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Articles

Why We Can’t Agree

Howard Darmstadter considers different ways of seeing the world.

A wildebeest on the African plain – aware of much in its environment, unaware of much else. The presence of suitable grasses, the whereabouts of predators, and the actions of other wildebeest, get its attention; but wind currents, the flights of birds, and the doings of small mammals are of no concern.

The wildebeest’s awareness requires mental ‘models’ to represent environmental features. Certain features of the model correspond to certain features of the environment, and relations between features of the model correspond to relations between features of the environment. It’s like the correspondence between an accurate road map and a road system: Circles on the map correspond to cities, lines to roads, and the small distances between the map circles are proportional to the real distances between cities.

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