This ambiguity is what I refer to when I say degrees of resolution in your mind's model of external reality. The degrees of resolution determine how accurately it represents external reality because it exposes or hides the details.
Some can look at a problem and see a binary (right or wrong) solution. Then, someone with a higher resolution model might see several features that don't appear to the person with the lower resolution model.
Observation is not passive. It is active. The observation and the observer are connected. We are not passively looking at the objects in our reality. We see what we project as much and sometimes more than the reality we're observing.
An excellent example of a low-resolution cognitive model is a map, roughly drawn with crayon, on the back of a brown paper bag. This crayon map is a rough representation of reality. It may even guide you to your destination. But at the first unanticipated obstacle, like washed-out bridges or construction detours, it fails. It would help if you had the benefit of a higher resolution map with the details to guide your decisions about what to do next.
Crayon maps, like low-resolution cognitive models, tend to be simplistic. They contain assumptions "like reality is simple; just follow the map. Or things are "right or wrong, black or white." There is a single, simple, correct, mutually exclusive solution to every problem. These low-resolution maps fail because reality has infinite degrees of resolution, like the Lake Michigan shoreline. They are woefully unable to represent the external world accurately. They can't recognize subtlety or nuance, and the world is filled with subtlety and nuance.
In the post-truth era, this subtly and nuance makes the space for all kinds of political mischief. Add in the for-profit news organizations' editorial predilections, and we have the "post-truth" era.
As I've written in my book, "Loosing" Your Mind: Liberating Your Intellect for Critical Thinking, it's essential for maintaining our mental and emotional peace of mind that we stand on solid ground and that solid ground can only be found within.
Robert De Filippis
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