Appearance vs Reality

Introduction

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams describes the alien race the Golgafrinchans as being divided into 3 groups. The first group - the leaders/thinkers - is composed of artists, engineers, scientists. The second group, the workers, actually did and made things. And the third group are the middle managers, hairdressers, telephone sanitisers etc.

The leaders convinced the third group that their planet will be imminently destroyed (many conflicting reasons are given for this), and are made to travel to Earth with the other groups promising to catch up with them.

Eventually their ship crashed onto Earth, and they managed to wipe out the early hut dwelling humans.

This means that humanity are descended from the third group.

The protagonists of the story come to see their progress, and find that after months they still haven't invented the wheel because they haven't decided what colour it should be. They haven't created fire since they haven't established how consumers relate to it yet.

In the meantime, the rest of the Golgafrinchans live long and prosperous lives, until they all die by disease because they don't have any telephone sanitisers.

This is all tongue in cheek of course, but I don't think it's too far off.

I divide people and organisations like this:

1. Concerned with reality.
2. Concerned on appearance.

By appearance I don't mean how something looks. I mean a concern for how things seem to others rather than how they actually are.

I'm not referring to Kant's noumenal and phenomenal, although they are related concepts.

I'll illustrate with a few examples.

First, let's deal with companies.

Companies

A company primarily concerned with appearance, if you remove all of the packaging, doesn't actually offer anything "new". Technologically, there is nothing impressive. There's nothing you could do with the product that you couldn't do with some other product. But that doesn't stop their marketing department. They're the kind of company that are very brand focused. Their marketing team has a lot of work to do, because they don't actually have a good product.

A reality focused company, on the other hand, is technologically leaps and bounds ahead of any other company. Whilst everyone else is selling charriots with different colours, they're making cars. Their marketing department doesn't have to work very hard, but these companies don't care about marketing.

Organisations

Companies are just one sort of organisation that can be described like this. But so can charities, schools, governments, activist groups, and clubs.

A reality focused charity is pretty boring. They're more into accounting and research to give the most moral bang for the least buck. Rather than give someone a good photo and story to talk about, they will effectively do the most good. An appearance focused charity will try to guilt trip you into donating, typically by giving you individual stories. But when you try to follow the money, you realise that the money that isn't paid to management, doesn't actually help that many people that much.

An appearance focused school would try to game their stats by manipulating their admissions to ensure that the average grades look good, and focus on people passing exams, rather than focusing on getting better at helping people learn.

In their meetings, the actual substance they pretend to offer is almost never discussed. School boards won't discuss how they can help students who are having a hard time with the subject. Appearance concerned charities won't discuss how they can help more people.

People

I think that people can be described in this way too. For instance, an engineer tends to be more reality focused, and a salseman is usually more appearance focused.

People into gossip would be more appearance concerned in this framework, and people who are into science, or philosophy, or engineering, are reality concerned.

Now if someone finds themselves having to deal with appearance focused things to achieve some goal, I don't think that makes them appearanced concerned people. They have to care about it for its own sake.

However, if someone often finds themselves doing appearance focused things but gives reality focused justifications, I think that they most likely are actually appearance concerned. It's unlikely that people are disciplined and effective at being appearance concerned despite not really being concerned about it, whilst having a hard time submitting essays on time or working out even though they understand it's important.

The distinction between interest in people vs things in the psychologocial literature is quite similar to what I mean here. However, it's not quite the same.

It's about how much someone operates in reality rather than being in a reality distorion field. Someone could score really highly in interest in people, yet care deeply about how a product actually helps someone. And someone could be less interested in people (but more than your average autistic programmer), and cares more about the branding of a product.

This is all a sliding scale, from people who seem to have no concern about what's actually real unless they're told to step off a tall building and not believe in gravity, to people that live in caves and don't care what others think, to everything in between.

More Examples

What about designers? Or artists? Or athletes? Or preachers?

I think that a large percentage of design is reality concerned. Especially User Experience design, and a lot of User Interface design. A big chunk of design is functional. In the same way that making a handle easy for a human hand to move is functional, making something a colour that humans can distinguish is also functional, it's a salient fact about reality.

There is a difference between making a button that people can see, and pretending that a red chariot is going to change transportation.

