Talking rubbish

Another fantasy, on rather different lines to the one at reference 1. Plus, I believe there is some truth in this one.

By way of reference 1 – on which more in due course – I have been pondering about the fact that we spend a lot of time thinking or saying things which are not true. Not necessarily lying, rather giving air time to stuff which is unproven or even untrue, perhaps in the course of reading stories, thinking about how to respond to something or other or just speculating about matters about which we know little. In the course of which, by way of example, thinking about whether Sally was a safe cracker would put the expression ‘Sally is a safe cracker’ into circulation.

One way or another, it seems likely that the brain stores a whole lot of data both about language (meta-data) and in language (data), say English for most people born in the UK. 

So it stores a whole lot of data in the form of language. Which, simplifying, might be thought of as a sequence of expressions, each one with a number between zero and one attached, expressing the likelihood that the expression in question is true.

Then we have generation rules, which allow us to generate valid new expressions from old data. Most of which would not be very likely to be true at all. So, something like ‘the purple sheep flew up into the prussian sunset’ might be fine as far as the generation rules are concerned, but is unlikely to be true.

Then we have rules of inference, which allow us to generate promising new expressions from old data. Much more likely to be true, at least if the premises are true, which will not always be the case. The brain might well be interested in what the consequences would be if Sally were a safe cracker, well before it had any knowledge on this last point.

This generation whirs away the whole time, using prompts derived from attention, probably qualified by mood at the time. Possibly by the chemical ambience at the time. If Sally and safe cracking pop into consciousness at roughly the same time, or are otherwise attended to at about the same time, then the generator will see what it can make of them.

Then we have validation rules, which allow us to compute the likelihood that these new expressions are true. Often this likelihood will be zero and the expression will be repressed or supressed, if not deleted.

Most of this goes on in the unconscious, and never sees the light of day – unless, perhaps, you go in for a spot of psycho-analysis – but from time to time an expression is projected into consciousness, when it can be given some quality time. Mulled over, developed or discarded. Or given a very low likelihood.

Sometimes the stuff projected into consciousness will be unwanted, perhaps frightening. The subject may feel a loss of agency, with unwanted thoughts arriving unbidden, not amenable to conscious control.

Expressions might also be projected into the outside world in the form of speech, tweets or even old-fashioned writing. With input from this outside world about those projections coming back in either through the double arrow up into consciousness in the sketch above, or, more subtly, through the bent arrow to the left, directly into the subconscious. This might happen, for example, when you pick up non-verbal cues from your interlocutors.

Sometimes these generated expressions are corralled in a what-if or otherwise pretend world, where they are not threatening or misleading. A world which might be conscious and which might be shared with interlocutors in the real outside world. Maybe the workings of the brain are organised into more or less mutually exclusive compartments, with the interaction between compartments being very restricted. 

The sort of sharing that will take place when children play at let’s pretend, play which can be complicated and involve all kinds of unlikely props. And in the case of adults, a sharing which might well produce useful input, which might well save one thinking about whatever it is for oneself. I can imagine time-poor senior managers regarding this as a good use of their time: chuck lots of stuff down to the chaps, any old how, and see what comes back. But this only works if the compartment can be extended into the relevant part of the outside world. Where our interlocutors understand that we are not talking for real, that we are just exploring possibilities and improbalities.

And sometimes we want to explore rubbish. We might know, or at least suspect, that something is rubbish without being terribly clear why. So we want to explore that why, and sharing with others might be an efficient way to do that.

Pushback

While talking rubbish in public is often a good way to test one’s knowledge, to test the future and to improve one’s knowledge of the world, there are factors which push back the other way.

Most people, particularly young male adults, are very status conscious. They do not like being caught out in public. They like to seem omniscient, at least in their chosen arena. This makes some people careful what they say, other people very protective of what they had said. They will never admit to having made a mistake, still less to having lied for some reason or another, despite it being clear to everybody else that they have.

I associate to the related difficulty of allowing nonsense to go unchecked at meetings because you are anxious about being made to look silly by challenging something you don’t fully understand yourself. Which some deal with by introducing their challenge by something pre-emptive like ‘I’m going to ask a silly question now. I should know the answer but I don’t. So why exactly is it that we have to use this very expensive metallic paint to paint all those bricks blue?’.

But one has to have a care. If one is chairing a meeting, that meeting will soon get out of hand if a lot of time is spent on these silly questions, on challenging everything. Which is why, in some contexts, there are rules about how long you have to wait before you are allowed to raise again a matter previously resolved against you. And you have to stick to the agenda.

Conclusions

So, for the most part anyway, not rubbish at all. Generating rubbish is an inevitable by-product of thought, just part of the process. The trick is appropriate containment.

PS 1: a rather different, literature-theoretic take on untruths is to be found at the previously mentioned reference 3. Why do we spend so much time on people who have been invented?

PS 2: later on I remembered about the talking horses in Gulliver's travels who were rather puzzled by humans using language to tell lies. Our own copy appears to have been culled, but Project Gutenberg got me to the right place, at the beginning of Part IV, Chapter IV, fast enough: 'My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance; because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such circumstances. And I remember, in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued thus: “that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black, when it is white, and short, when it is long.” And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures'. 

PS 3: I first came across purple sheep, many years ago now, when reading a book by the Yorick Wilks of reference 6. Both book and author then vanished from sight, which seems odd now as it was rather a good book.

References

Reference 1: Pretense and representation: The origins of 'Theory of Mind' – Alan Leslie   – 1987.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-fantasy.html. 

Reference 3: Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? – Blakey Vermeule – 2010.

Reference 4: Gulliver's Travels – Jonathon Swift – 1726.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-tale-in-tub-concluded.html. The last outing for Swift.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorick_Wilks.