Again foul weather shall not change my mind,
But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved.
—Thoreau
Against the pressure of one’s fear must be held the power of cognition.
Examination of the relevant literature, however, revealed that there were cognitive illusions that were as strong as optical illusions. This was an instructive analogy, because many optical illusions fooled one no matter how fully one understood the illusion and tried to compensate for it. Spin a disk with certain black-and-white patterns, and colors appear undeniably. There were cognitive errors just like that. Calculating probabilities, various statistical effects; cognitive scientists had devised several tests of these mental skills, and even working with statisticians as their subjects, they found everyone prone to certain cognitive errors, which they had given names like anchoring, ease of representation, the law of small number, the fallacy of near certainty, asymmetric similarity, trust in analogy, neglect of base rates, and so on.
One test that had caught even Frank, despite his vigilance, was the three-box game. Three boxes were presented all closed, with one ten-dollar bill hidden in one of them; the experimenter knew which. Subject chooses a box, at that point left closed. Experimenter then opens one of the other two boxes, always an empty one. Subject then offered a chance to either stick with his first choice, or switch to the other closed box. Which should he do?
Frank decided it didn’t matter; fifty-fifty either way.
But each box at the start had a one-third chance of being the one. When subject chooses one, the other two then have two-thirds of a chance of being right. After experimenter opens one of those two boxes, and it’s empty, those two boxes still have two-thirds of a chance, which is now concentrated in the remaining unchosen box; while the subject’s original choice still has its original one-third chance. So one should always change one’s choice to the unopened box one hadn’t chosen! Odds are two-thirds to one-third that the other box will be the right one.
Well, shit. Put it that way and it was undeniable, even though it still seemed wrong, indeed painfully counterintuitive. When Anna got the answer right the moment Frank described the test to her, he still felt that only proved Anna’s Spocklike quality of mind; he laughed at her, but the problem’s solution still felt deeply wrong. But this was the point: human cognition (which might leave Anna slightly to one side) had all kinds of blind spots like this. One scientist had concluded by saying, We’re so bad at seeing reality, we simulate in our actions what we wish had already happened.
People acted, in short, by projecting their desires.
Well—but of course. Wasn’t that the point?
But clearly it could lead to error. The question was, could one’s desires be defined in such a way as to suggest actions that were truly going to help make the desires come to pass, in a future still truly possible?
And could that be done if there was a numb spot behind one’s nose—a pressure on one’s thoughts—a suspension of one’s ability to decide anything?
Then also, could it be that these cognitive errors existed for society as a whole, just as they did for individuals? Could they map a way forward despite the inherent errors? Some spoke of “cognitive mapping” when they discussed taking social action: one mapped the immense unknowable civilization, or reality itself, not by knowing all of it, but by marking routes through it. So that they were not the map or the radar system, but the pilot.
At that point it became clear even mapping was an analogy. As such Anna would not think much of it, nor the cognitive scientists; “trust in analogy” was one of their identified errors. But everyone needed a set of procedures to navigate their days: the science of that particular Wednesday (Emerson). Using flawed equipment (the brain, civilization) one tried to optimize results. Some kind of robustness in the totality of the flawed instruments and procedures.
Something from Aldo Leopold: What’s good is what’s good for the land.
Something from Rudra Cakrin (although he said it was from the Dalai Lama, or the Buddha himself): Try to do good for other people. Your happiness lies there.
Try it and see. Make the experiment and analyze it. Try again. Act on your desires.
But what do you really want?
And can you really decide?