If I’m confused or curious about something, I take that to mean I don’t understand it.
This should work in reverse: when an answer to a question satisfies my curiosity, or stops me wondering, does that mean I understand?
Not necessarily.
The example that comes to mind is seemingly overnight going from never hearing of Gracie Abrams, to literally Spotify overriding my play queue to force me to listen to her. [1]So now I was curious – how did, overnight, she become so ubiquitous?
It wasn’t long before I saw her name next to the term “Nepobaby”.
Ah, it’s because she’s a Nepobaby! Her father is a famous TV producer and film director who, I assume, threw money at her career. Mystery solved. That explains everything, doesn’t it?
No, that was a Fake Explanation, a “because” that doesn’t actually hold any anticipatory beliefs. ”...because, Nepobaby” is functionally the same as saying”because, magic!”
It doesn’t explain, causally, anything about how that money was deployed, or how she was marketed. It doesn’t elucidate what strategies and tactics were used by her P.R., Management, and Label to get so ubiquitous. It’s also contemptibly elitist[2] and totally discounting the possibility that people genuinely dig her music!
It was a satisfying explanation for me. But it isn’t an explanation at all.
Yes, one slice of humble pie please.
Even the alternative hypothesis I has the air of Fake Explanation. I’m old. [3]She has slowly and steadily been building a following over many years, and what I experienced was simply the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
Now I’m worried. I have to do a, kind of, mental model inventory: what are all the other phenomena I feel satisfied about my answers to but are just fake explanations?
Obviously not all of my confidence or satisfaction is due to false explanations, but differentiating is gonna suck.
How? I was trying to get my Car Bluetooth to connect to my phone midway through playing a Spotify playlist, sometimes, for reasons I can’t fathom: this causes Spotify to wipe your queue. Even if you’re playing a playlist. Instead not playing anything, or even using the oodles of profile data it has to try and algorithmically deliver you tracks that match you profile – it defaults to contemporary middle of the road pop.
I am Principal Skinner in the meme/scene where while staking out a truant Bart Simpson, the trails runs cold. He wonders why there are no young people at any of the places he thought. “Am I so out of touch? no, its the children who are wrong”
There is another meme on the theme of being out of touch with youth culture: “Curtains for Zoosha” has been on my mind a lot. Where a 50 year old compares all contemporary celebrity news to seemingly nonsense words, including the celebrity names.
Satisfying Curiosity Isn’t the Same as Understanding
If I’m confused or curious about something, I take that to mean I don’t understand it.
This should work in reverse: when an answer to a question satisfies my curiosity, or stops me wondering, does that mean I understand?
Not necessarily.
The example that comes to mind is seemingly overnight going from never hearing of Gracie Abrams, to literally Spotify overriding my play queue to force me to listen to her. [1]So now I was curious – how did, overnight, she become so ubiquitous?
It wasn’t long before I saw her name next to the term “Nepobaby”.
Ah, it’s because she’s a Nepobaby! Her father is a famous TV producer and film director who, I assume, threw money at her career. Mystery solved. That explains everything, doesn’t it?
No, that was a Fake Explanation, a “because” that doesn’t actually hold any anticipatory beliefs. ”...because, Nepobaby” is functionally the same as saying”because, magic!”
It doesn’t explain, causally, anything about how that money was deployed, or how she was marketed. It doesn’t elucidate what strategies and tactics were used by her P.R., Management, and Label to get so ubiquitous. It’s also contemptibly elitist[2] and totally discounting the possibility that people genuinely dig her music!
It was a satisfying explanation for me. But it isn’t an explanation at all.
Yes, one slice of humble pie please.
Even the alternative hypothesis I has the air of Fake Explanation. I’m old. [3]She has slowly and steadily been building a following over many years, and what I experienced was simply the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
Now I’m worried. I have to do a, kind of, mental model inventory: what are all the other phenomena I feel satisfied about my answers to but are just fake explanations?
Obviously not all of my confidence or satisfaction is due to false explanations, but differentiating is gonna suck.
How? I was trying to get my Car Bluetooth to connect to my phone midway through playing a Spotify playlist, sometimes, for reasons I can’t fathom: this causes Spotify to wipe your queue. Even if you’re playing a playlist. Instead not playing anything, or even using the oodles of profile data it has to try and algorithmically deliver you tracks that match you profile – it defaults to contemporary middle of the road pop.
I am Principal Skinner in the meme/scene where while staking out a truant Bart Simpson, the trails runs cold. He wonders why there are no young people at any of the places he thought. “Am I so out of touch? no, its the children who are wrong”
There is another meme on the theme of being out of touch with youth culture: “Curtains for Zoosha” has been on my mind a lot. Where a 50 year old compares all contemporary celebrity news to seemingly nonsense words, including the celebrity names.