Certainty is the Death of Thought
The Perils of Absolute Certainty for Self Deception and Ossification
Yanagi Ryuken was a Japanese Buddhist monk turned martial arts instructor who amassed a considerable following of devotees. He claimed a record of 200-0 in no holds barred matches, which he would win by “touchless knockout.”
In 2006, the 65 year old Ryuken accepted a challenge match against 35-year-old Iwakura Tsuyoshi, a Japanese journalist and mixed martial artist.
Ryuken agreed to let the fight be filmed.
The height of self deception is believing one cannot be injured or killed in combat against a fellow great ape. Beyond a certain level of self deception consequences start to come increasingly without warning.
Another example of the emperor has no clothes.
Richard Feynman famously said "the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
Feynman is talking about the unknown unknowns of Donald Rumsfeld matrix, meaning you and I are fooling ourselves about something right now without knowing it.
The unknown unknowns is why labeling things is so corrosive to clear thinking. Labels are a compression algorithm for a multivariate object. Think conceptual zip file. Labels are an incomplete, low resolution map of the territory, a symbolic representation of a more complex structure.
Label yourself a touch less knockout master long enough and the label no longer survives contact with reality.
Once unmoored from the territory the label is a tool used to dig the hole of ideology.
Ideology means you outsource considerate thought to a Netflix style subscription bundle of ideological opinions, not realizing all shows are certain of their righteousness.
A useful indicator for political ideology is the following: If someone can derive all your political positions only knowing a single position, it’s likely you’ve hit subscribe.
Once subscribed you become a walled city believing there is nothing worthwhile beyond the walls. There’s a reason that in the opening act of Siddartha, the Buddha, he must leave the walls of his comfortable and privileged Brahmin life.
A subscription to certainty is a subscription to a feeling, perhaps moral superiority. Perhaps it’s the feeling of safety brought forth from a stable world view.
The problem comes as stability tends toward petrification. You ossify.
To go look and find out for yourself and to be wrong requires the destruction of a neural structure. It’s a real biological, cellular death. Through the reweighting of a neural network comes a horizon of apoptosis where what remains is scavenged to rebuild. Emotionally it’s uncomfortable.
The Jungian view is to look at the monster and know it will get worse for a time but with looking comes enlightenment - seeing that the monster has always been in service of you.
In a world of constructed meaning the purpose of looking is so your ideology dies instead of you, the continuous self that manages the transformation.
Every year, despite flashing warning indicators, people die on Everest because they are unable to turn back from the summit.
The climbers must know the answer to the question they come to ask. They must obtain what they come to seek.
They risk their lives to see the monster for themselves.