Power of Assumptions
February 28th, 2006 -- Posted in people | 1 Comment »In my line of work, assumptions are the key to making logical deductions. It is the base for any analysis or forecast I work with. It is my crystal ball.
But this crystal ball has its limitation. Assumptions, being assumed, are limited in its reliability and can only be used in an all-clean situation. Furthermore, we can only assume only the truly logical, or at the most the obvious out of general consensus. Otherwise, we are only pointing in the dark.
Even the obvious out of general consensus seem rather subjective.
A simple illustration:
When I assume that…
most Chinese in the world eat rice
... does not mean I can deduce that…
since you are Chinese therefore you eat rice or
since you eat rice therefore you are Chinese
Sounds logical? Not really the standard of a philo class, but it demonstrates enough. (Pure logic can sound illogical to our humanly senses sometimes.)
Why don’t assumptions always work? This comes to mind the possible ignorance irregardless of how knowledgeable or informed one can be. Even if you are a walking dictionary… or even a walking encyclopedia, there will still be things we can never deduce.
So what’s all these statements about assumptions and deductions?
Sound familiar, don’t they?
Believe it or not, most of us make deductions out of mere assumptions in almost every decision we make. When we do not have definite answers, we assume. This is normal if we are an intelligent bunch.
However, what really irritates me about deducing from assumptions is that there are some who deduce accounts about others based on assumptions they make about them. When the human mind and behavior is the most irrational and less predictable, sometimes devious even, than most other living beings, we are also the creature who assumes more than animals. When most attempts to teach animals understanding of our commands by instilling the idea of assumption from a wave or a vocal command, it takes many repetition of the command before the trained animal can deduce from assuming what they think we want them to do.
Do not mistake this with our power to understand cause and effect. We wouldn’t have come this far without this intuition. It is the other tendency I speak about. The tendency to demonstrate also the power of imagination to transform the little fact known into a wild matrix of twisted assumptions. The experts for this we common know as gossipers.
Why and how such assumptions are derived and how such stories rich of imagination come about? It seems usually compelled by the urge to draw the little short-term attention from others of the their kind… the same kind who also crave for a cheap thrill out of the little spice added to the boring fact. The cheap thrill which requires no production costs like soap opera… only the expense of others they have conveniently placed in the stories they cooked up.
So before you tell a story, be sure to warn your listeners that it is just fictional. Otherwise, avoid speaking of the assumptions you are making. You may have a strong hunch about what is going on with someone. Just keep it to yourself. There is no need to spice up the story. We always have the soap drama that we are also paying for… the same stories we vote for Academy Awards. Please do not waste the profession we have created and so expensively maintained.
