It is going to be a chilly start to 2024, which isn't unexpected around this time of year in Finland. It has "suddenly" got a fair bit colder around these parts though, and is currently sitting at -16 (3F), with tomorrow dropping down further to -24 (-11F), which is pretty cold, but still 10 degrees "warmer" than the lowest temperatures I have experienced in this region. I still find it amazing how large the weather variations can be around the world.
"Variations" is something I think about a lot, though when looking at larger groups of things, averages are required to make sense of the world. This is something that upsets people, because in a culture of everyone is unique, essentially everyone is missed in averages. People tend to believe that they are outliers, but the truth is that across most facets of who we are and how we behave, we are mostly the same. What matters is how we act on certain aspects though.
I was teaching Smallsteps about averages today, using the temperature across two days as the example. What is the average when Day 1 is -10, and Day 2 is +10 kinds of things. But, while the average is 0, the reality is that there is a massive difference between the two. Dress for the average and you are going to either be too hot, or too cold. But as I was saying to Smallsteps,
There is no perfect.
No perfect behavior either. However, using averages, we can make educated guesses at what is a "better or worse" response to a situation. We know on average what kinds of behaviors are likely to improve our situation, or degrade it. We know what kinds of average diets we should eat, and an average on how much exercise we should do. However, one will affect the other, so depending on our individual diet, we might need to exercise more or less than someone else - or change what types of exercise we are doing.
I talk in averages of my observational experience here, because I am not talking to a single individual, and the group is far from homogenous. If I was talking to each person one to one, it would likely change the conversation, and be more personal, more tailored. However, a lot of people seem to think that everything should be tailored for them, even if they aren't the target audience. It is like the people who complain about a comedian's joke because they find it distasteful, but they were never forced to listen and for the target audience, on average it was funny.
Over lunch, Smallsteps and I were talking about "positives and negatives" in terms of better and worse. This just happened to lead on from the conversation about averages using temperatures, but were actually unrelated discussions. Good and bad is pretty black and white and are useful to explain some things. But better and worse are relative positions and are situational, meaning that they have to have a reference point by default.
My wife laughed at one of the examples I used, where I asked Smallsteps if it was positive or negative if I were to cut off her finger. Then, asked what if the other option was to cut off her whole hand instead. Obviously, both are negative, but one is decidedly less negative than the other, with the emphasis on the decided, because we get to make a decision about how we feel about the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Yet, we seem to be so focused on the moments, that we tend to miss the averages of our own lives, where for most of us probably, life is on average, not too bad, even though we face outlier events. But, if we focus only on the moments, we are more likely to feel the ups and downs with more strength, more volatility, because we aren't zooming out to account for the general trends and stability.
We don't like being misrepresented, but we should accept that there will always be variation between what we are and how we are portrayed, even by ourselves. On average, we are likely good people, yet if you cherry pick from our worst days and worst instances of our behaviors as representations of who we are, we are likely all pretty terrible humans. Which then raises the question as to whether people want to be seen as unique, or be judged based on their average. Do you want to be called out for outlier interactions of good or bad, or your average?
There is an average to all of us, but it is impossible to compare each other based on some kind of average, because how does that work. For instance, if one person leads a pretty level life, doing little good, but also little harm with a baseline of zero. And if a second person lives a life of doing a great deal of good and saves 1000 lives from immense suffering, and then they torture 50 people. Do we consider person one and two to be the same? Is One better because there was less variation in them, or was Two better because they saved so many from suffering?
Do no evil.
Is that enough, if one also does no good?
Or is it cutting off a finger, instead of the whole hand?
At least on average, being at zero isn't enough to keep humanity advancing, we have to on average be improving. But, if we are only comparing ourselves to average people, is the average going to increase, or is it going to decrease? If we think about it in terms of learning a skill of some kind, like playing a sport or instrument, if we are comparing ourselves to the average skill level, we likely aren't going to become very good. We need to compare ourselves to the best forms, so that even if we only close the gap halfway to the stars, on average, we are moving further and further from the gutter.
There is no perfect.
There is better.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
