Predictable World

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Psychologist Martin Lerner put forward in 1966 the concept of a "just world", that is, a world in which everyone will be rewarded according to their deserts. I did nasty things - sooner or later a return will come from the Universe. Sooner or later … sooner or later … in one form or another … And then the offended person monitors the life situation of the offender for years, and when the streak of success gives way to bad luck or even tragedy, he rejoices: the Universe took revenge on you for me! Therefore, under reports of illnesses or failures of famous people, there are hundreds of comments, where sympathy and condolences are interspersed with the triumphant: "Serves him right!" Life is long, every famous person did not please someone. And for many, the situation looks like retribution, which will certainly, certainly overtake anyone who has sinned.

This, of course, is a very effective and even socio-forming, I would say, idea. In the end, you can't put a policeman on every person, so such an “internal policeman” who keeps you from dirty tricks with the promise of just retribution helps a lot the peaceful coexistence of people.

Sometimes, of course, this approach hurts: when the victim of a crime is accused (“And what did she want, why did she go out at eleven in the evening! yard in such an area ). Belief in a “just world” is precisely a belief, that is, a concept that is not questioned and can explain everything in the genre “it was God's will”. Rape in the middle of the night - there is no need to hang around. Not raped - well, nothing special either, apparently, behaves reasonably. They robbed - well, it's clear the case, there was nothing to shine with its riches. She lives quietly, peacefully, richly and calmly - respected, it means that he is the right person (and how they are robbed, she will suddenly turn into “wrong”, just like the raped woman, who calmly walked through the same yard a hundred times, but did not save herself in the hundred and first, suddenly becomes the cause of their own troubles).

The concept of a “just world” has zero predictive power (that is, it cannot predict who will be robbed and who will be raped), and at the same time it has one hundred percent explanatory power. It’s not difficult to explain when everything has already happened: well, it’s God's will. What is incomprehensible?

However, about the "fairness" in the approach, I would correct a little. And the point is not even that “blaming the victim” is both unfair and wrong, and does not work. It seems that people expect from the world around them not so much justice as predictability. Well, for example, imagine a village where nearby, in a forest, a terrible dragon lives and feeds on villagers. There is no particular justice in this: for what reward to those whom he ate? But all the villagers from an early age know by heart: if you want to live, do not go to that ravine near the forest, there is a dragon. It will gobble it up, it will not leave bones. And, without really reflecting ("For what sins we were given the dragon?"), They simply do not go where it is dangerous. The bonus is obvious: you behaved correctly - you are alive and whole; a mistake - well, the kingdom of heaven to you, a former fellow villager, and now a dragon dinner.

In general, a person is so arranged that he wants to find patterns in any situation that occurs. Research has revealed that subjects who were shown a randomly moving point on a computer screen tried to find a pattern in its movement and tried their best to guess where it would be next time. The desire to predict the future is one of the most ancient mechanisms; in ancient times, whether the tribe survived or not depended on how people manage to predict weather phenomena and animal behavior. Human intuition, all the senses, and the mind that arose in a person worked for this. It is the natural state of man to look for patterns and try to predict the near future.

The assumption is "I have comprehended the secret of the Universe!" seems so valuable and so warms the soul that the argument: "It is her own fault" to the victim means, rather, an accusation of a misunderstanding of the laws of the Universe, rather than of some kind of guilty behavior. Well, figs with her, fool, since she does not understand where the dragon lives. We know that this will not happen to us.

And this is one of the most dangerous illusions. We, too, usually know little about dragons, and we are very poor at predicting everyday dangers. Therefore: no, not "herself to blame." And a regularity, unknown to us, showed itself. Well, yes, some new dragon.

And do not gloat, but help those who are unlucky today. There are many unknown dragons in the world. The philosopher Nassim Taleb calls them "black swans".