The idea that rational, well-meaning people never contradict themselves is a misunderstanding of logic, evidence, and honesty.

We are limited and language is limited. It is easy to say two things that seem contradictory yet are nevertheless true for their original speaking purpose.

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An artificial prohibition against that kind of freeform contradiction actually impedes honesty, rationality, and evidence gathering and analysis.

Many things even in science seem contradictory, sometimes even impossible. Yet there they are.

We call these "paradoxes" or in mathematics "pathologies," and creative people know that they are often hugely valuable. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Albert Einstein was referring to the same trouble when he - to many people somewhat enigmatically, and I will get to that in a moment - wrote "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Zeno's paradox of the arrow is an incredibly good point. Gaslighting about it does nothing useful; the solution is not to dismiss it, but to discover calculus. Fractal math and chaos math and Newtonian physics and Darwinian evolution and so many other branches of knowledge suffered from the disease of social prohibition against apparent contradiction.

It is the groupish, conformist, overly proper mentality that gets in the way of seeing such truths when they appear, or that results in inordinate backlash when trying to get a new thought or observation accepted.

This is one reason that self-testifying in court is so often a bad idea: juries and seemingly the court system and society in general fail to understand that contradiction is often healthy.

With a friend, I was just watching the series The Girl from Plainville and the documentary it was based on, I Love You, Now Die. In it, Michelle Carter does not testify in court because that would probably be a bad idea. But why? Shouldn't an informed, rational court system allow self-testimony in a way that is not biased against natural, healthy kinds of contradiction? Shouldn't it especially remove such biases in disputes where unhealthy kinds of contradiction could be so important to see in sharp relief?

We should know the difference, shouldn't we? But can we figure out the difference by closing our eyes or using a brutally simple filter like "contradicting yourself shows you're stupid or dishonest"?

That criminal case isn't the reason for my post, nor is the article I'm referencing. They are simply two applications of a big idea that's too often overlooked, yet relevant in daily life and many social issues. It can help solve big problems when we see more clearly.

Often that means we feel free to make two observations that seem to be in conflict with each other.

The irony is that this is often more honest, not less, and that's why it's so valuable to take the risk and let people take the risk.

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Prompted by this article: "The Role of Contradictions in Creativity | Psychology Today"

I think we pathologize mental conditions too much. For many of them, it's less a disease than a natural variant that has clearly conferred advantages to bearers and those around them quite often in the past.

To some extent, then, the disease is often in society for failing or refusing to recognize the variant as natural, valid, and sometimes advantageous - or if not, then as an involuntary illness.

Some conditions like autism, ADHD, and benign narcissism are not really diseases in a person but rather in a society that expects everyone to be the same. If these people are given space to be themselves, are not inordinately punished economically or socially, there is not really a disease, just a difference. With the level of support that neurotypical people get from neurotypical people, I think these other groups would do just fine. Sometimes the real problem even in mental health is that a group is a minority.

I would term these "diseases of psychological minority" - or in other words, "basic neurodiversity."

Being a night owl is not a problem unless society expects everyone to be a morning lark and gives night owls slim pickings and acts as if this is fair.

There are also - sometimes this is the same, sometimes different - diseases of volition. These involve what many simply call "bad behavior."

Diseases of volition are diseases of (inner and outer) context. In other words, actions we disagree with make sense to the person who undertakes them. We want to blame their will, their freedom, and their character - but the trouble is that their analysis of the context - the reality as they see it - is different - different enough that what seems like a good idea to them seems like a bad idea to us.

I find it a bit of a waste of time to blame people's souls. Actually, I'm playing softball: I find it a complete and utter waste of time, and probably societally harmful in the long run.

A certain level of stigma around bad behavior serves as a heads up and a deterrent. That's fine. That's prosocial stigma. We need some of it. But the minute we begin dehumanizing and demonizing people who have behaved badly, we step past prosocial stigma into hate.

I am not a proponent of hate. I'm a proponent of recognizing when you're feeling anger and disgust combined, and dealing with it like an adult capable of compassion and wisdom.

Thinking very much about ways the world is unfair can be depressing, because no single person is ever likely to correct any global unfairness.

For example, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and we know this, it isn't an illusion, and social scientists even have a good handle on how it works. (Hint: greed is a red herring. While greed is undeniably one factor, the vicious circle is mostly a network phenomenon called "the Matthew effect" or "preferential attachment." We've been accusing rich people of greed for millennia, and the reason it hasn't worked is that greed is not the biggest factor in the effect.) Yet despite how much may be known, and the possibility of a solution from accurate and precise understanding, thinking about it is still pretty depressing, isn't it? People are suffering and dying right now.

