The end of the year, or the beginning of the New Year, often calls one to reflect upon the year that has passed. This can mean different things for different people. Some people tend to focus on the sorrows, some on the joys.
Some people even choose not to reflect at all. However, this can be a mistake, as mentioned in a previous post; we, as humans, should reflect and reflect often.
This year I’d like to invite you to reflect on your blindspots.
You might look at the phrase “reflect on your blindspots” and be a bit perplexed. At first glance this may appear to be a bit paradoxical, and indeed in many ways it is. However, I am a firm believer that the key to unlocking life’s greatest mysteries lies in paradox. It is in this space that answers (and yet, paradoxically, more questions) arise.
Paradox of the Blindspot
Back to the paradox at hand. If you have blindspots, how are you going to know you have them? Isn’t the very essence of a blindspot the fact that you are not privy to it?
The great physicist Richard Feyman once stated:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
The blindspot that Feyman is referring to is the blindspot of willful ignorance. These are the things we pretend to be blind to only to fool ourselves into thinking we are blind to them. In some cases, people bury these things so deep that they almost cannot see them anymore. Let’s refer to this blindspot as the blindspot of willful ignorance.
The Blindspot of Willful Ignorance
The blindspot of willful ignorance is an exceptionally wily creature. It can come in many shapes and forms, but let’s look at the most common example.
The most common form of this blindspot is the one formed by the path of least resistance. Whenever we take the path of least resistance (the most natural path for us to take), we immediately have to rationalize that decision. We have cognitive dissonance knowing that the easiest path is not usually the best path, and yet for the sheer purpose of being practical we have to take this path most of the time.
The problem is that sometimes the path of least resistance is chosen just as carelessly in truly important situations. It is chosen in some cases where it will even have catastrophic consequences. Many times it is even chosen in cases where it actually prevents us from moving forward and keeps us stuck. This is another paradox where the path of least resistance actually becomes the path of most resistance.
So, how does the blindspot form? Well, to avoid the cognitive dissonance we rationalize decision after decision pertaining to the decision at hand. We keep rationalizing and rationalizing until the fact of the matter (the truth) is obscured or buried under a mountain of rationalizations. Until we clear off the mountain of rationalizations on top of us, we cannot move forward. This mountain of rationalizations is what then makes this path the path of most resistance.
A common example of this blindspot in real life is a bad relationship. At first the relationship might have been convenient. In fact, maybe the relationship was extremely comfortable. However, maybe it became a little too comfortable, and before long the relationship hit a dead end. However, rationalization upon rationalization kept the relationship “alive.” Not moving backward, but not moving forward either. Life was halted because the path of least resistance became a dead end street.
In the example above we can see the danger of this blindspot. This blindspot can keep a person in a relationship that’s going nowhere (sometimes in perpetuity) or certainly not in the direction they had hoped for when they entered the relationship.
This blindspot can also be seen in many other areas of life. It can keep people involved in unhealthy habits, dead-end careers, from forming new relationships and can lead to a generally unhappy life.
The Blindspot of Unwilful Ignorance
This blindspot is the blindspot which consists of the things we don’t know that we don’t know. Donald Rumsfeld famously called these the “unknown unknowns.” These are things that you are truly blind to.
Uncovering these is much more difficult due to the nature of them. However, some of these unknown knows are easier than others to uncover.
An easier to identify form of this blindspot is the illusion of explanatory depth (IOED). The illusion of explanatory depth was uncovered by Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil in 2002. It is explained in the abstract of their article “The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth” as follows:
"People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do; they are subject to an illusion—an illusion of explanatory depth. The illusion is far stronger for explanatory knowledge than many other kinds of knowledge, such as that for facts, procedures or narratives. The illusion for explanatory knowledge is most robust where the environment supports real-time explanations with visible mechanisms."
So, what does that mean in layman’s terms? Well, it means that there are gaps in our knowledge we fail to comprehend we have. For instance, try to explain how a TV works to someone, or even a simpler device like a wrap-around measuring tape, and you’ll see just how hard it is to do. You’ll see just how ignorant you are to explain. Yet, you carry the illusion around that you know a lot object these things. The fact is, we have huge knowledge gaps that we fill in with a pretend understanding.
On the other side of the coin of unknown knowns are the things we cannot even pretend to know because we don’t even know that gaps in our knowledge even exist. At least in illusionary situations we can find out what the gaps are when we accidentally (or intentionally) get put into situations where we have to explain to people something about the topic at hand. You often will find yourself to be treading water more than actually explaining a topic.
