i think everyone has fluid mental models of the world that change throughout their lives. these mental models are basically structures of assumptions that let people more or less accurately predict future outcomes. i like to call them “frames”. naturally, as people experience contradictions in their frames, they’ll update them to better predict future outcomes. they do this knowingly or unknowingly. so these frames are basically built upon each person’s life experiences, values, and beliefs; their family and friends, their culture, their country, their political groups, their tribal in-groups and out-groups; everything contributes to a person’s frame.
in conversations with one another, we identify aspects of these frames through subtext and inference, but our identification of one another’s frames is made within our own frame. and typically, our frames obscure the frames of others.
when i first had this thought, i was disappointed in myself. i always thought, “how can this person possibly not understand/agree with me?” but i get it now, i had a problem of refusing to step into another’s frame. that’s solved, but my new problem is a lack of practice.
a musician can understand that IVmaj7 can flow into III7 and resolve nicely into vi7. however, to understand how it feels to move their fingers across the fretboard or glide across the keyboard; to hear the IVmaj7 naturally transition smoothly into III7; to mechanically reach for vi7 before the brain recognizes the III7; the musician must practice for long hours, boringly and actively preventing the mind from wandering, with strict intent and rigor, until the fingers move independently from the brain and before the musician can even recognize they have played that final resolution.
but practicing is easy alone in a room accompanied by the pleasing tones of music and the satisfaction of making them. practicing is a lot harder when confronted with another person who can’t or won’t step inside your frame, when the only method of reaching a mutual understanding is becoming uncomfortable by stepping into their frame.
could i reasonably expect a black man to befriend a white supremacist? come on, man, just step outside your frame. just try to understand him. you see, he grew up in a different environment than you, that’s all. he had no other community to join; can’t you be a little more understanding? only an exceptional few have this ability and it would be unfair to expect everyone practice it. but then again, we don’t need everybody to practice understanding frames. i believe, like self-driving cars, we only need 20% to make a change. i really believe that.
i believe, i think, and i understand. but i can’t say i know because i don’t know. i’ve been struggling to write anything recently because of another recent mental model: i don’t know anything, and it’s probably impossible to know anything. and if i did know anything, it would be impossible to know if i did.
for example, i’m writing this paragraph at my workplace backroom office/storage space. i want to say, “i know my car is parked in the parking lot,” and my justifications would be:
1. i locked my car and parked in the employee parking space.
2. my car has always been in the same spot when i came back to it.
3. my car has never been stolen or towed.
but i only need to attack and disprove one justification to prove that i never knew, “my car is parked in the parking lot.”
for example, what if i misremembered locking my car? in that case, i can’t know if my car is still in the lot. after all, it’s possible a thief walked by and pulled the door handle, and to their surprise, it’s unlocked. now they have access to my old 2003 Lexus RX 300, and i have no way of proving my car being parked in the lot except leaving my workspace, walking to the lot, and seeing my car with my own two eyes.
except, even perception is faulty. it’s possible that, right now, my car has been stolen by a thief with a guilty conscious. and during my walk back to the parking, the guilty thief could change his heart and park the car exactly where he stole it, locking the door to cover his crime. by the time i arrive, i pull the handle and sigh with relief that i locked the door, believing whole-heartedly that, yes, i locked the car; my car had remained in its parking space from the time i left it to the time i came back. in that case, i would have every justification and reason to believe that my car remained parked in the lot, despite the truth being the complete opposite.
the most i can say i know is, “i parked the car at the lot at 10:00 am, and the car was there again at 7:00 pm.” i imagine this line of thinking is what makes schizophrenics believe the government is spying on them, second-guessing every white van and unmarked car. this scenario is called a gettier problem, a scenario in which somebody has a justified, true belief that isn’t knowledge. the belief is justified in that my justifications are inherently tied to the truth of my car being parked in the lot, and it is true in that when i check on my car, it is parked in the same lot i left it. but the belief is not knowledge because the guilty thief inverted the truth by deceiving me about the true series of events.
