Making Distinctions, Hoarding and Intolerance

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am reading a pop psychology book about distinctions which makes many interesting points. Not sure I buy them all, so interested what other Dopers think.

The book starts off with an ancient philosophy problem. You keep putting sand, one grain at a time, in the same place. How many do you need before you have a pile of sand? Everybody can picture a handful, heap or pile of sand - but answers will differ. The point is that there is no discernible difference between adding just one more grain and the answer is arbitrary.

The same arbitrary principle has a lot of consequences. The difference between a migrant and refugee, a foetus and an unborn baby, whether a purple-red colour is described as red or purple, at what age to give scarce Covid vaccines, etc. may be essentially arbitrary and so people will have different opinions on them. But the consequences are there once an arbitrary decision has been made.

The book describes an experiment where a drawing of a dog is changed into a drawing of a cat with, say, nine computer generated intermediates - where the second drawing is 90% dog and 10% cat features, the third drawing 80/20, the final drawing unquestionably 100% cat. Each individual step is gradual but at some point in the middle, most people will say it has enough cat features to be described as a cat. The book claims intolerant people are more likely to be stubborn and consistent and may say it is not a cat even in the final drawing when this is unambiguously so.

The book also makes the claim people divide many things into categories to make the world easier to deal with. One could do this with anything - types of cereal, buildings or vehicles. One person may make lots of arbitrary subtle, detailed distinctions and have a great many categories, other people “seeing the world in black and white” may make relatively few categories. The claim is made intolerant people divide the world into far fewer categories (as simple as us and them).

Conversely, severe hoarders (and people are usually hardwired to have some degree of hoarding, from times when food was scarce) divide the world into so many distinct categories that they see their old newspapers or empty containers as a very distinct, special and so irreplaceable item. If one accepts this, severe hoarders may be less likely to be intolerant. Maybe the reverse is true?

It’s a strange argument. There may be some truth to it. Or not. Wondered what others think about it or have relevant stories or experience. I suspect it is a tremendous oversimplification.

2

This is part of the sorites paradox, which gets debated frequently online, and here. It doesn’t have any solutions, so can be argued to any desired conclusion.

The world is in fact arbitrary and people have been putting things into arbitrary categories since the first being capable of sentient thought. Many categories turn out to be extremely useful simplifications of a complex world and many turn into nightmarish horrors.

Other than raising the subject, what does the author have to say we should do about it?

3

Nothing. The question is whether there is any merit to his conclusions about hoarding or intolerant attitudes.

4

To start, I would say the sand pile decision is not only arbitrary, it is meaningless, depending entirely on one’s definition of a “pile” and of no consequence in any case. This is very different from decisions about how to allocate scarce resources (the next paragraph), which while possibly arbitrary, are based on values which may or may not have a rational basis.

I have always thought that hoarding is based on fear, the fear of not having enough of something when you need it. Hoarders tend to think many things are important and useful which most people regard as trivial. I don’t quite see how we get any further by regarding that as a category issue, nor that hoarder behavior is in any sense converse to that of intolerant people. Did the author present any evidence (beyond theory) that hoarders are less intolerant?

I suppose intolerance may be regarded as a category issue, but I’m not sure how that understanding helps very much. Does the author talk about how this view might help us to combat intolerance in the long term? It seems to me the best way to counter intolerance is to advance the idea that each person is an individual and should be judged as an individual and not because of their membership in a category.

5

Value is subjective, and ethics can have an effect on value. What defines a heap or non-heap depends on its value. If it’s a heap of dollar bills, it’s an asset. If it’s a heap of dirty laundry, it’s a liability.

Somebody started a thread on what a Star Trek-level society would do if they found a low-tech world that had plenty of a particular resource that was otherwise rare in the rest of the known universe. What’s cheap and plentiful to the low-techs would be considered of little value to them, but when a higher-tech society desires it, it suddenly becomes valuable.

If the higher-tech people (The Federation) considers it a bad thing to forcibly take this resource, they would possibly rely on subtle and quiet means of procuring it, such as use their transporters to beam it aboard, or by masquerading as natives who offer to exchange the resource for something that’s common to them, but rare and wondrous to the primitives. There is a little risk of exposing themselves, therefore violating their ethics, which can also be catastrophic to the primitives. The resource changes in value in accordance with its ease of procurement and effect on the societies involved. Such things happens when war and violence take place in the Middle East, and oil prices soar because the resource becomes harder to obtain.

If the high-tech society has no ethics, (the Klingons), then the resource has a different value. It’s easily obtained, provided the Klingons kill or enslave everybody who stands in their way. Such acts may attract the attention of other high-tech societies, who may oppose the use of force (the Federation) or may attempt to share in its exploitation (the Romulans), in which case the resource becomes more of a black market commodity that carries some risk to those who trade in it (the Orions).

In all these scenarios, the amount of the resource is the same, but is valued differently. What was regarded as a heap of assets before–because it was plentiful and easily accessible–is now a heap of liabilities, because of the blood spilled in acquiring it.

