They Never Play "Helpless" at the Stadium

Moore's Law, oracles, courtly flattery, attempts at understanding, and living with false confidence in our funny old world - with charts and a special announcement!

I lie, a little. Just triple checking, I’ll say, in my workday, in moments when I don’t know what’s going on. It’s one of those little lies, like thanks for the feedback!

I let things go uncorrected. I watch the misapprehension take place. Another day, and no one the wiser. I find myself quietly caught out of place, and that becomes the rhythm of my days.

Maybe it’s with these little lies that I put myself on the wrong side of understanding. Maybe it’s with these little lies that the crisis grows gradually worse, like mold in drywall.

The crisis? Everyone seems to agree there’s a crisis. But what’s the crisis, exactly? The consensus breaks down. Perhaps it’s a crisis of understanding.

An educated consumer…

Understanding is what it says, and involves humility. You stand under something.

But understanding is not something actively championed today in our fair republic, where the commercial forces outweigh the political - and possibly even the human ones.

We are customers and citizens, though the customer part gets more attention. The customer is, according to lore, always right. But what is the customer right about? How did the customer get so smart? I’m a customer, sometimes, and I’d be reluctant to correct anyone who called me always right.

And the customer is also king. But a king who understands a something has found a greater king. He abdicates, even if just privately. To understand is to be subject to something.

Understanding in a republic

In a republic, our politicians always have to say they understand. But understanding in front of other people is embarrassing. Better to say you understand already. Or after the shameful moment, you can say you understand now.

Understanding tends to speak poorly of us. It almost has to. Anyone who understands anything too easily can just as easily understand something else, at the drop of a hat. Anyone who understands slowly is like a rusty roulette wheel. Sure, they’ll stay where they stop. But no one can altogether trust the reasons that made them stop there.

And me? I once had a revelation on a rare clear evening as a full-grown adult, and came to the show-stopping conclusion - that I was a little thick. In the head, as in.

A funny X

I hate when people pull their phones out in the middle of a conversation to show me something. It always takes too long and never pays off. And the chart isn’t the point.

But, when in the 21st century…

(Data from Wikipedia. Chart by Eric Martin)

Moore’s Law says computers get cheaper and more powerful on a regular basis. It’s the law under which our ripped-off century has labored so far.

One result of Moore’s Law more or less working is Google, which scrapes the internet every day or so. It’s their business. They also scan the entire body of printed books in the world, the equivalent of the Vatican Library, on a regular basis. Because of copyright law and other concerns, they can’t do much with that part of the shop. But it’s there, devouring new books and rescanning old ones. And I think its work may show up in the Ngram viewer, which offers data all the way back to 1500 A.D.

So Google’s Ngram viewer has a chart of the use of the word “oracle,” back to 1500 A.D.

So imagine a chart. Moore’s law, left to right, shows the power of computers moving upwards, while the written use of the word “oracle” falls precipitously. At some point, there’s an X.

False confidence

What the sinking use of the word “oracle” seems to indicate that we’re riding a very long wave of false confidence. No one is consulting an oracle, or even mentioning one. No one thinks that what they don’t know or don’t understand is all that far out of their reach as to require something like an oracle.

Science is a big part of that. Computers are a big part of that (one reason for the uptick at the end of the Ngram chart is just because a major computer company had oracle for a name). Don’t get me wrong, computers are fine, if you like looking at computers. But they’re mostly just Ouija boards. They tell you what you tell them. To pretend otherwise is to pretend. It’s false confidence.

False confidence may get you the last mile on a journey, a seduction or a scam. I’ve benefitted from false confidence. I may be benefitting from it still. But I’ve also paid the price, and sometimes fear the price ahead.

For all its benefits, false confidence is a bad place to start. I sense just how bad a place it is to start when I talk to people younger than me. I hear them saying the optimistic and grateful words of the bosses, but helplessly. And I see them being eaten alive by anxiety.

The world can be a rotten bastard. And time tends to prove that all actual confidence is just false confidence that accidentally outlived the people who bought in.

Outside of confidence

Having helped to build a form of oracle, I’ve spent some time with the concept, reading, consulting oracles, looking at how they work, when they work and when they don’t.

ANNOUNCEMENT: A new version of this very oracle - Forget This Good Thing - is available free for all devices. Give it a whirl now! More news to come soon.

An oracle is a little like prayer. It’s a last resort when action or comprehension has fallen short. We all don’t know quite a lot. But we hardly ever lead with that. Neil Young’s Helpless is a beautiful song. But they never play it at sporting events. There’s no marching-band arrangement for it.

Instead, we have passing familiarity, working knowledge, which we sometimes have to triple check just to be sure. On a good day, that feels like understanding. It’s hollow, though, like the plaster-coated styrofoam exteriors they use on cheap luxury condos in Williamsburg. It looks like something, but it’s not.

This is where we start to believe in systems we don’t entirely understand. Off the top of your head (no Googling!), how does Moore’s Law work? What’s it based on? Has it held up since it was posited? I can see the bead of sweat wending its way from the hairline towards your temple.

Heavy is the head

With each new thing we take on someone else’s faith, we become more vaguely certain that a tornado is approaching. It’s like the end of the film A Serious Man, after all that comical, half-assed fumbling for understanding, the cost comes up dark and towering on the horizon.

Much of that false confidence, real anxiety and dubious understanding goes back to the time we spend as the customer - the one who’s supposedly always right and a king.

Kings often go bad. Kings often go mad. There are a lot of reasons. There’s freedom. There’s indulgence. There’s pressure. There’s conflicting information. But the most common influence shared by real monarchs and ordinary customers is flattery. Of course you know what you’re doing. Of course you’re an educated consumer. Of course you can afford that, or else why would we even be talking?

Flattery is hard to turn down. It feeds into the baseline complacency that’s required to enjoy most things in life. So, where do you draw the line? How do you enjoy life without becoming dangerously deluded? How do you inquire into the particulars of your life without becoming paranoid?

Don’t suck the bones

There’s a story about one of the great rabbis. A family came to the rabbi with their son, who’d been conscripted into the Czar’s army. In the army, the soldiers lived mostly on pork, which isn’t kosher. The family wanted to know if the young man should eat the pork and break the law of his people, or keep the law and likely starve to death.

The rabbi said the young soldier could eat the pork he was served. But he could not suck the bones.

I think about this often. It’s not a clean solution. It doesn’t fit into a meme. It doesn’t go on the end of one of those “I don’t know who needs to hear this…” wisdom hit and runs.

But it’s the best approach I’ve found to handling flattery, possibly false confidence and possibly real understanding. Partake but don’t linger, don’t relish. If you disagree, I can always triple check.

Selected Bibliography

Forget This Good Thing – Try it right now for free on any device

Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim

Forget This Good Thing – The app for iPhone and iPad

Forget This Good Thing – Paper book 1 - Paper book 2

A good, sturdy version of the I-Ching

Forget This Good Thing – All About It

Forget This Good Thing - Essay on its creation - Essay on what it can do for you