Taking a Step Back
July 21, 2021
by Chris Oestereich
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
Humanity has struggled with the complex set of challenges presented by the global pandemic. As a writer, I desperately want to help others recognize the ongoing dangers so that they might better protect themselves, their families, and their communities, and ultimately, I want to do some small part to help us eradicate the virus.
In seeking those aims, I've written several arguments that try to help people see things through my eyes on topics like the necessity of pursuing elimination strategies and waiving intellectual property. I think there's value in doing such work, but I'm often disappointed with the results. Well-honed rational arguments often fall well short of their aims.
The Delta variant is already causing great harm in some parts of the world, and it appears to be poised to continue spreading and amplifying its effects. Given our precarious moment, I thought it might be helpful to take a step back and think about how our interpretation of information affects our perception of the pandemic. My hope in doing so is that it might help others connect better with future messages.
“Different groups have different values and can thus "understand societal problems differently" and prioritize different things.”
So far, aside from a group of outliers that we might learn from, we have not been able to pull together, gain a shared understanding of the problem, and collaborate across the planet on a coordinated effort to eliminate the virus locally (much less eradicate it globally). Given the forces competing for our attention and allegiance, it's probably not all that surprising that we've struggled so much. Given the complex, global nature of the challenge, a host of factors leaves us all viewing the matter at least a little bit differently, but often very much so. We're a complicated species living in predominantly pluralistic societies where people with different beliefs and backgrounds coexist. Different groups have different values and can thus "understand societal problems differently" and prioritize different things. That alone leaves us with plenty to disagree about in simpler times.
We've now layered a pandemic over our existing challenges. An invisible machine of replication circulates in our communities, affecting those it infects in various ways. As we gain a better understanding of it and the ability to overcome it, it mutates, and the deadly dance starts anew.
“An invisible machine of replication circulates in our communities, affecting those it infects in various ways.”
And even as we gain an understanding, that understanding is not well shared. COVID-19 is a highly complex matter that affects our lives in many ways. It's a prime example of a 'wicked problem,' one which by its nature is difficult or impossible to solve or even fully understand. It's hard to have a shared understanding of something that can't be fully understood.
Berkley academics Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber developed the idea of wicked problems. Their work looked at difficulties related to the increasingly complex challenges faced by professionals in the planning sector, but their ideas have proven to be broadly applicable. As they put it, "The professional's job was once seen as solving an assortment of problems that appeared to be definable, understandable and consensual. He was hired to eliminate those conditions that predominant opinion judged undesirable." For such problems, like providing communities with roads, water, sanitation, and schools, the authors found the track record of experts to be "quite spectacular." But those were not wicked problems. Instead, those were — to Rittel and Webber — 'tame' ones, which could be well-defined and solved by professions designed for specific purposes.
Distinguishing properties of wicked problems.
Wicked problems are something completely different. They're messy, complex things with various factors that keep them from being addressed in the same way as tame problems, including the lack of a definitive formulation. How you choose to address a problem dictates what you would need to understand about it. They're all unique, and their solutions are not binary matters of fixed or broken, but rather ones that either get better or worse along multiple lines.
Cultural factors also come into play. Geert Hofstede's model of national tendencies is a potential guide. Individualism versus collectivism looked at a nation's tilt towards feeling more like independent individuals or interdependent members of groups. His uncertainty avoidance measure assessed the general tolerance for risk. Hofstede also surveyed time orientation. Cultures with a long-term orientation tend to see the world as being in flux and brace themselves for change. Alternately, people living in short-term cultures tended to view the world as being relatively static. Think about how one's time orientation might affect their interpretation of warnings about climate change and how that might necessitate different messaging to connect with different perspectives. And Hofstede's measure of power distance, which looks at "the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally," might help us understand why people in places like the US resisted things like lockdowns and mask mandates.
How we interpret cultural factors is a matter of perception. That occurs in the black box between our ears where things can get interesting. Our senses often receive vague, incomplete, and fragmented information, so our brains fill in the gaps. We then perceive our surroundings as a unified whole. Our minds stitch together our realities via inputs it's receiving and the information it has on hand. As neuroscientist Anil Seth put it, "Instead of perception depending largely on signals coming into the brain from the outside world, it depends as much, if not more, on perceptual predictions flowing in the opposite direction. We don't just passively perceive the world; we actively generate it. The world we experience comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the outside in." Your beliefs, values, and knowledge all await incoming signals and potentially affect their interpretation. Our interpretation depends as much (or more) on what's inside our brain as the signals from our senses.
“If the information stored in our minds can override the signals retrieved from our senses, we might want to account for that in our messaging.”
A fascinating example of Seth's message comes from an experiment with a visual illusion that appears to have a dot move diagonally when viewed through peripheral vision. When viewed directly, the illusion disappears, and you see the object as it is. Researches used brain imaging to find that the visual system appears to interpret the illusion as it is, but that the "higher-level thinking area dedicated to anticipation and decision-making" falls for the illusion. Our brains 'sees' the illusion differently than our eyes do.
Visual illusions may seem a far cry from the task of trying to connect with people who view the world differently, but they beg relevant questions. If the information stored in our minds can override the signals retrieved from our senses, we might want to account for that in our messaging. If what you know isn't what they know (it isn't), how does that affect the receipt of the message?
Going forward, how might we reach people who perceive the world very differently than we do? What factors might we want to consider in trying to do so? Who might we work with for assessing the importance of such factors and testing messages? What modes of communication might work best? Could stories reach people in ways that essays can't? If so, what sorts of protagonists or messengers might connect? And how can we undertake such efforts while remaining transparent and truthful, while avoiding anything approaching disinformation?
I've put forth a lot of questions and little in the way of answers. I hope that putting them out for consideration might somehow be helpful. The exercise of working through them has given me plenty to consider moving forward. In doing so, I'll keep trying to find common ground from which to battle the pandemic. I hope you'll do the same.