The Problem with Binary Thinking

The Abelardian approach doesn't work in a probabilistic world

The Band attempts to help binary thinkers evolve beyond their excessively simplistic mental framework.

Binary thinking is something the Band has been understandably harsh on in the past. The tendency to assume everything fits into one of two possibilities even sounds crazy when spelled out like that. Entire fields of probability get ignored. For the kind of results you’d expect from only considering two of countless options. The problem with the Band’s harshness is that blasting something doesn’t help those who don’t perceive they’re falling for it.

It’s best to begin any practical approach by being able to clearly define your topic or idea to yourself before sharing it. Ideas are flashes, but serious presentation is called “articulation” for a reason. Putting together all the parts into a coherent structure or system. Like a healthy skeleton or a solid building. Sometimes holes or gaps don’t show until you’re stringing it together. Making it all clear first dodges that bullet. Just take a moment and think it through.

So why is binary thinking so common? The short answer it that it’s easy. One thing paying attention to the House of Lies has taught me is that NPCs avoid effort. Compulsively. Obviously NANPCALT, but in general. I always sort of assumed Wrath or Lust were the most powerful motivators of the Seven. Projecting maybe, or conditioned by Pedowood. But The Band observed that, by the fruits, it’s Sloth that’s the #1 driver to socio-cultural ruin. Just observe. NPCs fantasize about doing nothing. It’s why we’re already seeing the [outsourcing agency to AI] → [cognitive decline] dance. Despite AI saying not to do that.2 The road to pods and cricket paste would almost certainly be voluntary.

There’s more to it than ease though. Binary thinking seems natural because it really is in important ways. Many fundamentals of our very existence are binaries. Any basic moral orientation has to establish a Good, that by extension creates an evil. Our own physical nature is defined by bilateral symmetry. To the point where “good facial symmetry” registers neurologically. Binary code is the foundation of digital reality. We reproduce sexually. Rudimentary logic with its = or !=. Either/or. Mind/body, with spirit bringing the divine triadic element. Often, real world choices boil down to a central dilemma. The problem is what to do when they don’t.

Why binary thinking is a problem is easy. It misrepresents reality and blinds you to options. As easy as associating the answer to any affirmative / negative type question with a moral absolute. Taken literally, refusal is “evil”. Do as thou wilt and so forth. The usual House of Lies satanic inversion.

Here’s a common binary error to watch out for. Assuming that because something is shown to be false, the revealer’s story is true. This one is everywhere. It appears to be a reflex response to restore the comforting binary structure after the old assumptions were upended. Different content, but same form.

All revealing a lie does is … reveal a lie.

There’s a more insidious part to binary thinking than assuming only two choices. A compulsion to settle on one of the choices when the evidence isn’t there to choose. It does appear many find it hard to operate in a state of uncertainty. That’s the House of Lies talking though. Human existence is a state of uncertainty.

Binary thinking is the most common mode of thought and it permeates the entire SSH, although Deltas are probably the most firmly entrenched in it while Gammas habitually resort to it in their endless series of “gotcha” arguments.

But it is intrinsically false, and frankly, rather stupid, because there are usually more than one way to be wrong. 4 is the only correct answer to 2+2, but 1, 3, and 537 are all incorrect answers and the fact that 2+2 does not equal 3 does not mean that it therefore equals 537.

Furthermore, there are partial truths, nuances, and contexts that are often, though not always, relevant. Binary thinking is an attempt to impose certainty on an uncertain reality, or worse, to deceive by presenting a false choice between an obvious impossibility and a falsehood. The latter is what the economist Joseph Schumpeter described as “the Ricardian vice” which just happens to be the foundation of our current economic system.

The comprehensive vision of the universal interdependence of all the elements of the economic system that haunted Thünen probably never cost Ricardo as much as an hour’s sleep. His interest was in the clear-cut result of direct, practical significance. In order to get this he cut that general system to pieces, bundled up as large parts of it as possible, and put them in cold storage—so that as many things as possible should be frozen and “given.” He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by these assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, given these assumptions, he set up simple one-way relations so that, in the end, the desired results emerged almost as tautologies. . . . The habit of applying results of this character to the solution of practical problems we shall call the Ricardian Vice.

The triumph of free trade theory is one of the great masterpieces of binary thinking, but there are many, many other examples. So remember, when you’re trying to simplify matters and render them down to a simple Yes/No question, there is a very good chance that you are engaging in the philosophical vice of binary thinking.