Skip to main content

Thoughts on Judging


Jun 24, 2019
Judging is a means for us to reduce the noise in a complicated world, extracting meaning amidst an overload of information. In this manner, to judge is to be human, and any attempt to completely forgo it is unnatural. While the inclination for the human mind is to judge, what also remains true is our ability to control their impact on our actions and belief—that we actively have the choice to believe or forgo what first appears to be true.

Since judgement is personal, it is inevitable that our interactions with it vary by person, the diversity spanning with two extremes. The first is a person who is unrealistically optimistic abou the world and individuals in their surroundings. They fail to recognize the fallibility of human character, leaving them vulnerable to the manipulations of others or likely to end up binded in relationships not based on mutual respect. The other extreme are the cynics, who assume ill about others at the slightest of their mistakes. Yet the cynics fall prey to the hypocrises of their own judgement as they are oblivious to their own fallibility.

From a moral standpoint, it may be slightly more preferable to be the naive person than the cynic. Everyone was once the former—their attitude primarily determined by a lack of experience or simple unawareness; while the latter usually comes from a place of arrogance or a tragic event that breeds mistrust in fellow human beings.

What appears to be most prudent is to be a realist—a healthy compromise between the two extremes. Unless the other person is in a position where we are in a state of dependence, we should attempt to see the good in them and give them the benefit of the doubt where different interpretations are possible. It is through this endeavor that we can most reliably absolve ourselves of moral hypocrisy. However, if past incidents are repeated and may afflict us in the future, it is best to assume that it will happen again out of prudence. If the past incidents have no possibility of directly influencing us, we are no longer granted the moral authority to assume ill about the other person; for they have not done any wrong to us.

Jun 25, 2019
Excerpt from The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Human beings have a tendency to overfit, especially rare events and random noise into narrative explanations.
We like stories, we like to summarize, and we like to simplify, i.e., to reduce the dimension of matters…. The [narrative] fallacy is associated with our vulnerability to overinterpretation and our predilection for compact stories over raw truths. It severely distorts our mental representation of the world; it is particularly acute when it comes to the rare event.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

South Africa - Stories of People (Part 1)

I met a few individuals in South Africa whose encounters have stuck, leaving an ever lasting impression on me. Here I share some of them. Lisa I met Lisa in a co-working space called WorkInProgress. Lisa is the cleaner for the entire space. She also organizes all the furniture in the space, and does the dishes after lunch. The Woodstock Exchange, where WorkInProgress is located. We sat down on a coffee table, and she told me about her life's journey. She came from the Eastern part of South Africa, where the lifestyle is completely different. It was said to be less urban and more agrarian. Back there, the family was a closer unit. Around when she turned 17, she found out that she was pregnant. She was frightened at the prospect of having to take care of a child. In order to sustain her new daughter, she moved to Cape Town in order to find work. A new city, a new life. Despite all the excitement, her time in Cape Town did not go smoothly initially. She remained unempl...
Post a Comment
Read more

South Africa - Longer Stories of People (Part 2)

Bradley These are a series of journal entries that I wrote about my encounters with Bradley. Jul 02, 2019 Around 9:30 am, I walked out of the house to go to work. The morning was relatively cold (~50 deg Faranheits). Instead of the elevator, I opted to take the stairs down to the doorstep. In front of it, I saw a man and a woman coddling against each other in a blanket. As they were blocking my way of exit, I had to wake them up and move them so that I wouldn't be late to work. My first instinct when I awoke them was fear. I was scared that the two would try to mug me. I soon found out that this attitude was misguided. The two just went back to sleep. I felt bad for waking them up so gave them a KIND bar. It was then I realized the truth about the streets and that I was wrong. I wrote the following in my diary It seems to be the case that the people on the streets are mostly good people and have good hearts. They follow you because they are genuinely broken and have no ...
Post a Comment
Read more