The Sophists Would Recognize This Place

You ever notice how sometimes a message doesn't quite reach you, not that it's unclear but more so due to who said it or how it was said?

I listened to Ken Griffin of Citadel being interviewed about the state of the economy/market.

Prior to that, I watched a documentary not that long ago about this same figure and it somehow tainted my perception of him, not all of it in a good way. Always two sides of a story, sometimes even more.

There are some similarities between having one's understanding of a message tainted by one's perception of the messenger and judging truth by how aesthetically it's packaged.

Rhetoric vs. substance.

Permit me to mention the ancients already saw the trap. Back then, as in during 5th century BCE Athens, truth was a fragile thing, easily dressed up in fine words and theatrical delivery.

The Sophists, who in part can be defined as professional teachers of persuasion and argumentation who charged fees to train young men in the art of winning debates regardless of underlying truth, learned that people didn't always want truth even though they may need it, they wanted persuasion or something that felt good to the ear.

Plato called it out, warning that eloquence without essence was a kind of sweet poison. And he wasn't wrong. Humans have always been attracted to what glitters even when it's clear that it's hollow.

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Sometimes I think we're still stuck in that same theater, except now the crowd is much bigger and easily persuaded into one direction or the other.

Presentation bias, "aesthetic" over authenticity

I think the word "aesthetic" is a bit overused in terms of how it's been flattened into meaning "visually pleasing" rather than its fuller philosophical sense of perception and sensory experience.

We live in an age where every message has to look the part before it's even read. Our attention has been refined, so to speak, to only get attuned to polished thumbnails, clean typography, the right lighting, proper cadence in someone's voice, etc.

A newsletter with clunky formatting loses subscribers before the first paragraph ends.

I try to not jump on this programmed bandwagon of equating production value with intellectual value.

We say we want authenticity while our attention keeps rewarding symmetry.

And I get it, as in the world moves fast. Presentation saves time.

But I also can't help wondering how many ideas we overlook because they didn't come with the right framing. How many brilliant observations got buried under poor lighting or an awkward speaking voice?

Obviously, a rough, pixelated truth can carry more depth than the smoothest production ever could.

I'm drawn more to young artists making film productions within their neighborhood with borrowed cameras and natural light than the traditional epic blockbusters that if it wasn't for the stunts working on our adrenal system and the CGI masking thin plots would fall flat against any real scrutiny of character or meaning.

The work of seeing clearly

I think there's something humbling about realizing that this old struggle between what's real and what's beautifully presented is personal too and not just societal.

We do it with people, ideas, and even ourselves. How we frame things often matters more than what we feel about them.

I tend to catch myself rehearsing how to say something vulnerable, workshopping the delivery until it sounds just right, which sometimes means I'm more concerned with how my honesty will be received than whether I'm actually being honest.

If there's work to be done here, then it's training the eye again to pierce through the presentation layer and sit with what's actually being said, especially when it arrives awkwardly.

In my case, it means listening to Ken Griffin's economic analysis separately from my downloaded feelings about his role in various market controversies.

One does not need to have any affinity or lack thereof with the messenger to really make use of the message.

Especially if you can think for yourself, you can extract value from sources you distrust and find limitations in sources you admire.

This type of separation takes practice, though. It's an active form of listening that most of us weren't taught and that our current environment actively discourages.


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