{"id":12555,"date":"2018-09-24T15:39:45","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T07:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=12555"},"modified":"2018-09-24T15:39:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T07:39:45","slug":"models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2018\/09\/24\/models\/","title":{"rendered":"different people have different mental models"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

People typically have high-res models<\/a> of their own lives and lower-res models of other people\u2019s. We are all born clueless with incredibly low-res models of the world – then we tweak and upgrade our models. Different people do this to different degrees depending on many variables<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cluelessness, innocence, na\u00efvet\u00e9, privilege – these are all words used to describe the condition of having a flawed and\/or low-res model of the world. A child who loses their innocence is forced to develop a higher-res model of some harsh and ugly things<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A common source of misunderstanding is as follows: a person experiences an increase in resolution of their own model of something that\u2019s relevant to them. They then make a claim based on that model that extends beyond it. It might seem accurate to them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People inadvertently do this all the time because natural language is fundamentally fuzzy&vague. We say things that seem true to us, but may only at best be true in the context of our model, which is vague to a degree we cannot appreciate until we get a more precise, hi-res one<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this look like? A person has a bad experience. He then makes a general statement that extends beyond that experience. This statement contradicts someone else\u2019s experience. Boom, we have ourselves a conflict<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way of avoiding this is to caveat everything endlessly. \u201cIt seems to me in my experience under X circumstances that…\u201d – but this is tedious and tiresome. (It\u2019s a good habit, though)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an example of someone who thinks he\u2019s developed an insight based on his experience, and makes a general statement that extends beyond it. It\u2019s interesting to consider that his statement must have genuinely seemed true to him when he said it. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cStraight White Male\u201d has become this century\u2019s N-Word. It\u2019s used to offend and diminish the recipient based on assumption and bias. No difference in the usage.<\/p>— Josh Denny (@JoshDenny) May 18, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote>