Meta-Analysis
These notes will look at the good and bad aspects of analysis, keeping in mind that, as examples of analysis themselves, what is written here will suffer and benefit from the same negative and positive characteristics herein described.
What do I mean by analysis? I don't mean to limit the thing to the formal analysis of experts and mathematicians. There are aspects of analysis in our every thought. I'll give examples after a little explanation. There are several steps to the process I'm thinking of. These don't describe actual phases of the process because the process doesn't necessarily have phases; the aspects usually come together in a helter-skelter, simultaneous way. (This granting of form after the fact — in particular, this fallacy of sequence — is a typical side-effect of analytic thinking. )
0) Framing of the situation being investigated — i.e. asking a question, developing a thesis.
1) Separation. Pulling out significant-seeming details from the situation or system being analyzed — the pertinent agents, interactions, aspects of the milieu — whether or not they have actual independent existence.
2) Conferring upon these separated elements simple descriptive characteristics. For example, when analyzing an American election, we might treat individuals as if they were primarily democrats and republicans (or elements of some other larger set of categories — middle-class Hispanics or soccer moms, e.g.) rather than idiosyncratic individuals or gay farmers or Presbyterian adulterers. We will, of necessity, eventually stop looking at variation and indefiniteness within the category. That is, this separation entails simplification, reduction, artificiality, and abstraction.
3) Injection/projection of our abstracted tokens into an artificial, rule-oriented environment.
4) Logical or intuitive manipulation of the tokens based on rules and a set of
5) Premises to make deductions and inductions. The premises are rarely explicit. I would claim that they can never be entirely so.
6) Re-inflation or re-animation of the conclusions drawn in the artificial world back onto the real situation.
Step 7 involves holding up those conclusions to reality. This isn't necessarily part of all analyses. This is where analysis becomes science.
There is a fundamental trade-off here. Analysis throws away completeness in exchange for comprehensibility. Well there it is in a nutshell! We can embrace the whole of reality while confusedly dithering and dickering over every last detail and the glory of diversity and a thousand interpretations thereof or we can KISS (keep it simple, stupid) and get on with it. The good and bad points of analysis are completely subsumed by the implications of KISSing. Comprehensibility isn't in and of itself a good thing if what we comprehend is shallow and unimportant or perhaps even detrimental to a deeper understanding. That is, it's no good if it strays too far from reality. Comprehensibility doesn't imply significance or meaning or a moral justification for action. Much bad science and bad journalism is perpetrated through meaningless analytical diddling.
Analysis is necessary to the extent that we can't logically manipulate actual things but only tokens for things. The trade off is 1) the bad throwing away of uniqueness for 2) the good of submitting the world to logical manipulation. The question becomes "How do we know when-and-how to apply analysis, and when and how to avoid it?'' When is the trade-off worth it? Details to follow.
The fundamental thing to note is that analysis is necessarily artificial, make-believe, and subjective while frequently lending to the investigator a sense of naturalness and objectivity. My current analysis seems very objective to me right now, for example... even in spite of my pointing it out.
Negative consequences can enter this system at several key points — particularly at steps 1, 2, and 5.
1) We can draw lines in inappropriate places. Or too few or too many places.
2) We can choose inappropriate characteristics to focus on. Predetermined or prejudicial ones, for example.
5) We can make assumptions that are ill-founded or incomplete.
Star Trek's Vulcans glossed over the subjectivity of 1, 2, and 5 — as if only the axioms of mathematics were in play — so that Spock was always surprised when Kirk's seat-of-the-pants decisions were more successful than the logical ones he was able to conjure. The rational (which subsumes the analytic) differs from the logical. Logic is powerless without good separation, good reduction, and good premises, and it can offer none of those by itself.
The positive side of analysis is that, if we've done an adequate job with 1, 2, and 5 — i.e. considering various alternatives, taking input from parties of differing perspective, avoiding unnecessary simplification, holding initial implications up to reality, etc. — the success of steps 3, 4, and 6 are limited only by A) how smart the investigators are, B) the state of mathematics, C) the state of computation, and D) the quality of data-gathering, which are all trivially easy to deal with in comparison, and are themselves easier to analyze. What I'm claiming, I suppose, is that faulty logic is less a problem than faulty assumptions, faulty abstractions, etc. [This of course depends on the circumstances.]
I should point out an important caveat about step 4. I'm suddenly remembering how fraught it is. We should try to spend as little time in abstractionland as possible. With each round of logical manipulation, the faultiness of our metaphors and/or insights and/or premises is amplified, and results tends to diverge further and further from reality. That is, if our assumptions are each 80% right or valid (to artificially put a number on it), as they are iteratively applied, the conclusions go to (.8 x .8 =) 64%, (.8 x .8 x .8 =) 51%, etc. For me, then, one of the keys to a good theoretical representation is brevity. We should try to get from premises to conclusions in a minimal number of steps. That's what I mean by spending as little time as possible in abstractionland. (The layering of abstraction on abstraction is my primary dissatisfaction with so much of philosophy. Get in, get out, get on with it. Most of the good stuff is in the initial insight or metaphor or the magnum opus's introduction.)
I should spend the rest of my life trying to validate this theory of diminishing analytical benefit! A life well-spent. Indeed.
What is an unnecessary simplification? The Law of Seven (plus or minus two) comes to mind here — limitations of human mental capacities. It's the whole reason to keep it simple, stupid. I've unconsciously utilized this law earlier in this essay with my 7 parts of analysis (0 to 6, for some reason). Appropriate simplification is cutting things down only until we can manage them well enough — and no further. Why say "There are two kinds of people in the world" (or two parts of analysis) when we can handle three, four, or seven. On the other hand, what possible use is it for a person to say there are 153 kinds of people in the world (or 153 steps to analysis) . A mind can't hold onto all of them at once (or sequentially) in a way that increases analytical benefit. Comprehensibity is lost, and that was the whole point. It makes for a very weak thesis and can lead to no further insight in the listener -- unless, I suppose, we are dealing with technical categories; things that don't need to be kept in mind all at once. There might be 153 different varieties of some gene with specific implications for each — like subtleties of eye color etc. My point, and I do have one, is that every such categorization scheme is artificial, so it stands to reason that we should use one (or several) in which we maintain FULL comprehensibility while losing as little detail as possible. Once we pass a certain level (2, 3, 4, 5 etc categories) then the tradeoff begins to take effect — inclusiveness again being at odds with comprehensibility. "There were six principal causes of the Russian Revolution" — is going to go over way better in a history lecture than 2 or 22 principal causes. The history student will learn more, gain more insight with the six. I'm not saying that there will in fact be a small number of causes of the Russian Revolution; only that, if the point is to engender insight and understanding and not overwhelm our little minds, a smallish number will do a better job.
Now, holding as many categories as possible doesn't mean that if we've come up with four so far, we keep those four and try to add a fifth. The essential nature of a five-part categorization may differ from the four-part in very deep ways, and may have to be developed by an entirely separate process. Here comes a ridiculous, crude, and long tangent to illustrate this point!
When I was a young man, my eldest brother told me about a friend of his who had found a way to put everyone into one of two categories. Succinctly put, everyone is either a creep or an asshole. In case that doesn't give you an immediate aha moment, let me elaborate. My interpretation is that all people are screwed up, selfish, and pathological: They differ only in how they go about getting what they want. Assholes, my explanation goes, are aggressive to the point of obnoxiousness about what they want, blundering ahead by intimidation and cluelessness. They are egotistical, insensitive, etc. Donald Trump is an amazingly good example. Creeps, on the other hand, are more internal, passive-aggressive, quiet, self-righteous, even skulking. They get their way through obstruction, underhandedness, inconspicuousness, obsequiousness, shaming, repulsiveness — by creeping around the edges. Donald Trump is an amazingly good example. They are more scavengers or parasites than predators. Politicians and used car salesmen and bullies are assholes and serial killers and bureaucrats and nerds are creeps. It aint exactly yin and yang, but kinda like that. Back when my brother offered me this tool for understanding the world of human interaction, I had a name for the scenario — the Cynic's Delight. A nice aspect of it is that it's completely egalitarian — no one is exempted, not even oneself. The question becomes, "Which one am I?" After due consideration, I've concluded that one person can take on the role of creep or asshole under different conditions, pecking orders etc. The bad news is that by trying to become less of an asshole, you probably become more of a creep, and vice versa. It's only by becoming less selfish or less self-serving that one can escape the cycle. Good luck with that!
If you were to ask my co-workers and others who only know me in limited contexts which category I fall into, I think the vast majority would say I'm decidedly in the creep camp. But the better you get to know me and the more comfortable I feel in your presence, the more my asshole nature emerges. It's a matter of trust vs. fear. While playing sports and some other competitive activities, I am definitely in the asshole camp. Anyway, for many years the cynic's delight served as a useful metaphor to comfort me at crucial moments. ("I can't really hold a grudge against the guy; he can't help that he's an asshole ")...then something changed.
Many years after finding the cynic's delight, my other older brother (every bit the cynic that the first brother is) recommended that I see the movie "Team America" by the South Park guys. Despite its excessive vulgarity and adolescent hatred for and dismissal of just about everyone (or perhaps because of it), this movie is a must-see. There's a scene in it where one of the protagonists is sitting dejectedly in a bar after having made a mess of his life. He proclaims to everyone and no one in particular that he's a dick and has fucked everyone over. A peculiar-looking hobo/drunk/shaman tries to comfort our hero with the following speech (that I transcribed from YouTube).
"Well, being a dick's not so bad. You see, there's three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you've got your assholes, Chuck. All the assholes want is to shit all over everything. So pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because... pussies get fucked by dicks, but dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn't fuck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!"
Wow, this is a way better description of humankind than the cynic's delight (once you fill in several thousand blanks). And even more cynical. Of course, I'm not sure how appealing it would be without the crude imagery.
The category of creepiness from the earlier dichotomy miraculously gets distributed over pussies and assholes in the new tripartite system, while the former asshole category is distributed all around but mostly on dicks and assholes 2.0. (Yes, the word asshole used slightly differently in both systems is a bit confusing.) The real revelation here for me is the category of person who just wants to make everyone as miserable as they are. Kind of like a creep, but with some asshole 1.0 as well. A yang creep. The asshole has something awful in her. She'll feel better if she lets it out, but everyone else must now deal with her shit.
There is just a hint of subtlety here. There's yin, yang, and other. Even hippies and idealists (ostensibly unselfish people) are implicated. Don't you self-righteous people know about dicks and assholes? You're just enabling them! Your petulant refusal to take these harsh realities seriously — or think you can change the dicks and assholes — just misses the point and makes things worse.
In addition to the egalitarianism of the Cynic's Delight, this interpretation includes another positive twist. Don't wish to rid the world of dicks, pussies, and assholes. Without dicks and pussies, after all, there'd be no procreation, no sexual release, no life. And without assholes, we'd all be constipated and miserable and eventually succumb to our self-produced poisons. We each serve the purpose of keeping the other two types in check like the three branches of the federal government. [When things are running well, the president is a dick, the congress are pussies, and the judiciary are assholes. Or something.]
All in all, I'd have to say that this second tripartite system maintains comprehensibility and gives a richer description of reality along with more interesting insights than the first bipartite one. And it's remarkable how different the worldviews are. And that's the reason I brought this up in the first place. Long digression complete. When you draw the lines in different places (especially more places), you get new insights. It would be pretty difficult to get to the Pussy-Dick-Asshole analysis by merely adding a new category to the Creep-Asshole analysis. The tripartite system can't be derived from the bipartite system. This says something about the plasticity of analysis.
If you tried to say there are 13 kinds of people (Chuck), the incisiveness and comprehensibility as well as the humor would be lost. If I tried to articulate the causes of the Russian Revolution first as a pair and second as a trinity might the interpretations be equally different? I think maybe they would. Project for another time.
Back to analysis. Actually, this digression kind of derailed anything else I might have had to say.