6

The Star Trek theoretical can be summed up rather tightly both morally and philosophically with this knowledge:
Primitive societies grow into high-tech societies eventually. By gaming the resource away from the primitives – it impedes their ability to grow into their potential in the future. Immoral AND against the Prime Directive. Settled.

Having read a number of books on brain development, decision making, and competencies – I believe I can honestly state that knowing the most ideal number of (or range of numbers) categories to divide something into is the very definition of professionalism and competence. One of the many reasons that apprenticeships and other trade schools take several years is because it just takes that much day-to-day, hands on experience to become competent (a Journeyman) and even longer to become a master. The same is true in professional settings, even more so. If you do four years of post grad schooling you still end up starting as an associate, or at very most a low-level partner in your family’s firm. Only after grinding for several years do you have the competence to become a senior partner. A very large part of that experience is learning how to sort, and store, and prioritize different aspects of the job/profession/field of endeavour.

A good deal of this seems (from the experts) to be being able to determine what is important and when it is important. There are many considerations that are seldom important in day-to-day work – but are occasionally VERY important. High levels of competency (which tend to go down after ten or twelve years in the same field if new techniques and brain use is not developed – usually through promotion and seeing a fuller picture) require sorting things into the proper “mental file” and recognizing the difference between important, urgent, and neither quickly. The medical field was given as an example for this. One of the reasons there are so many levels of talent is because you need a few big picture, overview doctors and administrators overseeing younger more energetic (but less experienced) worker bees who in turn train the students who will eventually become their replacements. In each step, you learn a new way to sort and store information and priorities and danger signs.

In the field of architecture, archiving and something known as ‘saving conventions’ are a very big deal. It used to be pretty straight forward because almost every architectural contract (for a whole project - it is different if you are hired to give say three or four potential designs as concepts) has four milestones starting with conceptual designs and ending with working drawings. At each phase, certain criteria are contractually obligated to be included and payments are released. In the old days when plans were made on paper (actually vellum), a background was made with the shape and important features and each worker would address a specific area (Fred, you have a nice aesthetic so you design the front elevations- Betty, you design public floor plan- Dave, you focus on the storage areas or backrooms- Kevin, you design the bathrooms). Those elements are eventually agreed upon then stacked on a light box and a master is made. That master is sent to the customer for payment, but a copy is placed into the archive and several copies are printed out for further work. Some employees choose fixtures, others work on technical issues, consultants add in temperature controls,electrical, and plumbing equipment, landscaping, etc.

In those days, once the sheets were added to an archive it never came back out so it was never altered Phase One was archived, Phase Two was archived, then Phase Three was in the works with a deadline of next Friday and very few people worked on Phase Four. But now that files are electronic, some well meaning but clueless employee can access the archive file and modify it!! This is a very big deal because each phase must be saved separately and later down the road it is often important to prove the client signed off on something that they might not have noticed until the final working drawings are provided and suddenly they pay close attention and refuse to pay because in their mind something new has been dropped in.

I tell that whole story because I had to fire a young woman who was a very good worker and otherwise competent – but could not grasp that archived files are NEVER, EVER to be modified. She did not have the ability (or perhaps the desire) to mentally create the correct amount of files. In her view, there is only the current file – and a trash bin full of discarded versions. She was quite adamant that she was correct and that our office standards were a bunch of meaningless rules beneath the genius had to offer, even when it got to that point.

I have had the privilege of knowing some remarkably competent people, most of them in fields in which I am not very well versed. In every case a major contributing factor to their success (or occasionally- contributing reason for limited success in contrary cases) was their ability to sort things into the roughly correct amount of commonly used files, supplemented by an expert knowledge of very seldom used files that are none-the-less urgently vital.

To a large degree, both in my own experience, and in the non-fiction I have read on the subject, there is a profound relationship between competence and a modified Occam’s Razor of knowing and using all of the important matters and ignoring all of the unimportant matters. Perhaps the greatest indicator of competence.

And for the record, I am far, far too detail oriented for my own good (and the good of those who have to deal with me). In the one or two areas where I am a genuine expert – it is a benefit to be able to immediately go to a great deal of detail creating opportunities less experienced competitors would have to study to achieve. In all other areas of life I often get caught up in details that are sometimes insignificant because I am not looking at the big picture. (Perhaps better expressed – in my field the big picture is always there in the back of my mind no matter how far I zoom in, how much detail I consider. In my field the detail is always tempered by fully understanding the big picture. In other fields, when I zoom into those details I do not have the breadth of background to keep all of the important matters from the big picture in mind.)

“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who vote like I do . . . and those who deserve --”
In the current political environment this matches my experience also.