However, a big part of design is also about appearance. About current fashion. I think that design as a field accomodates both sorts of personalities, and that a designer has to not be in any extreme end of the spectrum.

What about artists? Whilst Da Vinci strikes me as a highly scientifically inquisitive person, most artists don't seem interested in reality. Under my categorisation scheme, most of them would be pretty appearance concerned.

Athletes, I can imagine talented atheletes on both sides of the spectrum. I think that they would have to be more on the reality side because how they perform has nothing to do with what they say or believe. You can't bullshit your way into running a 100 metres in under 10 seconds.

What about preachers? I think that 90% of what they do is work a crowd and make shit up, and the other 10% is sleep. On the other hand, theologians would be reality concerned, just bad at it. The same is true of most philosophers. If someone is religious, their justification will show whether they're reality concerned or appearance concerned. If they say something about how they feel, or how they think religion is needed for society, or it's metaphorical but has deeper truths then they're appearance concerned. If, on the other hand, they give arguments for why God exists, even if they're bad ones, then they are reality concerned.

Why Does This Exist?

In game theory, there are situations where agents have different information. Not only do they know different things about the situation, but they know different things about what they each know.

If I know that there is food, and I know that you know there is food, and I know that you know that I know about the food, then if I eat the food you will think I have cheated you. And a good way to respond to that is to retalliate. So I should avoid eating the food when you know about it.

However, if you don't know about the food, and I know that you don't know, then if I eat it you won't know that I have defected against you, so you won't retalliate. That way I get the food and I don't get harmed by you.

This is why it's handy not just to know things, but to know what others know.

That's also why it's useful to decieve. And it can even be useful to self decieve - it makes it easier to decieve others.

It can also be useful to skip the costly proccess of finding things out by relying on what trusted people say. And so it pays to maintain networks of trusted individuals. It pays to be on this list, and to care about what others are saying is doing to affect this.

It's also useful to try to find out what's actually happening, regardless of what people think. It means you can make good decisions, and can notice when someone is trying to decieve you. Bobby Fischer, a chess world champion, famously said:

"I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves"

And Akiba Rubinstein, when asked who he was playing, said that he is playing against the black pieces.

Is It Bad To Be Appearance Concerned?

By now I've probably made appearance concerned entities seem worse than reality concerned ones. But I want to avoid the common mistake philosophers make of assuming that people that aren't like me are worse.

The answer depends on whether we're talking about companies, societies, organisations, or people.

In the case of people, a person can't actually change whether or not they're concerned with appearance or reality. They can change how they act, but then they'll be acting in a way that is not aligned with their own wishes. I don't think it's harming anyone if someone is appearance focused, and I don't think they can change it.

I don't think everyone's goal in life should be to become an encyclopedia containing as many true facts as possible, or servants to the rest of humanity. I think that our own goals are valid to pursue as long as they don't harm others. In fact, I think that it is a good thing when we pursue our goals.

If someone wants to watch lots of movies, then that isn't a bad thing. And if someone wants to be liked by their peers, then good for them.

Highly appearance concerned people can be frustrating for me to deal with. If what they say has nothing to deal with reality, I can't trust anything that they say. I have to do a lot more fact checking than usual. Being with someone who, either through deliberate dishonesty or complete disregard for reality, constantly tells you things that are untrue, if you act on what they say, could lead you astray.

But most people who are more towards the appearance side of the spectrum are not that bad.

Reality based humans aren't all good either. Presumably assassains are reality concerned. As are people who engineer weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of people are primarily concerned with reality, but not very good at it. E.g, theologians. If you're concerned by reality but bad at it, and situated in the right place, you can be responsible for a serious waste of human effort and time and resources, and bring humanity back in a way that being appearance focused wouldn't be.

With companies, on the other hand, it's almost always worse to be primarily appearance concerned. Those kind of companies are a net negative. They trick people into forking over their money. They don't provide anything worthwhile in return.

The same is the case with organisations and societies. They don't deliver on any of their promises, they just waste the time and money of millions of people.

If the company is a fashion company, then they will be unavoidably appearance focused, but that's ok. In this case they are giving people what they want and making them happier. Most of the time, on the other hand, being an appearance focused company is bad.

