Welcome to As-If
Beliefs: Hold them Lightly. Test them daily. Upgrade them continually.
This is As If, where we will knead the dough of doubt and bake the bread of broadmindedness. And if a slab of certainty appears on the table, as it will, we’ll carve it up for picnic sandwiches.
I’m a meaning-thirsty preschooler disguised as a Boomer. I never stopped asking questions or marveling at the boundless strangeness and beauty of existence. I want to understand what I am, what you are, and what our shared circumstance (everything else) is. Join me in some of my meaning-tracking excursions.
What to Expect
Frequency: Expect an article at least monthly, but usually weekly.
Topics: My fascinations include psychology (emotions, perception, memory, sense-making, meaning-making), social behavior, how and why stories work (or don’t), evolutionary topics, and a basketful of topics generally considered philosophy (existence and its challenges, meaning, reality, subjective experience, etc.). I also explore various scientific topics, the built environment, technology, and the metacrisis/polycrisis. I’m likely to reflect on what I’m reading, watching, and listening to, especially when I sense meaningful connections within and among them and with my core interests.
Lens: As the newsletter’s name suggests, I aim to maintain a provisional posture with respect to any knowledge claim — make claims earn their place. We’re pelted with propositions about what’s real and what’s important from every angle. What to believe? Fortunately, we can simply ignore most of them. And when we do embrace beliefs, we are wise to hold them lightly, test them frequently, and amend or retire them when they stop aligning with attentive experience and best available information.
Provisional thinking means
being choosy about which claims to expend effort considering
some (most?) claims are simply noise and don’t earn our focus
rapid-fire, hyperbolic claims are often tactical deceptions (the real topic of interest is where they are not pointing)
the one making the claim owns the burden to
convince me I need to pay attention
provide evidence; we (usually) don’t need to disprove it
prove their and their sources’ relevant authority
accepting that we aren’t obligated to believe or dismiss anything that isn’t relevant to our needs, wants, nature, or verified circumstances
maybe it’s so / maybe it’s not — poke it and see — and if it is, so what?
Why ‘As If’?
As-if thinking is a specific application of provisional thinking. We can apply as-if thinking to knowledge claims we want to experiment with. (Remember, we’re still ignoring the other ones.) We test a claim by imagining (thought experiment) or acting (behavioral experiment) as if it were true, while never taking it as a certainty and resolved to drop it if it doesn’t prove itself.
About Me
I grew up in the southeastern United States in the 1960s and 1970s, spending as much time as I could exploring the outdoors, reading, drawing, and imagining alternate realities. After undergraduate studies and marrying a Kentuckian, I spent 20 years of active service in the Air Force, which took us to seven states and two other countries. We settled in New Mexico for another 14.5 years in Civil Service. Most of my 34+ total Air Force time was in information technology management and knowledge management. Since retiring, in 2021, we’ve been back in the Southeast, reconnecting with relatives. It’s probably not our last stop.
My academic journey focused on psychology, natural sciences, and philosophy (undergraduate); systems science, information resource management, and military science (master’s level); and computing technology in education (specialist and doctorate).
I also write fiction, hike, and am learning Spanish.