It's similar with so many kinds of unfairness.

And it's hardly made better by the refrain "Life isn't fair! Didn't you learn that in grade school?" Fairness is not some pie in the sky. It matters. Whatever is unfair should be considered as a topic of interest, not brushed aside as if only fools concern themselves with fairness.

I do happen to think it's possible to fix most unfair conditions - especially when we work together. Whatever really can't be changed can be worked around.

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Another big hint, which I'll spend the rest of this post on...

Fairness may be related to entropy, which at most scales tends to increase over time. (To recap what we learn in chemistry class too fast, and I'm sorry but hopefully this is enough of a refresher for the purpose: The sun is a huge "organized" not-so-entropic pile of stuff that fell together - in some ways that falling together under gravity is apparently a decrease of entropy, where "entropy" could mean approximately "disorganized" or better yet "freely scattered" or "independent." But because of all that stuff falling inward in a way that looks "organized," the sun will burn and eventually burn out, having shed energy in all directions for billions of years. Throwing light everywhere evenly - and at the highest possible speed, right? lightspeed - is "disorganized" or "freely scattered" or "independent" compared to having everything in a heap or ball. So anyway, with the sun, matter fell together - less spatial entropy, less freedom to be in many places - but in doing so managed to radiate/splatter pure energy in all directions - producing much more entropy, specifically a net increase of entropy, kind of like profits for the work and after the costs of doing business. So entropy is served. And the idea I'm working from here is that light gradually, efficiently flowing all over space is not only more entropic but also "fairer" than fuel stuck in one place.) If that link holds, there may be some reason to believe that the universe - specifically the 2nd law of thermodynamics that says entropy tends to increase - "wants" systems to develop greater fairness wherever possible, and reason to believe that our experiences and activity make up part of that gradual movement. An inner wish for fairness may be part of the universe's tendency toward entropy. But fairness can get complicated, so the kind we're talking about doesn't happen by itself; it takes conscious, intelligent application. We are part of the universe, and some things that happen in the universe happen - or don't - because of us.

Yes matter falling together drives the sun and the entropic scattering of light. But if there isn't enough matter falling together, that doesn't happen.

Yes humans can think about how we interact and create fairer systems, but if we don't put in the effort, that won't happen.

Like the sun, we have an informational-energetic purpose.

Part of our purpose, I would argue, is creating the kind of fairness we sense the absence of - which sensing and fixing takes the kind of mental ability humans have.

A key to fairness is that it's actually a game concept. Something is only fair with reference to certain categories, rules, and expectations. Without those categories, rules, and expectations, "fair" doesn't really compute. (By this way of thinking, law is a game - which may seem objectionable until you realize that every jurisdiction and every state has its own set of rules, and these are - or should be - balanced and adjusted for fairness like the ruleset of a game made for entertainment or art. The level of seriousness and life-and-death is very different, but we're talking about the same larger category of thing: a ruleset for human/sentient interaction.)

Many people think fairness doesn't exist, is imaginary, is an ideal. I'd say that actually it is a ludic concept - a concept rooted in games, participants, virtuality, categories, and information itself.

In other words, it's real when you get to information theory and considerations of entropy.

From a game design standpoint, a desirably well-balanced game is fair - or at least fairer - and more fun - and will consequently encourage the most participation. (Nobody except exploiters - and maybe sometimes game designers and playtesters, for the R&D - likes to play an unfair or broken game. Players tend to quit when they realize a game is unfair or broken. Citizens facing an unfair society can behave similarly for similar reasons, as we know.) And curiously enough, a game with full participation from more participants also happens to be more entropic - the players are freer individually to choose their roles and approaches, and also freer to trade places. Those extra degrees of freedom bring measurable entropy. And this is much like how a scuba tank with O2 molecules evenly mixed and distributed throughout via their "exploration" of the space is more entropic (and "fairer") than a scuba tank with O2 molecules clumped up somewhere, barely moving because they're frozen or trapped. Nature "wants" participation. The drive toward entropy is also a drive toward fairness and inclusion.

The desire for freedom itself is, if you ask me, part of nature's drive toward entropy, fairness, and inclusion, and this is the basis for human rights.

Games that are fair and participatory please us. I'd say this is because they help entropy along, and on some level we have evolved to sense this. A fair group is a sustainable group is a group that'll go through energy in the way that produces the most entropy efficiently over the longest time. (Eating enough - but not too much - also helps entropy along. It's the same with other healthy instincts when they're working - in each case, it's easy to see how they help entropy along.)