Going into too much detail (again), I believe one of the best books on the subject is Danial Levitin’s The Organized Mind

Other good books on the subject, almost all of which are more accessible are:
Top Dog
The Tipping Point
Why We Make Mistakes
Thinking Fast and Slow
How We Decide
Nudge (This one really startled me!)
Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know The Answer)
and even a couple that are not exactly right on target:
Getting To Yes
The Devil Is In The Details (Which is actually just an inside glimpse of how one particular mind works)

7

We’ll schedule a meeting for Wednesday afternoon to discuss the definition of a ‘pile’. Managers from R&D, production, marketing, and shipping are required to attend.

8

Will corporate be conferenced in?
Are warehouse managers and physical plant required to attend or just shipping?
We did a preliminary study on ‘heaps’ two years ago, would you like me to forward you the results? If legal is not going to attend, could you be sure that we have a defensible definition of ‘sand’ as well?

9

We’ll add some items to the agenda and schedule a follow up meeting with legal where we can circle back to those issues.

10

Thank you for the follow up, see you Wednesday afternoon.
Regards-

11

The author talks about categories - and how this concept may help hoarders justify hoarding more than the average person (who hoards somewhat), and may play a role in many other things. He does not tie them together, the idea hoarders may be more creative, less intolerant, etc. are a slight extension of his ideas.

Since the idea is simple and the topics complicated it is, if at all, only a contribution. Intolerance is often learned. Hoarding may be due to fear, but also could have psychological components and involve other issues like scarcity or arbitrage. True, even if the way one categorizes things is a contributor, this solves few problems. But it might help understand them, and with complex problems one must start somewhere.

12

I have a friend who is maybe borderline hoarder, if there is such a thing. He doesn’t collect garbage. No more used pizza boxes and orange peels in the house than any other messy person, and those items change—today’s pizza box is from last night, last week’s pizza box is gone.

To the point of this thread, there is lots of categorization and micro-focus, but very little large picture focus. Stuff is often sorted into large bins, based on categories of stuff, so computer cables, scrap metal, etc. Or, things are sorted by convenience. The computer cable box happened to be on top, and had some room, so it also contains colored pencils and a white board eraser.

The excuses are “it might be useful” and “I can’t get rid of it unless it is in a useful way.”

The lack of large picture focus is the breakdown of “it might be useful.” A parallel cable is useless in 2022, unless you’re into retro computing. Even if you are into retro computing, it is unlikely you need more than one. Keeping a box of 15 parallel cables is hoarding.

I see the categorizing as a satisfying need to impose order on chaos. The pathology comes in because the chaos is self created.

A non-hoarding person would have meta categories of

  • this is genuinely a useful item and should be kept
  • this item is not useful to me, dispose of it properly (sell, donate, recycle, etc.)
  • this item is not useful to anybody, and it goes in the trash

And a non-hoarding person wouldn’t let the first category get out of hand—the first parallel cable is genuinely useful, if you ever find a working IEEE 1284 card to go with your Apple IIe, but the rest are trash.

13

There have been a few threads on hoarding. I have known – still know – hoarders. It is a mental illness. It has aspects of OCD and aspects of ADHD, and also has unique qualities. There’s an impairment of “executive function” which typically spills over into other difficulties such as time management, planning of all sorts. A lot of hoarders accumulate things because they believe that they will fix it, make something with it, or give it to someone else, despite many years of never doing any of those things. Shopping addictions are similar – there’s a happy burst of feeling over acquiring the thing which fades almost immediately and has to be repeated with a new object to get the rush again.

Hoarders often have an attachment to their hoard which most people only have for loved ones or pets. If they are forcibly separated from it they can feel intense grief, even internal collapse. It’s kind of scary.

It’s true that the ones I’ve known have all been exceptionally nice, non-judgemental people. For what that’s worth.

14

This is a very interesting topic, would you mind sharing the title of the book and who authored it?

15

The book is called Black and White Thinking by Kevin Dutton. It is well written and the above topics are a fairly small percentage of what is covered. But most of the topics involve how circumstances affect seeing the trees and forest or an average. Ideally one always sees both, but few do all the time in every situation.

Another point the book makes, could be true, is that words that describe an average amount of a quality tend to be dull and used less in conversation. He thinks this makes conversations more dramatic. He challenges the reader to pick intermediate words or short phrases between things like smart or dumb, introvert or extrovert, fat or thin, etc. and claims all of these words are more interesting than the intermediate words most people come up with (average, middling). Is it true? Possibly somewhat. But it’s not an idea I have seen expressed elsewhere.

16

Thank you, sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing if my library has a copy. This sounds like it is very much in my wheelhouse. Are you familiar with any of the works I listed above?

As for the middling modifiers, I have always been one of those who went for accuracy above all else so I do that automatically. Many years ago I was involved in this triangle where I was pursuing a lovely young woman while her (also attractive) sister pursued me. She was telling me how good she did in her karate class and was looking for a compliment. I told her that her kicks were successful because she had “ample feet”. That became a thing that I heard about for a year or more.

Now I use them ironically, like when my kid gives a concert and others heap praise upon him for an only okay performance, I make a point of telling him he was perfectly adequate.

17

Read most of the works you listed. You are right that this has similarities to them.