The Nuances of Analog Wisdom

I took the day off from work yesterday and besides catching up on some overdue chores, I also spent some time mulling over the subject of my blog article this week. I know I have written a lot in the past about the trap of dogma and certainty (e.g. here and here) and it is the naturally tendency of our minds to fall into the trap of confirmation bias.

Today, I'm going to elaborate further on the other side of the coin: if we operate in a mode of uncertainty, wouldn't we be unable to function decisively in the world?

I've mentioned before that 'perhaps' is my favourite operating state. A lot of things in life are not binary: it's never true or false, good or bad, white or black. The answer lies somewhere in between--not in the digital, but the analog domain.

Which is why analogies work well as a tool to grasp an understanding of any situation. You compare one situation with another which you have an intuitive grasp of; having an intuitive understanding means that you 'feel' it in your body, you have physical and emotional sense of it.

If I tell you that ruling a country is like walking a tightrope, you get a sense of the difficulty in finding you balance at all times--to be vigilant and not sway too much to one side. You are are always sensing and adjusting to changes in your position.

For any area of expertise, you'll need sufficient experience before you get a feel of things. You cannot rely on flowcharts with yes/no tests to determine what you are supposed to do in every situation. Real-time situations have nuances and extraordinary exceptions, which can never be captured completely in any instruction manual.

I've always believed that a good football striker is one who has a good positional sense. He takes in everything in a heartbeat--the direction of the ball, the position of the defenders and goalkeeper, the run of his team-mates and then deciding what movement--to accelerate, to jump, to slow-down, to readjust his body, so that he can be in the most optimal position to receive the through-ball, the cross or the pass from a team-mate. All this is done instinctively. And when he processes all these very quickly, he outwits the opposition and arrives at the right position and at the right time, to head or strike the ball with the correct technique and force, to score a goal.

The football striker has a nuanced feel for the situation.  It can only come through a mental and physical wisdom honed through practice and experience. The mind and body learns things that way.  He doesn't mentally decide how to move at every instant, he simply 'flows' with the game, in a holistic immersion.

The analogy extends to almost all of life's roles and situation. How much freedom should you give to your child? It depends. How much affirmative action should a government enforce to help the minorities and the disadvantaged? Again, it depends on the situation. There's no simple answer for it.

The most important stance is to never have any dogma and always have a keen awareness of one's own mental biases. Listen to the facts, observe the situation and make a decision. Observe, evaluate and take another action after that. It's a continuous feedback control system. Have a feel for the nuances, the many gradations in shade and hue of the situation.

An analog signal captures everything, albeit within the sensitive range of the sensor. A digital one, chops and judges with absolute certainty--it's either a 1 or 0 at the instance of sampling. Ones and zeros are good for transmission and storage once the signal has been captured--we can do that without loss. But what we lose are the nuances at the point of sampling. Once lost, they can never be recovered.

Which is why, there are audiophiles today who prefer vinyl records and vacuum tube amplifiers for the audio-system, claiming that the sound is 'warmer' compared the precision and perfection of digital CDs or MP3 players. The analog signal captures all the nuances of sound at the moment of creation. True, noise is often introduce at every stage of processing, but something of its original quality and character is also preserved. And that makes all the difference--at least to the diehard aficionados.

Living in a the real-world requires a mode of perception that is similar to analog signal processing. You take in everything as best as your senses could, and never judge prematurely. That way, all the nuances of life are captured and taken into consideration. That to me is the essence of wisdom.