So. Want to solve big social problems? Get more people to work on that. Want more people working on that? For one thing, get more people voting. Want more people to vote? Make voting and government fairer. It seems to be "what nature wants." But we are part of nature, and sometimes it's on us.

I don't like the word "neurodivergent." There's a need for it I won't dispute. But it's 5 syllables, a mouthful for something ubiquitous (note: even longer than the word "ubiquitous," which is already a puffy way to say "prevalent" or "everywhere" or "widespread" or "common").

Worse than any of that, the opposite of "neurodivergent" is "neurotypical," an even more prevalent condition that's given a supremely dismissive name. Does anyone ever say "neurotypical" without a note of contempt, or at least frustration? I'm not sure I've ever heard it if so.

It makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to be branding normal people with this five-dollar smack talk.

It's fine. I think the words are relatively harmless and sometimes, as I said, necessary.

But how about calling normal people "normal"? And how about calling eccentric people "eccentric"? We don't need to medicalize it, and if we do we don't need to make it sound so weird.

"Neurodivergent" gives an air of authority, like many overlong words.

"Neurotypical" is dismissive not least because a person without ADHD is not "neurotypical" but rather "non-ADHD." We don't know what they might have or be.

If I were writing slang for a sci-fi story, I'd use "reg" for "neurotypical" and "diff" for "neurodivergent."

There's this basic principle I think about a lot, and if it has a name, I don't know what it is. However, others have definitely thought about it. Under various guises, it's known to everyone. But it's actually one underlying principle.

For lack of a better phrase, I'll call it "the category multiplier." (This is in reference to Immanuel Kant's version of it, which he called "the categorical imperative." Maybe my thought is exactly the same, but I think it's more detailed.)

If you act a certain way - driving a car that pollutes more than is necessary - eating meat like most everyone else - treating people who look a certain way with suspicion - expecting everyone who wants a job to manually supply a large quantity of personal information for every single application and go out of their way to get references and transcripts - it may be socially acceptable, understandable, normal, or "not that bad" in each instance. But when you take a step back and look at what happens as a result, take a long, hard, honest look at the result of that policy, you may realize that it's unfair and it's shit and it hurts.

Kant called that the categorical imperative, and he claimed it was the single most important rule for ethics. Since then, that has been much disputed, and it isn't difficult to see why. Under his formulation, which basically says "behave in a way that would be the best way if everyone behaved that way" or "follow the rule that would be the best rule if everyone followed it," you run into (in my limited understanding) two immediate problems. First, you'll never get uniformity, and is that even what we want? I don't think we want everyone acting the same. Variety and diversity are why life continues to prosper, actually. Second, any time you use rules, you categorize people/situations, and any time you categorize, you get a loss of information. That is, no two cases of blindness have ever been the same. No two children are the same. No two roads are the same. When you operate according to categories, you are necessarily losing detail, and sometimes that detail makes all the difference.

All I want to point out here is that there *is* an idea at work. There's how we act. And there's what happens if lots and lots of people act approximately that way and for approximately that reason. I'm calling that the category multiplier. It matters.

The category multiplier is what makes voting meaningful even though your vote typically makes no difference.

The category multiplier is why profiling Muslims and Arabs at the airport is unfair - and would even remain unfair to those individuals if it did manage to statistically save lives (which I'm not saying it would).

The category multiplier is involved in the Tragedy of the Commons (spoiling of public lands and resources) and the Jevons paradox (eg, advances in lightbulb efficiency or gas mileage don't seem to help, because it becomes more economical to be wasteful).

It's how you know that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" will get overly normative and then exclusionary and toxic.

It highlights that not only can individual efforts add up, multiply, and take on a group life of their own, but so can seemingly normal, convenient, and harmless simplifications and shortcuts and other oversights, which may become monstrous in aggregate.

At the same time, it helps explain how like-enough-minded individuals find each other to collaborate. Concepts have a sort of gravity and people align and gather around them.

It's sadly why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Maybe I'm putting too much under the spell of one phrase, but it seems to me that all of these are nonlinear, macro results from the use of categories by humans (on the micro level of their individual lives and daily decisions).

Benefits and costs scale in weird ways.

It's integral calculus applied to humans, in a sense.

And actually that's what the game that I've been working on for 10 years is about. It's an attempt to teach that idea in a variety of ways players can really feel and intuit.