Presentism
One’s ability to describe and understand a new phenomenon is always limited by the contents of the prevailing scientific and technological toolbox. An eighteenth-century person who was briefly, but unwittingly, thrust into the twentieth century would return and describe a car as a horse-drawn carriage without the horse and a lightbulb as a candle without the flame. With no knowledge of internal combustion engines or electricity, a true understanding would be remote indeed. With that as a disclaimer, allow me to declare that we think we understand the basic principles of what drives a quasar.
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Projection: Teleology, we see ourselves/other people/animals as agents (intentionality directing action), applying to everything
Tendency to look for centralized control in Decentralized Systems, e.g. Single-Factor Determinism
- We observe
- Ourselves as unified agents → central authority directing action
- Societies functioning in hierarchical structures → organized complexity with top-down control
- Computers behave according to a known master logic
- Narratives as main characters as single factors responsible for outcomes
- We use them as cognitive templates to understand systems that are decentralized and emergent
- Acknowledging bottom-up complexity & no central planning challenges our sense of:
- Predictability: no controller, chaotic
- Agency: cannot appeal to or blame a single point of control
Inertia
- Ingrained ‘metaphorical thinking’ - trying to comprehend the unknown with what’s already familiar
- ‘To a hammer, everything is a nail’
- Meme about how the universe is a wheel/book/machine/web/simulation…