I’ve been mulling for some time a statement made by a friend. In an article about accusations
of bias against the media by both the right and the left, John Fleck wrote “they can’t both be right.” Sorry, John, but I disagree
and I’m surprised by your naivete. In matters of human belief, thought and behavior, it actually is possible for everyone in any
grouping from one to the entire world, to all be right or wrong at exactly the same time. Two conflicting views can both be right; a
billion conflicting views can all be wrong. Again: in matters of human belief, thought and behavior. Call it the Human Uncertainty
Principle. I’m not saying that there is no objective truth or fact. I’m saying that for all that can be measured in matters of human
belief, thought and behavior, there is a huge black box we don’t see because everyone of us depends on it.
You surely witness
this countless times a week. One person describes something one way, another in a completely different way, and yet they’re both right.
This room is cold (to me); no it’s not, it’s warm (to me). Don’t get out the thermometer — it can’t say what’s cold or warm — or
who is correct — just what’s colder or warmer than something else.
Someone who reads my blog surely must think I’m among the
lowest of communistic socialistic homosexual ecofeminist extremists. (If you don’t, read my “antagagnosticism” entry — that should make
95% shun me.) I think of myself as rather liberal and progressive. But a friend says most white people are more conservative than they
realize. Who’s correct? We all are.
So, you and I read an article. You come away feeling it is biased to the left, I come away
believing it is biased to the right. I honestly believe that even if the whole thing consists of a single word, we might both be
correct.
LCohen say something lovely in its poetry: one of us cannot be wrong. But he was. mjh
3 thoughts on “Human Uncertainty Principle”
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Sure, in a trivial sense you’re correct –
everyone in a large group of people can be “right” or everyone can be “wrong”, even when they hold conflicting views. But in a practical
sense, the right/wrong distinction matters. If I’m alone in a room and I think it’s too cold, I can just turn up the heat. “Right” and
“wrong” here don’t involve some absolute truth, but rather suggest a course of action to take. If there’s someone else in the room who
thinks it’s too hot, though, we can’t both be “right” in terms of some proposed course of action. Or rather, the course of action
becomes a lot more complicated.
So if everyone in the readership agrees that the newspaper is too cold, we obviously need to turn
up the heat. But there is no obvious solution when some readers think we’re too hot and others too cold – or, rather, the solution is
for us at that point to realize we’ve found some useful practical solution.
So we may be talking past each other here, and actually agreeing more than I realize. The
solution is actually pretty straightforward, and the room temperature metaphor works quite nicely. You put on a sweater. I wear short
sleeves. And we leave the temperature where it’s at. But the key, which a lot of our critics don’t recognize, is that if they have
strong feelings about the temperature of the room, hot or cold, chances are good that the temperature we pick is not going to be right
for them, and that doesn’t mean we’re “biased.”
What I’m asking is that readers be as thoughtful as you and I would be sitting
together in the same room face to face trying to decide where to set the thermostat – be thoughtful about recognizing the biases we have
about what’s the “right” temperature, rather than seeing our notion of it as the only correct one and criticizing the obviously biased
idiot who set the thermostat.
If you’re spotting the liberal bias as well as the conservative bias in the story you reference in
your final paragraph of the original post, that’s all I can ask. If you recognize why it has to be there, that’s all I can ask.