Hybrid reality and conflict intervention

Human vision has some serious problems which spill over into the way we think and result in avoidable conflicts. If we can sort that out, we may be able to resolve some "intractable" conflicts, so this is worth a glance.

One factor we're all familiar with is the impact that "perspective" or "view-point" has on what we perceive. It appears to us that, as things get farther way, they get smaller. We learn as children to adjust for that, which becomes so automatic we forget that, to a camera, my outstretched hand is "larger than" the sun.

Unfortunately, we also tend to use the most powerful system our brains seem to have, the visual system, to "think" with. We "picture" things, get a "vision" of what is going on, and "see" or don't "see" what someone means. Along with that comes the downside, that any properties or flaws of our vision system, and there are many, now affect our thinking as well. But we haven't calibrated our mental eyes with as much feedback (ouch!) as we have our physical ones, so these errors persist. We may think things that are "far away" actually are "smaller".

So, for example, the drought in the Southeastern USA was distant to most people's thinking, and seemed small, if not forgettable.

A second problem with viewpoint or vantage point is also familiar in the space our bodies walk around in, but is not always corrected for in the space our thinking walks around in. If I hold up a soup can and you look at the top of it, you see a "circle", clearly. The can is "round". To an observer off to the side, looking at the side of the can, the profile is clearly "rectangular". In answer to "Well, which is it? It can't be both!" the answer is "Yes it can be both and it is."

We learn in art class or drafting that it takes 3 different views of an object to describe the surface shape it, in 3-dimensional space. In software "architecture", generally at least seven "views" of a system are required to begin to specify it and nail it down.

In our social experience, many things have the higher-dimensional property that any single description of them from any single viewpoint is incomplete, and if affirmed to be complete, is therefore "wrong." It's right "as far as it goes" but it doesn't go far enough.

Already, with that factor, different people looking at the same world can see "different things" and pick a fight, particularly if they distrust the competence or intentions of each other. The other party is viewed as "insane" or "blind" or "hostile" or "stubborn" or "evil", resulting in harsh words, rocks, gunfire, or all out warfare.

But, there is a third factor that has come to light that is even more insidious in nature, illustrated by the hybrid images here or here or here. Viewed from a few feet away, the images are hostile or are of Albert Einstein. Anyone can see that. It's "obvious". A person would have to "be demented" or a trouble-maker not to see that.

However, viewed from across the room, the images change. The angry faces now look happy, and Einstein has become Marilyn Monroe. Anyone can see that. It's "obvious". A person would have to "be demented" or a trouble-maker not to see that.

So, which view is "right?" Both are right. From close, the image appears one way to a competent observer, and from far the image appears totally different to a competent observer. What you see depends on how far away you are, and more than just "size" is changing.

What is wrong is our assumption that "size" and "shape" are the only properties that change and depend on where the observer is located. Other important things appear to change as well.

From what I can tell, this same phenomenon is true in some cases as what can be "seen" by an honest, sincere, competent observer changes with scale, or location, or rank in the hierarchy of an organization.

Failure to appreciate this has caused, and continues to cause, no end of conflicts. The impact is far worse if people set out with a basic distrust of the competence and honesty of others.

It may be that simply educating people to this effect, and giving it a name we learn in school, is sufficient to detect it and account for it in many circumstances where the sides are not yet "dug in" and shooting words or bullets or nuclear weapons at each other.

The simplest case of this is what I've called earlier "Wicked-II" problems - issues that close up have no end of frustrating complexity and detail and are almost impossible to solve, that from far away, up even one step up the management ladder, appear to be incredibly easy and simple, implying that the person unable to solve them is either a trouble-maker or incompetent or lazy.

It appears that many of the problems of depression and poverty have this property - that "solutions" that appear so "obvious" from on high appear incredibly stupid and impossible from below -- like a suggestion that "To get ahead, simply put $200 a week into your savings account and resist the temptation to spend it. " Right. Next idea?

On a larger scale, many corporate issues seem to have that property. Sincere and competent top leadership sees one thing, and people "on the bottom" or "on the ground" or "at the front" see something entirely different. Since this is "inconceivable", each group assumes the worst about the other group.

On a national scale, the question of "apartheid" in Israel seems to have this property. I'm going to assume that sincere and competent people within the Israeli leadership honestly do not perceive that their own actions come across so badly, whereas sincere and competent Palestinians on the ground cannot comprehend how the people at the top could be "so blind" to such "obvious" data. And vice versa.

This was caught perfectly in the Boston Globe on Sunday:

"We absolutely, unequivocally, do not see Israel as an apartheid state," said Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

I'm not taking a position on which side is "right" here, I'm suggesting the astounding idea that "both" sides are right is possible.

Again, with no ideas of the details and no statement as to which side is "right", the conflict in perceptions at Kaiser Permanente Hospital "No one would listen!" described in this morning's LA Times might be another situation where "both" sides are right. It might be that a doctor could be viewed overall, from above, as performing extremely well, and still perceived from below as the opposite.

I'm not saying that's what occurred in this case, but I am saying that it could occur, and we, as humans, don't expect that and don't look for it and don't know what to do with it when we find it.

Because of that, we don't know how to look for it. From an academic perspective, we lack metrics and methodologies. We don't know how to talk about it. We know that we need to be very careful to avoid making "Type I" errors (too gullible) and "Type II" errors (too skeptical), but no one has yet defined "Type 3 errors" -- failing to realize the object of interest has fractal qualities that make competent, scientific, honest observations depend on the scale and location of the observer.

And, because we don't recognize this, globally, we tend to think the worst of others and conclude that they are liars, stupid, hostile, evil, uncaring, lazy, arrogant, or whatever.

Also, I should be clear that I'm not saying the "direction" of this difference is always that the "top" is "right" and the bottom is wrong, or vice versa. Another item in the news lately is the rating of schools and teachers in the "No Child Left Behind" evaluation. I've taught at the high-school level, and agree that there are many cases where the "test" imposed from on-high completely fails to distinguish teachers who are having an enormously powerful beneficial effect on students, but who may not know some basic math, say. Anything that assumes the "details don't matter" and life can be summarized by a single metric is, I'd say, suspect.

This is important to address and fix. Since the health of the public depends greatly on fixing it, I would suggest it is in the proper ballpark for "public health" to be the ones to research it, if no one else will.

Public Health, in fact, already has realized that the needs of humans, viewed at the level of the individual, can look entirely different, when viewed at the level of an entire population. What hasn't been done is to generalize still further, and realize how common this scale-dependence is.