Bob: Don’t look now but … that creature is watching our every move.
Alice: I saw it too, I believe it’s a Great Eared Bandersnatch. It’s kind of sniffing with its … is that a nose?
Bob: It is a very strange creature. I’m not sure if that is a nose. Could be.
Alice: I don’t like the look of those enormous claws. I don’t suppose it could be a vegetarian creature?
Bob: Not a chance. Look at its teeth. I should say its fangs — it really has quite vicious fangs.
Alice: I’ve heard about these Bandersnatches. It’s actually their ears that you have to be careful about. The Great Eared Bandersnatch is known for tracking its prey by sound. Its ears are very sensitive. It can hear every word we are saying, even if we whisper. It even understands our language.
Bob: That means that the longer we talk, the more likely it will grab us and have us for lunch. So the optimal course of action would be to stop having this conversation.
Alice: We don’t have to stop talking altogether. The Great Eared Bandersnatch only attacks people who have embedded conversations.
Bob: What does that mean?
Alice: Embedding is just an unhelpful pattern of thought, emotion, or conversation that you get stuck in. It’s often a thought about “how things are” — but it might not be simply and straightforwardly false.
Bob: Can you give an example?
Alice: You know, like belonging to a cult that mistreats its members. Or having excessive feelings of guilt or anxiety. Or being overly arrogant. Or getting into a pointless argument. None of these things are necessarily “false.” They could be unhelpful because they are neurotic, obsessive, self-deluding, or overly analytical.
Bob: Belonging to a cult is not a thought or emotion.
Alice: Sure it is. Depending on the particular person, it could involve many emotions — loyalty, trust, spirituality, and so on.
Bob: Okay, but more importantly, your examples all involve vague qualifications. “Excessive” feelings of guilt or anxiety. “Overly” arrogant. “Mistreats” its members. “Pointless” argument. What, exactly, are you trying to say? And I’m not sure what you mean by “overly” analytical. Is it overly analytical to engineer bridges? You’re a mathematician. Mathematical analysis is used to build bridges that get cars over rivers.
Alice: No, Bandersnatches have no problem with building bridges.
Bob: What about the analysis that’s used to calculate how to build medical imaging devices?
Alice: No, that’s not overly analytical either.
Bob: Is it that science can be analytical but the humanities can never be analytical?
Alice: No, there’s plenty of successful analysis in the humanities. People will disagree as to which is good analysis and which is bad analysis. But to reject all analysis in the humanities, you’d have to reject all of: the Federalist Papers, the Communist Manifesto, the Second Sex, Plato’s Republic, and so on. Surely most people subscribe to at least one of these.
Bob: The Bandersnatch is licking its lips for some reason.
Alice: That probably means it’s hungry.
Bob: Personally, I think the humanities require just as much emotion as analysis.
Alice: Embedding can also come from being overly caught up in your emotions!
Bob: Then how, exactly, do you tell if you’re being overly analytical or just analytical?
Alice: That’s the sort of question that leads to overly analytical discussions. If there were some systematic analytical process for detecting embeddings, we could easily become trapped or stuck in that process. So the only way to tell is really by a kind of – I don’t know, a kind of gentle internal nudge or mystical intuition. It’s about a kind of feeling of being stuck. A sixth sense, if you will. Escaping embeddings is a matter of learning to listen to that sixth sense and go with it.
Bob: What does this “nudge” feel like, exactly?
Alice: So, imagine you overhear an embedded conversation in which people are stuck. What they’re saying sounds relevant and helpful to them; but to you it sounds kind of absurd or problematic in some way. You get a certain reflective feeling by listening to them – a feeling that you are not caught up in their conversation. You don’t have to analyze what they’re saying – you just intuit that it’s not helpful. Now take that reflective feeling and apply it to your own thoughts. You can let go of your own thoughts, reflect on them, and intuit whether they are helpful or not helpful. That’s the sixth sense.
Bob: It would help if I could listen to the kind of conversation you’re talking about. Then I could analyze it for myself and understand your point.
Alice: You wouldn’t need to analyze it. You would have an intuition that it wasn’t helpful. That’s the mystical intuition thing.
Bob: Well, I think I’m one of the most reflective people I know. In fact, I’m reflective enough to be skeptical about claims of mystical intuition. Even if mystical intuition is real, it just isn’t practical.
Alice: What do you mean?
Bob: We need to have an agreement on what is and isn’t “embedded.” Mystical intuition is no basis for discussion and agreement. Only analysis, logic, and reason can get us to that agreement. Without agreement, we can’t work together to avoid getting embedded.
Alice: Sometimes people can have the same intuition at the same time. They can even arrive at the shared intuition through discussion.
Bob: But in general, that doesn’t always happen.
Alice: Bob, don’t you see that by becoming overly obsessed about the general way to reason about embedded discussions, one risks having an embedded discussion?
Bob: That’s true, but unless people can discuss how to stop, I don’t see how they are going to stop. People have to talk about something in order to figure out how to do it.
