On the Limits of Human Understanding –or- Even Nate Silver Doesn’t Know

After Trump had won the Republican nomination, I heard a wonderful interview with one of the many pollsters who had gotten it wrong. He was from a web site that was known for its thoroughness and unbiased approach. Over the past two elections cycles, their predictions had been unusually accurate. (Spoiler alert: they did not get it right this time.)

The pollster reported that every time they had compared Trump’s position to the position of similar political figures in the past, they came up with the prediction that his candidacy would quickly fade away.

The problem, he said, was that Trump’s political trajectory was unlike anything they had seen before. Since their models are based seeing the patterns in data from the past and extrapolating into the future, they could not have predicted the emergence of this particular new pattern. At the end, the interviewer innocently asked: ‘So our predictive models and our capacity to forecast the future are only valid as long as everything stays as it has been?’ The interviewee had no reply.

The 20^th century anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson explained it using number patterns. In the pattern 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… what is the next number? If you said ‘6’, you probably did well on your SAT’s and got into a good college. But, in truth, the next number is 11.   With the series being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15… and you know the rest….only you don’t. The next number could be 21 or 111 or 67. The pattern holds until it changes. Than all bets are off.

And so here we are with a looming Donald Trump Presidency that none of the mainstream authorities saw coming. Many of us are still in shock, trying to deal with the failure of our internal models of who and what our country really is. It is important for us to begin to make sense of how this happened. What are the realities that were not included in our understandings? How do we use these difficult times to come to a richer and more nuanced acceptance of the many realities of our country?

We can use our predictive failures to enrich our understanding and increase the accuracy of our capacity to predict what will happen next. AND we also might be well served to remember the limits of what we can know. We live in an emerging and creative universe. While this can be wildly disturbing, it also means that what is yet to come is the adventure of a lifetime.

Day Two

Day two of this new world of the president I don’t want to have. The terror, sadness and anger have abated somewhat but I remain deeply unsettled. I’m reminded of a conversation with a deeply conservative friend after Obama’s election in 2008. She was convinced this meant that men from the government would come knocking on her door if she said anything that was critical of his administration. At the time, I thought this was laughable, but now I know the reality of the place of deep distrust that leads to entertaining these dark thoughts.

Donald Trump disturbs me. His unpredictability and seemingly boundless narcissism make it difficult to predict how he will actually behave when he assumes power. I am not hopeful that he will be thoughtful and deliberative—not hopeful that he will gather wise and experienced people around him. I fear the actions of anyone who is convinced he has THE answer.

But I am doing my best to come back to what I can do. First this is on the most tangible level of washing the dishes and making my bed—to stay connected to the grounding daily tasks and requirements of life. (I have a new appreciation for my mother’s advice to me when I was bored as a child. I would ask her: ‘What can I do?’ She would reply: ‘Why don’t you clean your room?’ Now I see the deeper possibility of her encouragement.)

Then there is the larger level of my role in the society and world around me. Though it is easy to say I support justice and equality of opportunity, I have to admit that I certainly have not done enough to live out these deep values. What is the new action that is required of me? What is it I can do today to extend beyond the cocoon of my comfort and reach across the differences that divide us? How can I use my life to make the world a slightly better place for all of us?

Facing the New Reality

Last night when I lay down to a restless sleep, things were not looking good for Hillary. I woke early this morning and lay in my dark bed for a long while—sick with the possibility of living in a world where Donald Trump would be the next president and not wanting to face the bad news.

At five a.m., upright for a trip to the bathroom, I could delay no longer and opened my laptop. One glance at the front page of the NY Times thrust me into a terrifying new world. Donald Trump will indeed be the next president of our country.

What will this mean for our fragile world order? What will this mean for how we treat people who are different from us? For our stewardship of the earth? For our capacity to discuss issues and make decisions with reference to observable facts? For our willingness to recognize the common interests that bind us together across our differences and toward our mutual destiny?

Dark thoughts fill my mind.

Even as I write this, however, I am conscious that the ‘fragile world order’ has already broken down for so many. The safety and predictability of life that I take for granted are actually the privilege of a small elite. The reality for many, even perhaps the majority of human beings, is a feeling of powerlessness in the face of systemic and personal disregard and even violence.

Trump’s election wakes me up to the fact that my sense of ‘things are basically OK’ is not shared with a huge portion of our country—and it’s not just people of color and the urban poor. A wide swath of white people live in a world where the most important aspects of their lives seem to be increasingly controlled by people and forces they deeply distrust. I suspect the level of uncertainty and discouragement I now feel mirrors the experience of many people who have swept Trump into the presidency.

Several hours have passed since I first heard the news. The shock is abating and I am beginning to take stock of this new landscape. I find myself in good company (even the plurality of the voters in this country). I am not hopeful, but perhaps Trump will surprise us all as did the ruthless and corrupt Lyndon Johnson who eventually used his power to push through ground-breaking civil rights legislation.

I am certain of the renewed importance of standing and acting together for a world of greater justice and equity for all. We are indeed woven together with all living beings. Our human work is to find something deeper than self-interest to help us move together to ameliorate and even solve the issues of this tender and suffering world.