why does it matter, anyways? because what matters isn’t the likeliness or probability of a belief being untrue, but whether i can ever be sure of any truth at all. i believe i’ll be safe if i look both ways before crossing the road, i believe i’ll be safe if i eat food prepared by a service worker, i believe that vaccines are an effective method of preventing disease.
even if i come across a situation where one of those beliefs are wrong — i cross the street and get hit by a car, i eat fast food and get food poisoning, i get a jab and develop myocarditis — was i necessarily wrong for believing? no, most likely, i was right all along, because i didn’t notice all the moments i didn’t get hit by a car, didn’t get food poisoning, and didn’t get covid when i would have without my cautious beliefs. considering truth is a lot less fun in the realm of reality because there are so many variables that are impossible to consider or fully understand; truth is a lot more fun in the realm of fiction because it’s fully self contained.
i used to say that i liked media reviews because the reviewers put words to feelings i had but couldn’t express. looking back, that’s probably a cope. most likely, i was adopting my favorite reviewer’s top-level opinions without necessarily agreeing with or fully understanding the frames of their arguments. however, with my two most recent mental models, i enjoy media reviews even more than i did before, in a way that i think is healthier.
i see media reviews as hobbyists expressing their frame for enjoying or hating something. media is great because the work of art, in it’s entirety, is one self-contained truth; a truth that can’t be attacked for being untrue, because it’s existence pre-supposes its being true. interpretations of media turns media into a microcosm of determining truth in the real world. historiographers argue over which samples of an overall truth are the most important for weaving a narrative about the actual history of events, because there are so many truths that telling a story about all of them would be pedantic and also impossible. so, when media reviewers review a media piece, they engage in a small form of historiography while opening to the reader a glimpse of their soul.
i see a lot of video game reviewers structure their reviews in the form of gameplay, story, sound design, and art direction. then, under each category, they’ll sample out the characteristics of the game’s category that was most meaningful to them.
“although the combat mechanics are fun and engaging, x, y, and z,”
“the story falls flat because of x, y, and z,”
“the sound design drives the combat by x, y, and z,”
“the graphics of the game are x, y, and z.”
but there’s far more than x, y, and z for each category; there’s an almost infinite number of a media piece’s characteristics that may be individually analyzed, and there are more than just four categories from which to sample.
every media reviewer has a frame that informs which categories are most important to analyze, and which samples of the category are most important to recognize. that’s why i like media reviews, especially when they’re told from the perspective of my closest friends. a media review is a person saying, “hey. i like art. this is why i like art. here’s a piece of art i recently came to know about.” you learn more about the reviewer, how they view the world, and how they view art. however, it’s important to make the distinction between a reviewer’s descriptions of the media and the descriptive truth of the media itself.
a reviewer’s descriptions of the media is not necessarily the truth about the media itself; oftentimes, a reviewer’s frame influences their perception of the media’s descriptive truth. this applies even in the case of direct quotations or video clips. a book reviewer could quote a passage from the book, and expand with their opinions on the passage, but that passage is necessarily nested within the larger context of the book; a film reviewer could clip a one-minute video, but that one-minute clip is necessarily nested within the larger context of the film; a music reviewer could quote the lyrics of a song, but that lyric is necessarily nested within the larger context of the song. the quote or clip may omit information necessary for understanding the greater whole, but what’s important is understanding why the reviewer omitted the information. was the context necessary? did the reviewer understand the context? if so, why did the reviewer omit the information? if not, what were the reviewer’s priorities? by asking questions and critically analyzing a review, we can learn so much more about the reviewer than what they let on. in that sense, media reviews are media in themselves (but i guess oscar wilde could have told you that, and better).
i believe it’s important to review and alter mental models. mental models give us a lens from which to view and understand the world around us, much like frames. but honestly, changing a mental model is scary. it involves recognizing the errors and faults of the previous model. but it can also be very fun! after all, from my two previous shifts in mental models, i’ve learned to be more wary of what i consider knowledge and to enjoy media more than i could have before. i see the world in new and different ways. the mundane has become novel. everything is new and fresh and the way i think feels like i’m walking on clouds. someday, these mental models will be mundane again. and when that happens, i’ll find something new to think about. at least, that’s what i believe.