Alice: You don’t think people will simply know how to stop?
Bob: People are often drawn to embedded discussions in a way that they can’t control.
Alice: I agree, it can be generally hard to stop. Why do you suppose that is?
Bob: Perhaps what’s required is some effort of will that most people lack.
Alice: Why do most people lack this willpower?
Bob: It could be helpful to consult the academic literature on this question.
Alice: Studies have shown that willpower is a limited cognitive resource. When you are on a diet, it’s hard to exercise too. You can use your willpower to diet or exercise, not both.
Bob: Ah, yes. The theory of “ego depletion.” That’s actually a popular misconception; there is no such thing as ego depletion.
Alice: It’s a misconception that willpower is limited?
Bob: Not exactly. It’s a misconception that willpower can be used up on one task, leading to a lack of willpower on another task.
Alice: It seems to me that we lack the willpower to end our own embedded conversations.
Bob: But with a sufficiently good theory of willpower, we could change that.
Alice: I don’t know. Do psychological theories actually help you think better? There is a phenomenon I might call “theoretical impracticality” whereby simply knowing about something doesn’t always help you succeed at that thing.
Bob: What we need is a practical way to tell which theories are practical and which are impractical.
Alice: Ssh. The Great Eared Bandersnatch is looking over in our direction.
Bob: Does that mean it is going to pounce?
Alice: I don’t know, but Bandersnatches will pounce if people don’t stop having their embedded conversations. That is a generally important and relevant fact about Bandersnatches; we should keep it in mind.
Bob: The more we learn about Bandersnatches, the better we can prepare ourselves.
Alice: Maybe if we had a really good theory of what it means to stop having an embedded conversation.
Bob: Well stopping means … cessation, finality, or termination.
Alice: Those are synonyms of the word “stopping,” yes.
Bob: Are you dissatisfied with my list of synonyms?
Alice: I don’t see how the synonyms are getting us any closer to actual cessation. I call this unfortunate situation “synonymism” — it means that we think we are understanding something, but really we are just listing a bunch of synonyms. Real understanding, useful understanding, doesn’t come from just knowing the word for something.
Bob: I happen to like synonyms.
Alice: Like them or not, they aren’t very useful.
Bob: Oh, so everything should be analyzed in terms of its utility? Are you a utilitarian?
Alice: Well, naturally things have to be analyzed in terms of their utility —when one has any kind of goal. Our goal is to avoid provoking the Great Eared Bandersnatch, so we need useful knowledge about Bandersnatch-avoidance. In general, one always has a goal, and so one should always consider utility.
Bob: That doesn’t mean we have to explicitly talk about utility. We could be talking about, you know, art, aesthetics, or values.
Alice: Moral values?
Bob: Moral values, among others.
Alice: I should point out that the Bandersnatch seems to be creeping closer. It’s almost imperceptible, but each time I look at it, it’s a bit nearer.
Bob: Why is it moving so slowly?
Alice: I think Bandersnatches move slowly in order to give their prey a false sense of security.
Bob: Anyway … you had asked about moral values. But what about spiritual values?
Alice: How will spiritual values help us with the dilemma at hand?
Bob: You shouldn’t be thinking in terms of this dilemma at all. Only by not thinking about the dilemma can you hope to resolve the dilemma. The Bandersnatch will attack if we continue to talk in analytical terms, but if we talk in aesthetic terms it may not attack. Aesthetic conversations are generally less embedded than analytic ones.
Alice: You say that, but the sentence you just said is still analytical. You are analyzing whether analysis or aesthetics is more embedded. My word for this situation is “analysis irony.” Analysis irony means that one talks about the drawbacks of analysis but does so in an analytical way.
Bob: I’m not the one analyzing what you said. You are the one analyzing what I said. So you are the one engaging in “analysis irony.” In fact, it is a kind of meta-analysis-irony, because it is analysis irony about analysis irony.
Alice: No, now you are analyzing what I said.
Bob: Yes, but you started it.
Alice: Why does it matter who started it?
Bob: It matters because you are attacking me, and I am defending myself. You are engaged in an “analysis irony attack.” Analysis irony attacks are all too common nowadays.
Alice: Defensiveness is a symptom of embedded discussion.
Bob: Why is that?
Alice: Because in order to defend themselves, people generally come up with theories about “how things really are” that they use to justify themselves. They invent theories that explain how they are innocent, while their attackers are being quite unjust. I call this situation a “moral reversal.”
Bob: Well in this case I’m just telling it like it is, because I am justified.
Alice: Bob, you might want to look behind you, because …
Bob: In fact, I have had quite enough of your accusations. There is a whole set of people who are hypocrites about analysis. They think they can analyze others, but others cannot analyze them. I call these people “one way analyzers,” because aaaaiiiiii! (CHOMP).
Alice: Oh, no the Bandersnatch! I told you that you were being too defensive. In fact, you were being meta-defensive, which is a kind of defensiveness that is about ack! (CHOMP)
(Not) The End.