This is not the case with the other version of unknown unknowns. We don’t often run into situations where we can uncover these. We’re also unlikely to have even formed illusions about them because we don’t even know they exist in reality.
True Unknown Unknowns
Talking about unknown unknowns is a bit like talking about the boogeyman. It’s a bit difficult to talk about something that doesn’t even exist (as far as you know). So, true unknown unknowns are perhaps easiest to see in the form of examples.
“Lone wolf” attacks (lone wolf terrorism) are a great example of unknown unknowns. They’re hard to prevent because often times there are not a lot of signs that an attack is about to occur. This makes them especially difficult for law enforcement. In the most hard to uncover events, a person who commits an attack may have no prior history of violence or any indicators to tip off that an attack was imminent.
Unknown unknowns can also be black swan events. A classic example of such an unknown unknown is his of the computer. Many people did not foresee the rise of the computer (or even known it existed) and thus had no way to prepare for it. This huge blindspot disrupted many businesses and put many people out of business altogether. The Internet is also viewed in this same way.
They can also be one-off events. 9/11 and the housing collapse are other great examples. Any time where people are caught off guard with no forewarning or signs of an impending major calamity. Brexit is another good example.
Now, we can argue about whether there were truly warning signs for any of these events but that’s beside the point. The point is that the events themselves are unforeseeable and the consequences of such events are often extremely large.
Another way to put it—unknown unknowns are the things we cannot see because we had no clue we should even be looking for them.
The Best Defense Against Unwilful Ignorance
Although the nature of unknown unknowns make them almost impossible to prevent (because we cannot predict them), there are some things we can do to make them less likely to occur. Let’s look at some of the ways to prevent the potential occurrence of these types of events.
One of the main ways to prevent unknown unknowns is to have a team. A team could be anything from trusted friends to business partners to mentors. However, the one commonality these people should have is that they are A) objective and B) willing to tell the truth. If they fail to meet either A or B they’re not going to be of much use to help combat unknown unknowns.
A trusted team will help with unknown unknowns because they’re either faced them before or can provide insight into things that we cannot see by ourselves. One example is that perhaps there is a major flaw in our personality that we cannot see. A mentor or trusted friend can point this out before it becomes detrimental to our lives. Another is that maybe a mentor points out some skills we should obtain that we weren’t unaware of. Obtaining these skills could have “lollapalooza effects” (to quote Charlie Munger) and dramatically change our lives.
Another way to prevent unknown unknowns is taking some time out to play imagination games. This may sound a bit childish but the results can be spectacular. One imagination game that can be played is called “predicting failure.” Imagine that everything in your life, every iron in every fire, has failed. What will you do in each of these situations? Imagine this has actually happened and then dig try your best to dig your way out of it. This is a great way to prevent unknown unknowns from occurring because it actually uncovers some things we otherwise never could have seen.
The last way to prevent unknown unknowns is to seek an unlikely source of information. This may be a person or individual that you would not normally seek for advice but could perhaps offer some perspective that you never would have thought of otherwise. This means someone outside of the “team” suggested above.
It may mean seeking the advice of a religious figure for a personal problem or if you’re dealing with an engineering problem, and consulted 3 engineers already, you might ask someone else like a mechanic or a physicist instead. Often times this sheds new light or a new solution that was blind to you before.
Although these three defense are not perfect and do not always work, they are more likely to prevent or reduce a blindspot than if they were otherwise never employed. Also, it should be noted that this list of defenses is not definitive.
Best Weapon Against Blindspots
This might come as no surprise but the best weapon against blindspots is education. Reading and constant study help tremendously in shedding new light on things we were blind to before having read about them or studying them. Be a lifelong learner and continue to open new doors to new places in the mind.
Also, choose the right books. It is easy to turn to books that give us pleasure. We want to read books that are fun or make us feel good, but this is often the worst strategy. We should read books that challenge us. We should find books that really put our backs up against the wall and make us uncomfortable. We should read books we are afraid to pick up because of how much they challenge our worldview. It is only then that we can hope to make progress in combating our blindspots.
Conclusion
Often times we don’t think to focus on one particular thing to think about during the day. Shifting or focus solely to focusing on blindspots give us that opportunity. So focus on blindspots today and see what comes of it. It may even be a life-changing experience.
