If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you might be familiar with the concept that humans can be considered learning agents. They observe the world and act upon it and, most importantly, build a mental model of it in much the same way a machine learning agent would do. Most people mistake this model they are building with reality itself, forgetting that it is filtered by the human condition. They say "the ball is red" as if redness was an inherent property of the ball, despite the fact that the material the ball is made of has no concept of redness. It's just what humans have agreed to call the perception of light in that wavelength. In that example it might be knitpicky to think that way, but in other areas like morality or metaphysics this can be a big problem.
It might not have been a big issue for the hunter-gatherer tribes of the stone age where communication was mainly intended for coordination. However, as times grow more and more modern, I feel like this problem has increased to a point where it profoundly impacts our daily life. Many modern conflicts are born from this lack of understanding that other people’s mental models are simply different. People talk about fake news and propaganda driving a wedge between us when actually it is our language that might be doing it. People use the same words, yet mean entirely different things. It’s like a linguistic schism where the meanings of words have shifted so much that communication becomes near impossible.
How can you be empathetic with someone who says horrible things, if you don’t understand that it is only in your mental model of reality where the meaning of these things is actually horrible? How can you expect someone who disagrees with you to listen to your arguments if you don’t understand that your words have horrible meanings in their mental model of reality? It might be the most important lesson humanity has to learn. It might even be the largest obstacle on the path towards world peace. If everyone in the world understood that our own mental model of reality is generative and subjective and we must not confuse it with reality itself, we could finally see each other as people again. All the tricks to manipulate us to hate each other would cease to work.
So, how do we get there? I don’t have a full solution but I have a humble suggestion. Just a small change, one that will not hurt anyone but might kick off a long process that could some day get us there. It’s not difficult but absolutely contingent on your help. So if anything I wrote previously resonated with you, please consider supporting this cause. I’m not asking for money, I’m not even asking for any of your time. I’m just asking for a word.
Yes, I think one of the main reasons people make the fundamental mistake of confusing their model of reality with reality itself is that there is a word for the latter but not the former. “My subjective model of reality” doesn't roll off the tongue the way “reality” does. Yes, philosophers, academics and other thinkers have known about this concept for thousands of years, but none have ever deemed it worthy to name it properly. Why would they, they know what they mean. But this academic way of handling it is not sufficient to integrate it in everyday language, which is what we really need to make the concept available for everyone.
For this reason, I’m making the cocky move to propose a short, proper noun for it: eidon (pronounced aye-don). It’s an ancient Greek word that means as much as “seeing” or “perceiving”. It’s originally a verb, but I propose using it as a noun to give it an entirely new meaning. So someone’s eidon is their subjective, generative model of the world which is at the core of what they believe is true. Now if someone says something you consider to be false, you don’t have to tell them “you are wrong”, you can tell them “not in my eidon”. In one word you acknowledge that the other person might believe what they said to be true in their eidon while expressing that you have your own eidon in which it isn’t. You express a clash of opinions without the immediate necessity to resolve it. Instead of fighting for the one truth (which, as you might remember from my blog post two weeks ago, none of you has) you can have a friendly competition to see who’s eidon is more useful. Or you just accept that this information about each other’s eidons was exchanged and move on to the next topic.
Let’s look a bit more at how useful the word eidon is. We can acknowledge that it is always changing as a result of new experiences. We might say “wow, that meeting really changed my eidon” to show that you think differently about something now. Where before you needed to admit that you were “wrong” about something, you can now simply celebrate that your eidon got more useful. In fact, there’s a new way to celebrate certain people by saying that their eidon is very useful. It’s like saying that they are smart, but without invoking this vague notion of “intelligence”. It’s like saying they are knowledgeable, but without necessarily implying a lot of factual knowledge. It’s just a way to express that they really understand a lot about how the world works.
I’m sure you might think of other uses yourself. Because that’s what I’m asking of you. That could be your part in this most important transformation of humanity towards a more empathetic future. Simply add the word eidon to your active vocabulary. Try to use it in conversations whenever you find it useful and be prepared to explain its meaning if you’re talking to someone who hasn’t heard of it (which will happen a lot). You can send them here for explanation, but I’d find it more useful if you just explained it in your own words. It’s ok to leave me out of it if you want, just explain what the word means.
Unlike the other wild proposals I express in this blog, this one might even give you some immediate benefits. Once enough people around you are actively using the word, you might just feel your own social circle become more compassionate and understanding. I might be wrong about this, but at least in my eidon it will.
