Context

Hamilton, New Zealand
November 2021

"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
- Arthur James Balfour

Imagine there is a war between nations. And just for argument's sake, let's say you hear about this war through a trusted source of information, so that there are no lies - including no "damn lies" - with respect to the information you receive.

Your brain conjures up multiple scenarios. You want to know more, you need to know the answers to certain questions. How many nations are involved? Which nations? Where is the war - in your own country, or halfway around the world? What is the nature of the war - political, economic, cyber, conventional, nuclear, or total war? The specifics are crucial, so you know whether the war actually "matters" to you and, if so, what may be the best way for you to act upon the information.

For example, if you live in Canada and there is a conventional war between two small nations in Africa, the war won't impact you very much. In this scenario, the fact there is a war doesn't really matter to you, at least not in the immediate future. If, however, the war involves Canada, the United States, and several other large nations around the world, and it is a nuclear or total war, it will impact you a great deal. Under this scenario, there is not much else that matters to you.

Knowing if there is a war going on may be important, but it's more important to know whether it will actually impact you (1).

So, even assuming you have been given reliable, trustworthy information, it's not just the information that is important, but also a finite number of highly relevant details, without which your brain cannot determine the probability of the war impacting your life (or not).

Practical Applied Statistics

Statistics refers to the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data (2). Statistics are perceived as boring by most people, and they certainly are taught that way in most places. However, the ability to practically apply statistics to the data we receive is utterly crucial to most of the decisions we make every single day. For once we are given a bunch of data and statistics - even if they are correct - the brain has to know how to interpret them to know whether they "matter" at all.

Many people are not very good at this - they are easily misled by reams of fancy data and statistics, particularly when the headline prefacing them adorns the front page of a newspaper, or they are repeated by an "expert" or some other sanctified officiary of knowledge. This is a problem, for nowadays there are data and statistics everywhere. We live in the era of "big data," with news, numbers, and statistical models being thrown at us relentlessly from a variety of mainstream and social media sources. 

​So now, consider another example. Now, let's imagine there is an asteroid and its trajectory is aimed straight at the earth. There are two different people who want to learn more about the asteroid, Stan and Dale. They each do an internet search.

​Stan seeks as many facts as he can about the asteroid. He finds a site that describes the physics of the asteroid movement in space. Another outlines the composition of the asteroid. Another talks about how the asteroid formed. By the end of several hours of surfing, Stan has obtained tons of data on the asteroid. He knows a lot about it; you could say he is even an "expert."

​​Dale, on the other hand, seeks only the most relevant facts to his situation. How big is the asteroid? How far away is it? Where will it hit? Dale realizes that if the asteroid is the size of a football and is 100 light years away, it will not matter to him. However, if the asteroid is the size of a small moon and is only a day away, not much else will matter to him. He finds these relevant facts within 10 minutes, and acts accordingly.

Knowing an asteroid will imminently hit earth may be important, but even more important is whether it should "matter" to you (3).

Even though Stan has done a lot more work and has acquired much more knowledge with respect to the asteroid, there is little in the way of practical relevance that allows his brain to actually apply the knowledge to help him decide what he should do next. Dale, on the other hand, has acquired a finite set of facts about the asteroid that allow him to determine what he should do next.

Facts Are Important, But So Is Context

There is a movie called Good Will Hunting (4) in which the main character, Will Hunting, is portrayed as exceptionally intelligent. The portrayal of his genius is often through his remarkable ability to memorize facts and solve complex mathematical equations. Essentially, he is deemed highly intelligent based on his ability to acquire and manipulate information, so he's kind of like a walking computer. This is the idea of intelligence that may well be visualized by most people today - the person who can memorize and manipulate vast amounts of information (which, by the way, most computers can do much better than any human brain).

​Unfortunately, being a walking computer does not make a person (or a computer itself) able to survive function with respect to the "ordinary," day-to-day aspects of reality. A person can know many things, but if the information is largely irrelevant to what they need to do to survive and function in their life, it does not matter. Intelligence is not just knowing facts, solving equations, or having a multitude of figures at one's disposal - it is the ability to process the context of those facts so as to make predictions about reality, and act accordingly.

Will Hunting knows a lot of stuff, but that's not sufficient for him to be "intelligent" (5).

An entire set of brain structures, called the basal nuclei, evolved to process context as its main function. The basal nuclei are now more important now than ever, for they allow us to sit through all the information acquired by the cerebral cortex so as to determine how we ought to act in the world to achieve the best outcome...or at least, to avoid a negative one.

Right now, there are several world scenarios being played out with respect to viruses, government mandates, currency crises, the erosion of social roles, potential military wars, and the like. Even when facts are reported correctly - which frequently is not the case - there is rarely any context attached to them; it's just data and statistics. Facts lacking in context are often highly misleading and generally lead to adverse decisions and outcomes.

Best to gather facts, figure out which facts matter, whether they should be acted upon, and if so, how. That's key.

​Solace.

References
(1) https://onlinemapdatabase.blogspot.com/2019/08/26-ww2-map-of-europe.html.
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics.
(3) https://7news.com.au/technology/space/asteroid-size-of-will-whiz-past-earth-c-2045182​.
​(4)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Will_Hunting.
(5) https://www.imdb.com/media/rm2216147200/tt0119217.