Have you ever come across one of those words that everyone uses but you’re not really sure anyone knows what it means? Cognitive Dissonance is the one that comes to mind for me this morning. Cognitive, something to do with the brain, or understanding, probably thinking right? Cognition - the process of recognizing or understanding? (My guesses, I haven’t looked it up. If you know definitively while you read this, +2 bonus points). But Dissonance? Conflict? I think Dissonant? Like two sounds not harmonizing. The opposite of harmony. Struggle? Disagreement? So Cognitive Dissonance - when your thinking disagrees with itself? And is this like a spat? or an all out argument? Are we talking, I went to Canes to get a snack and I didn’t call you or text you and ask if you wanted anything, or is this, you slept with my best friend kind of row?
I struggle with terms that label but don’t explain. And lately, I have been attuned to the terminology that makes understanding worse. At present, I’m thinking of circulating a petition to remove the labeling from most psychologists and neuroscience. Take the term “degeneracy.” What does that sound like? Degenerate. Who wants to be a degenerate? When something degrades, it loses capability. What is a degenerate neuron? One that sounds like a wayward youth that hasn’t learned about consequences and should spend some time in juvenile detention. But no… it means multi-purpose. It can do more than one thing. That sounds really useful, but the filter bubble of scientists who named that picked a word which teaches away from its idea.
Which reminds me of the coding philosophy of an engineer I used to work with. He never commented his code because he said, and I quote, “If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand.”
So in that spirit, I tip my hat to those who label, not as a way to be clear, or elucidate, or make plain, but to create a boundary of knowing. Those of us on the outside, vs those on the inside. If you thought you were doing this to educate and illuminate, please let your Cognitive Dissonance shine! (but tip of the hat to astronomers. Those guys should be responsible for labeling everything. Gas Giant. Red Dwarf. Black hole. You guys win the “let’s make it clear” award, and God bless you for it).
Today’s prompt: Ask your AI to explain Cognitive Dissonance. Ask it to give you the meaning of each word individually, and then together. But if you really want to have some fun, ask it to engage in a snark filled tirade against the scientific naming of things. I know I enjoyed it when I did that.