Recently
two articles of mine were rejected because their reviewers had certain issues
with them. What those are and my responses are described in detail on my
website (My Home, The ISAA...).
On a
more technical level (in terms of the Otoom mind model) however there are
issues that go beyond someone's personal or political opinion.
A
preconceived notion represents an already established cognitive template about
what is to follow. Even if subsequent paragraphs explain more their mind is
already set; so much so that further statements are not accepted because it is
not what has been expected. The problem has been recognised in Neuroscience
for some time now. Norretranders' "The User Illusion" [1] provides
many interesting results from experiments along those lines.
Should
the reader - or reviewer in this case - get any further response to a criticism
this is constructed as further proof that the criticism has been correct all
along. If not responded to (and so this kind of information spreads
unchallenged) the preconceived perspective becomes the norm, further
strengthening the framework (the template) from which further a priori
perspectives and starting points are created.
Anything
now not in line with that ambience (the results create indeed an entire
ambience) are seen as beyond the standard and hence fair game for attack. This
happens within general society and also within groups who tend to isolate
themselves from the rest.
If a
group has a large enough membership or their perspectives cover many areas,
overlaps with other groups are possible through their respective intersections,
although whether the entire ambience of a group can be altered via such links
would depend on the conceptual scope of the latter.
Which
raises certain questions: to what extent is the interplay between a group's
composition, its parts, their mutual influence on each other, and the potential
of any of them to be an agent for change, being realised? Are some groups more
susceptible than others, and so which types make up a certain society at any
given time, and if the overall conditions change would the groups change as
well?
In
other words, do the groups operating within a society determine the
effectiveness of its environment, or is it the other way around? More likely it
would be a combination of the two, which of course complicates the entire
scenario to a large degree. This is an example of how the complexity of such an
observation and its analysis can explode in a very short time.
As for
the mix of the two possibilities, since we are dealing with complex dynamic
systems, it would be virtually impossible to decide for one or the other,
especially since by the time an observation yields a result those
interdependencies have already come into play. At that point to talk about any particular
directional cause-and-effect relationship is meaningless.
Does
that mean any further analysis is therefore useless? Actually no, because although
the initial direction is indefinable, since the dynamics operate in any case any
decision at a given moment will have an effect provided it is followed by some
action that involves the existing dynamics; that is to say, if the action occurs
within its conceptual space.
In
other words, it doesn't matter what the action at that moment produces (ie, a
cause-and-effect relationship in this or that direction), some result will be
produced. The validity of that result does not depend on the identification of
the previous direction but depends on the efficacy of the action itself.
When
information has passed back and forth between two entities (individuals, groups
at any scale) and a third party injects some further information, then at that
point the salient aspect is the affinity of the latter with the existing
context.
It
doesn't matter how that context was formed, its precise history is neither here
nor there. If there is an affinity between the new information and the context,
new connections will form between the two. The dynamic continues to evolve.
This is the reason new concepts - sometimes called memes - form with their
exact source often remaining unclear.
Nevertheless,
in practice accusations and remonstrations can ensue, but both sides are
justified in arguing they are not the guilty party. In the immediate sense they
are correct, but we are dealing with a type of system in which our
understanding of exactitude does not hold - it's the nature of complex, dynamic
systems.
All
this is another manifestation of progression lock (the ongoing development of a
scenario based on what happened previously), and the only way in which such a
situation can be resolved - if this is the right word - is by either having an
outside force capable of unseating a sufficient number of participating elements,
or the system exhausts its reserves on its own (ie, those entities become
ineffective). Functionally speaking both outcomes are the same.
A
scenario where all parties are arguing to the hilt, and every accusation only
making things worse despite no-one really desiring that turn of events, and
above all everyone being equally responsible but no-one ever admitting to it
... does this sound familiar?
Reference:
1. T.
Norretranders, The User Illusion, Penguin Books, New York, 1998.