What About Marketing

I don't like most marketing and sales, but it's not all bad.

Not all marketing and sales is about deceptively manipulating appearance.

There are products where, if people knew more, they would see that buying them is actually a good idea. Marketing that focuses on this works by communicating salient facts about reality.

On the other hand, there are products where, if the customer knew more, they would not actually want to buy it. Marketing this sort of product involves drip-feeding just the right facts and lies to convince people to buy it.

Sometimes these are the same product and it's the people that are different. Whilst marketing is more on the appearance side of the spectrum, it can be reality focused. However, the way the incentive structure is set up tends to reward being appearance focused.

A company that was completely focused on reality is unlikely to be discovered and make any money. And a company that is completely focused on appearance, well, could actually make a good chunk of change unfortunately because many people are too willing to hand over their money, but it's not fulfilling and eventually it becomes too difficult to persuade people that your chariot is better than cars.

Is the ideal somewhere in the middle? No. It's pretty close to 100% reality focused, with just enough focus on appearance to ensure that it does not fade in obscurity.

If you start from 100% appearance focused and keep making it more reality focused, it takes a very long time before making something more reality focused makes it get worse. On the other hand, if you start from 100% reality focused and make it 95% appearance focused, then any further focus on appearance makes it worse.

Would you rather have a hospital that was actually better, or "looked" better by gaming metrics, e.g by not admitting many patients so that it looks like it has a good recovery rate and wait time?

What About Society?

A completely appearance focused society is a horror story that everyone is too blind to see. Infant morality rates are through the roof. Small injuries are fatal. Everyone is starving. There is no technology to make things better. There are just prayers and other bullshit. No one recognises the discoveries of the reality focused. Often it's portrayed as sacriledge.

Advancement mostly comes from loosening the focus on appearance and letting the reality focused do their thing.

Often focusing on appearance can be practical. However, a big reason for this is that it's only because other people are focused on it. Gatekeepers exist, which makes focusing on appearance practical. And when these gatekeepers are overly appearance focused, and sufficiently important, others must also focus on apperance.

What To Do With This

As you can probably tell, I'm from the reality focused side of the spectrum. I have difficulty communicating with people on the appearance side, because our priorities and concerns are so alien to each other. I don't have much in the way of advice for what to do on either side of the spectrum, but I think that this way of looking at things can identify points of friction when communicating. I think it's also a useful way of looking at organisations and companies.

One area of interpersonal interaction that I find challenging is dealing with people with fundamentally different interests.

Merely different interests is not that difficult. If I am talking to someone that is interested in gardening, for example, then even though I am not interested enough in gardening to give it a go, I can ask them about their techniques and goals. Just because I am not interested in doing something, doesn't mean I am not interested in talking about it.

But what should I do when I'm not even interested in talking about it?

A lot of my interests are like that, and generally what I do is not talk about the things people probably don't want to talk about, and try to focus on areas we are mutually interested in talking about.

But when talking to someone on the opposite side of the reality/appearance side of the spectrum, there is very little overlap in interests that either of us would like to talk about. There is very little in what interests them that I care about, and vice-versa.

So how should I, and they, proceed in this situation? In practice, we notice our interactions with each other aren't very fulfilling, and interact with people that we find more interesting.

But this advice doesn't deal with lots of cases where this doesn't work. Where either you can't stop interacting with them, or you want the interaction to go well.

Another solution is lying. Pretend that you are interested in it. But, morality aside, that's not satisfying either. It's not like pretending to be a millionaire, you're pretending to be a normal person that's interested in things you find incredibly boring. And you have to keep that up for however long your continued interaction lasts.

But, if my framework of looking at things is correct, then another solution is finding that small venn-diagram overlap. The contours of their reality focused interest. Where you stay away from quantum mechanics and compiler theory, and talk about something like business or cooking. You can talk about the same thing but appreciate different parts of it.

I came up with this scheme doing what philsophers do rather than using good psychometric techniques, so this way of talking about things is scientifically unfounded and may not actually be a good way of talking about things. However, it is something that I notice all the time, and seems like it's an area worth exploring. Is working at a reality focused company actually more fulfilling than an appearanced based one? If so, are there common charisteristics that can be used to identify them? How should we interact with people at either side of this spectrum?