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The Missing Context · After the Signal

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is After The Signal.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go a little farther down the road.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: A sentence can be completely true and still leave you with the wrong idea.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: That may be one of the stranger things about truth.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We usually think of information in two categories.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: True or false.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Did it happen?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Did she say it?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Was he there?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is the photograph real?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is yes, we tend to think the problem is solved.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But increasingly, I think there is a third category we don't talk about enough.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: True, but incomplete.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And incomplete information can be remarkably persuasive.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine I tell you a man walked out of a meeting halfway through.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Immediately, your mind begins supplying possibilities.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was angry.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: He was offended.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't like what was being said.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he was making some kind of statement.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now I give you one more fact.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: His wife had just called to tell him their daughter had been taken to the hospital.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Same man, same meeting, same exit.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing about the first sentence was false, but everything about its meaning changed.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's context.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we live in an age that produces enormous amounts of information
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: while constantly stripping context away from it.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: A photograph appears on a screen.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: A 15 second video circulates online.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Someone repeats a sentence from an interview.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: A headline summarizes an event.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: A friend tells us what another friend said.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We receive the fragment first.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And very often, we form the judgment before the context arrives, if it ever arrives at all.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: That interests me because
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: the human mind doesn't seem particularly comfortable leaving empty spaces empty.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We fill them.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Quickly, someone doesn't return a phone call.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: We create a reason.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: A colleague seems distant.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We create a reason.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: A family member makes an unexpected decision.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: We create a reason.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're right,
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: but sometimes we're simply completing a story with the information available to us.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that once the story is complete in our minds, new information has a harder job.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't entering an empty room anymore.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It has to display something already there.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's much more difficult.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen this happen in families.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You probably have too.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Someone tells a story about something that happened 20 years ago.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone knows the story.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's been told at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at reunions.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's even become funny.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then one day someone who was actually there says, that's not quite what happened.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And there's resistance.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily because anyone is dishonest.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: The familiar version has simply had 20 years to harden.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It has structure.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The correction doesn't.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: This happens at larger scales too.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Organizations develop stories about themselves.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Communities do.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Institutions do.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Countries do.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every group eventually creates a narrative explaining who it is,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: how it got there, and what certain events meant.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those narratives are well supported.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some are convenient.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Most are probably mixtures of both.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because history has the same problem memory does.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: There is always more information than the story can contain.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Someone has to decide what belongs.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: That decision is unavoidable.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot include everything.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: A biography containing every moment of a person's life would take a lifetime to read.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: A documentary cannot show every frame that was recorded.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: A newspaper article cannot include every interview.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even a photograph is an act of exclusion.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The photographer points the camera in one direction instead of another.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everything outside the frame disappears.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I've become interested not only in what I'm being shown,
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: but in what I would need to know to understand it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Those are different questions.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: One asks, is this true?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The other asks, is this enough?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: That second question is harder because sometimes the missing information isn't dramatic.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one detail,
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: one earlier conversation,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: one relationship you didn't know existed,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: one decision made years before, one sentence left out.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the thing you were certain you understood looks different.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Writing the Executor series has made me think about this constantly.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Elias Ward keeps finding pieces of his father's life.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Documents, names, places, decisions.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Each piece is real, but a piece isn't a picture.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the dangers Elias faces is assuming that because he possesses evidence,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: he possesses understanding.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Those aren't the same thing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: His father, Thomas Ward, knew that.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: He understood something that becomes increasingly important as the story expands.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Information has power partly because of when it arrives.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Give someone one fact today and another fact tomorrow,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: and they may reach a completely different conclusion than if you gave them both
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: at once.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: The facts haven't changed.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: The sequence has.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's a subtle form of influence, and we experience versions of it constantly.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: The first person who tells us about an argument establishes the starting point.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: The first headline establishes the frame.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: The first explanation establishes the cause.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Everything afterward gets evaluated against it,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: which means context isn't merely additional information.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes context is the difference between two completely different realities.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's another part of this I find uncomfortable.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: We don't always want more context.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the incomplete version works for us.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It confirms what we already believe.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: It supports the person we already trust.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: It validates the conclusion we've already reached.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: More information might complicate things.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And human beings have a complicated relationship with complication.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: We say we want the truth.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: But often what we really want is a truth that fits neatly into the story we've already built.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've caught myself doing this.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Probably everyone has.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: You hear something about someone you already dislike and think, that sounds about right.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting sentence
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: because what we're really saying is this new information fits my existing model of
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: that person.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't necessarily evaluated the information.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We've recognized the pattern and pattern recognition is incredibly useful until
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: the pattern is wrong.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been trying something.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: When a piece of information produces an immediate emotional reaction in me,
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: especially when it confirms something I already believe,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I try to ask one more question.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: What context would change the meaning of this?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not prove it false.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Change its meaning.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different standard.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the answer is nothing.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: The evidence is clear.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you realize how much you don't know.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who said it?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: When?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: What happened immediately before?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: What happened afterward?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: What was the relationship between the people involved?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: What information did they possess at the time?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: What information am I seeing now that they didn't have then?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions don't guarantee certainty.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they often do the opposite.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: They introduce uncertainty.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe uncertainty isn't always a weakness.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes uncertainty is simply an accurate description of what we know.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's a strange pressure now to have an opinion immediately.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Something happens and almost instantly we're expected to understand it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But understanding usually takes longer than information.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's value in saying, I saw that.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I heard that.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I read that.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know enough yet.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: That isn't indecision.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: It may be discipline.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because the fragment in front of us may be completely real.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: The photograph may be authentic.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: The quotation may be accurate.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: The event may have happened exactly as described.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we still may not understand what we're looking at.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Truth matters.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: But context tells us what the truth means.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the most important part of the story is the part that hasn't arrived yet.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is After the Signal.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, strengthen the things that remain.