The thing about confusion is that it’s something I can’t quite make sense of. It’s an unavoidable ailment that always manages to strike time and time again. I imagine most people encounter confusion to the capacity of maybe just a perception-based misunderstanding where a Starbucks barista unexplainably gives a consumer a green tea latte when they asked for a vanilla bean frappuccino. Clearly the barista was confused during the moment at which she acted on the information, but the interesting thing to note is HOW the confusion sprouted in the first place. The 2 phrases ‘green tea latte’ and ‘vanilla bean frappuchino’ clearly sound different so why is it that she got the order confused?
This is the nature of confusion, you don’t really know what caused it, you don’t know how to discern the confusion at the time of occurrence (as is the fundamental nature of confusion), and you have no way of stopping it in the future. In some scenarios it’s harmless, but in other scenarios it can be deadly. I would never want the pilot of my airplane to undergo a bout of confusion when hearing an error signal. Perhaps this is life’s premonition, an indicator of the slow corruption of our minds into chaos. A taste for those of us that await the age of Alzheimer’s for those of us unlucky enough to not die before then.
The nature of mathematics lends itself to showing the hardest complexities of life itself so I’m sure I’m not the only one who has experienced confusion in this area. Today specifically, I noted a bout of confusion when trying to derive a formula for something called a ‘projection’ in the field of linear algebra. A projection is, in layman’s terms, what happens when you would like to see where a line segment will lie on another line segment on a graph. It’s okay if you don’t understand my explanation, it’s somewhat irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make. Anyway, to derive the formula you must make some logical deductions which can be made both geometrically and algebraicly. The source of my confusion was being able to understand the geometric interpretation of the deduction but somehow miscalculating the algebraic formula even while having the geometric image clear in my head. It makes me wonder: What was the cause of this and how do I prevent it??
It would be great to be able to have such granular control over one’s intentional mind, but if it were possible I’d probably be a different man today.If I would probably get rid of all sexual thoughts — a source of fun experiences at best and an addictive annoyance at worst (one that makes me make bad decisions and befriend women who I have no interest in befriending over normal terms). But confusion would be the close second.
When anything is true, nothing is true. Where the validity of contradiction reins, there is no logic, or arguments, or debates. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. I latch onto ‘a’ belief because of my cognitive imperative to strive for happiness through success consistent with my reality. In this reality I understand nothing may be true, but operate in this reality on an assumption for which I treat as truth.
To explain my thought process through the logic to which I believe to be a shared for most of mankind, I would say my view of reality can take concepts from Schrödinger’s cat experiment. It’s an experiment of uncertainty where you put some kind of poison in a sealed box with a cat, but never look inside it. The state of the cat from your perspective is neither alive nor dead, but in a state in between — an indeterminate state. That’s where I believe all our minds lay, in this indeterminate state where we act on assumptions that best reduce the state of uncertainty in our brain. I may still believe the cat alive or dead based on my need to reduce this uncertainty in my mind even though I can never truly, wholly, and logically ‘believe’ either one.
The discussion of belief leads us to use the term ‘belief’ that was itself defined within our reality, to explain reality. I once read a section of a book on the nature of information that discussed whether this was possible. Whether our ontology ever really allowed us to describe itself with precision. I ask if perhaps our language and concepts within this reality restricts us from fathoming other realities, or if the current nature of our reality is flexible enough to adopt any concepts. If our reality was flexible enough to describe all and any concepts then we can deduce that the concept in question already existed, undiscovered within our reality. Then there’s the question whether this talk of reality is all paradoxical. If the fact that I can talk about a different reality within this reality lends itself in support of the argument that this is the only reality. More paradoxes to think through, more cognitive corruption, more…confusion.
Confusion is so elusive that it may just be a way to suppress our thoughts. It may be exactly what tethers us to each of our operating subsets of our reality.
To bring us back to ideas that don’t reduce to complete drivel when discussed, I recently read an article of a philosopher who was able to give insight as to why I feel so shitty when I noticed I’ve been duped by my own mind. It’s the buildup of something labeled ‘free energy’ within the brain. The more the demand for release, the closer we get to a state of panic where we are able to realize our actions don’t line up .It’s the one ‘bug’ in my ‘code’ that constantly reminds me of my short cognitive shelf life, and I fucking hate it.