#pattern matching

By: Angel Eduardo

Published: Sep 12, 2022

Once, when I was home sick from school, I noticed something odd: none of what was on TV was meant for me. The programming was either cartoons for kids under four or talk shows and soap operas for adults way older than me. I wasn’t the target audience for the advertising, which allowed me for the first time to observe things more critically. I began to see the ways bright colors, an ebullient announcer’s voice, and fast and flashy editing were being used to get young kids to want this or that toy. I saw the different ways those same tools and tactics were employed when trying to get adults to want products that I, being about ten, couldn’t have cared less about.

Something cracked open in my mind that day, and I could never close it again. Whenever I watched TV from that point on, I couldn’t help but notice the ways I was being influenced. I wasn’t totally immune to it—I still wanted all the toys and gadgets other kids wanted—but I did start to recognize the subtle manipulations being used to hijack my thoughts and desires, and I began to resent them.

This was the beginning of my skepticism.

In the years that followed, I called out lies and inconsistencies in my parents, teachers, and peers with increasing confidence and indignation. I questioned every fact I was told, every rule I was expected to follow, and every norm I was meant to hold sacred. I also actively sought out people and art that did the same thing: George Carlin; Rage Against the Machine; Fight Club. And it was good for me. My skepticism allowed me to abandon my religious upbringing. It gave me the ability to recognize the oversimplified history I was taught in school. It got me to see the ways our systems often worked against our interests despite being designed to help us.

My skepticism opened my mind, and I became addicted to it. Anything that defied convention, anything that flouted authority, anything that exposed a hidden reality that “they” didn’t want me to know, I took to like a moth to a flame. I use that cliché intentionally, because the very same fire that had set me alight when I was a kid ended up burning me as a young adult. See I didn’t just question authority, I rejected it entirely. I didn’t just keep an eye out for bullshit, I actively wanted there to be bullshit. Rather than make me a true skeptic, this tendency made me credulous—more credulous, even, than many of those I scoffed at for “believing what they’re told.” I saw Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and accepted everything without question. I read Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code and thought it was revealing real secrets, despite the disclaimer on the very first page noting that it was a work of fiction. I was hopelessly drawn to “secret knowledge” and “hidden truths,” to the point where I ignored and avoided evidence against my suspicions—even if they were staring me in the face.

It took seeing a more extreme version of who I’d become to finally shake me awake. One night, a group of friends and I watched the 2007 movie Zeitgeist. It was broken into three parts, the first of which seemed almost tailor made for me. It railed against religion and religious belief, using clips from George Carlin routines to bolster its criticisms of Christianity and dispute the historicity of Jesus. The second part, though, focused on September 11, 2001, and asserted that it was either orchestrated or allowed to happen to justify the War on Terror. I was willing to believe that political opportunists took advantage of the attack for their own gain, but I struggled with Zeitgeist’s portrayal, which went much further. I lived just over the river from New York City. I knew people whose family members died that day, and I had trouble believing anybody would or could—in the case of the comically inept Bush administration—intentionally manufacture or allow such a thing, no matter how much they stood to benefit.

Despite this, it was really the third part of the film—which all but advised viewers not to pay their taxes and alleged that the Federal Reserve System is run by international bankers who have orchestrated global disasters to further their nefarious agenda—which lost me completely. It all seemed too insane, too convoluted, too convenient. And I’m grateful that it did. Something cracked open in my mind again when I sat through that movie. I started to see more clearly the way it used its music, editing, structure, and even appeals to authority (with the inclusion of Carlin, one of my counterculture heroes) to influence me. This was just another version of the daytime television I’d learned to see through as a kid. The movie was giving me something I wanted—rebellion, secret knowledge, a reason to be angry and cynical—and using that desire to do to me what it wanted.

I went home that night disgusted, both with the movie and myself. I had been duped, and worse, I’d been duping myself for years. I suddenly saw all the signs I’d ignored: the disclaimer at the beginning of The DaVinci Code; the things Fahrenheit 9/11 clearly exaggerated or got wrong; the ways Rage Against the Machine oversimplified much more complex realities. I realized that all this time I hadn’t really been skeptical at all, because I had never stopped to be skeptical of myself. It finally struck me just how wrong I’d been about everything despite my unshakable confidence, and I was humbled by it.

Skepticism is a valuable thing, and self-skepticism is probably its most critical manifestation. We are hard-wired for pattern seeking and pattern making. It’s an ability that has brought us great fortune, but which misfires far more than we often like to admit. In the realm of empirical knowledge, we’re fortunate enough to have devised science as a tool to mitigate our subjectivity. But in the social and interpersonal arena, where mere data can’t hold the kind of sway that a good story does, humility is the thing we really need to help see us through.

As a result of my misadventures, I’ve come to develop a near-physical aversion to certainty. The moment I think I’ve got something or someone figured out, I stop, consider all the possible ways I could be misunderstanding, and proceed with that caution in mind. It’s been long enough now that, when I see the colossal levels of smugness and condescension some people have—particularly online—I can barely fathom their bravado. At this point, I’m all too aware of how easy it is for us to fall into old habits and patterns of thought, to think we’re too smart to be taken for a ride, and for that to be the very reason we get taken completely.

From conspiracy theories to mistrust of others to denying objective reality, there’s no limit to what we can convince ourselves of if we aren’t careful, no matter how smart we are. Some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known have also been the ones who succumbed to the most ludicrous ideas I’ve ever heard. I’m trying my best to constantly check myself and avoid being one of them. I’d advise everyone reading this to do the same—especially if you’re smirking right now thinking, “I’d never fall for any of that.”

Are you sure? I was.

==

Habjah on Etsy.

My mom likes flexing her pattern matching skills.

#FallforCostume Day 22: Stripes

Welcome to pattern matching hell where we bring you offset windowpane plaids that are not symmetrical in all directions! 😂😭

This was a 19th century wool waistcoat project for one of my costume construction classes in college that taught me some basic skills in tailoring, but sewing was frankly the easy part in comparison. It felt like I spent way more time in the cutting stage than I did actually constructing it. A lot of marking up my patterns, staring endlessly at the plaid, and swear words contributed to this project 😂

Default values can be used now in all modern JS environments like so:

function greet(name = '') { return 'Hello ' + name; } console.log(greet('Phil')); // Hello Phil console.log(greet()); // Hello

Though what is not often known is that these do not have to be primitive values like strings, they can be objects to. So default property settings are also useful for large objects. Which is useful for complex functions which take objects as configuration:

function createMessage(config = { type: 'default', name: 'Person', date: new Date(), }) { let message = ''; if (config.type === 'default') { message = `Hello, ${config.name}. You have received a package on ${config.date}.`; } else if (config.type === 'warning') { message = `${config.name}, a package has been in storage since ${config.date}, `; message += 'and will be sent back to sender in 1 day.' } return message; } console.log(createMessage()); // Hello, Person. You have received a package on <NOW>. console.log(createMessage({ type: 'warning', name: 'Phil', date: new Date('2019-01-27T08:00:00'), })); // Phil, a package has been in storage since Sun Jan 27 2019 08:00:00 GMT-0500 (EST), // and will be returned in 1 day.