Imagine yourself in front of a mirror, taking in all parts of your appearance. The moles on your face, the wrinkles in your skin, all aspects of who you are. Mirrors don’t lie, at least that’s what they say, when the distortion is negligible. The image you’re reflecting isn’t meant to be filtered or augmented. Aside from reflecting your actual appearance, the mirror gives you a reasonable look at who you are physically.
But the mind has a penchant for filtering out the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see. Perhaps we’re stuck in the memory of years gone by. The bags so evident under the eyes, the wrinkles from the years of stress, are hidden behind that view of the past. Given enough time in the mirror, run through the sieve of your mind, you might start to see yourself as you once were.
Now, bring up a memory, one from years ago. You might talk to a friend from years ago who remembers it completely differently. Over time, after reflecting on it for years, that memory has distorted from reality.
The mirror is a classic example in philosophy. It’s the basis on which Socrates wrote about self-awareness. The mirror should show us reality.
But the analogy is inherently flawed, as all analogies are.
The Object and the Lens
What our eyes see and what our brains interpret may be vastly different. We’re motivated to interpret what we see through the lens of our own experiences. The way we interpret justice is based on our experiences. Even the way we interpret pain is shaped by how we’ve been treated by others.
Our minds are more like the funhouse mirrors that distort reality. The mirrors that show your waist expands, or your head enlarges. Interpreted through our minds, they’re never entirely accurate.
In the same way you look into a mirror, consider a lens instead.
The faces we see on the other side of a camera lens are rarely the ones that show up on social media. Even if no filter is applied, depending on the lens, there are slight distortions. In certain lights, your eyes might look red. In another, it might look like you’ve gained or lost 20 pounds. None of it is an accurate reflection of reality.
The Basis of Reality
Yet, we can find truth under a limited scope. The image you see in the mirror gives you a fairly accurate view of how you look. Assuming you’re standing in the right light, your friend can identify you among others, even though not every speck on your face shows up in the picture.
There is evidence to back up nearly every claim if you can find the right scope. The “lived experience” of one person certainly could back up their beliefs.
Cobras, for example, in most stories, deliver a deadly blow. Their venom first paralyzes, then kills their victims. There are thousands of stories of death from cobra bites. Those who didn’t get the antivenom start to see the devastating effects it can have. And, if we look at the evidence through these stories alone, we start to see a pattern: a bite from a cobra always leads to death if untreated.
However, if we expand the scope and look at more data, we start to see another story. Cobras have extremely potent venom, yes, but 20 to 30 percent of cobra bites don’t inject venom. Though the wound may be painful and swell near the puncture wounds, those bites don’t result in death at all, even though you may not want to take the chance once bitten.
When we zoom out, we start to see that the world isn’t broken into binary viewpoints. There are an unlimited number of perspectives, each of which is equally distorted, in a sense. Even your view of yourself is colored by past experiences.
Just like in life, you never fully understand reality. Your interpretation of the AI boom is likely influenced by your position as an employee or employer at first: It could mean apocalyptic doom, or it’s the next revolution in humanity. Claude could mean the end of your job or the possibility of increasing production for your new startup company. The reality of what AI represents can be both or neither, or somewhere in the middle, which really depends on what you do with it.
The image both sides see is incomplete. Neither has the full story, only fractions of it. In each sphere, their experiences with AI may back up their claims.
But they gain a closer understanding of reality when they broaden their scope. The business owner who loses his business to AI starts to see how its negative impact affects the employee. The employee who has lost his job sees the benefit of AI when he starts his one-person company. In both cases, the parties begin expanding their scopes to better understand reality.
Forming a Personal Interpretation of Reality
While we can never fully understand reality, we can understand it better if we experience more. The image of yourself in the mirror at 6 years old will vary from the one at 60. Both are the same person, but the image has changed over time. Even the image of what you look like differs from one moment to the next. Not every ray of light shines back the same way.
Our interpretation of the world depends on developing a framework for understanding a series of distorted images. The more we accumulate, the closer we become to discovering objective reality.
As the scope of our understanding inevitably grows, as we experience more and gain a better picture of reality, that framework adapts.
Reality may seem to be cloudy when outlier experiences contradict our vision. But there will always be outliers. There will always be moments that don’t fit into our frameworks. That’s how we expand our scopes, learn more, and grow. However, knowing there is no limit to expanding scopes, at some point, we may discount the outliers, whether it’s outside of the scope we care about, beyond our control due to constraints, or simply because we don’t think it’s worth the effort.
Creating Happiness
But you are the ultimate master of your own fate (until you hand it over to God, if you believe in God). Your understanding of reality of “now” doesn’t have to be the reality of “tomorrow.” It’s a change of scope. Your free will may actively alter reality to your vision if you put in the work.
The image you see in the mirror, the reality of what you see, is only the beginning. Happiness is the adaptation of that reality. Your uneven skin tone can even out with the right cream. The mole you’ve never liked on your nose can be removed.
And who you are may be different from different angles. The light in the mirror shines differently in the sun and with artificial lighting. It’s up to you to choose which lighting you like the most. And if the mirror bothers you, you can even flip it to the other side!
Knowing Your Parameters
What do we leave out of our framework?
Well, that’s where things get tricky. Luckily, the basis for developing your framework begins here.