You Only See What You Believe

In the early 1980's, Japanese car makers were beginning to consistently outperform their American counterparts. One fine day, an American company decided to send a few of its top executives to Japan, to find out exactly what the Japanese were up to. The factory plant that was shown shocked them. There were no inventories. When they came back, one executive remarked, "They staged that plant".

We now know that isn't true. The Americans saw, in operation, what came to be known as "Just-In-Time", a marvel of cutting-edge industrial engineering. But there is a bigger question. Why couldn't those executives believe what they saw?

Avoiding conspiracy theories since this isn't dinner table conversation, I think it's only one of those rare times when you just can't believe what you see. In other words, you believe perception is not true. That goes head-on against Carvaka philosophy, which deems perception the highest source of knowledge. But, I think the Carvakas missed an important element of the equation. I think the Carvaka perception isn't really what is in our minds, it's the inference from it. The Carvakas conveniently reject inference as a source of true knowledge. One could never be too sure, they say.

I think that broken link between what we see and what we think we see is presupposition. Human beings are born without blinkers. Out of 90% of children with genius-level intelligence, only 10% retain it till they're 13. Only 2% retain it till they're 21. With every learning comes a restriction. When we open new doors, we close a few as well. There are innumerous examples in medical science where new avenues are not even considered since the old alleys are doing just fine. What we don't know, however, is that there could be way to avoid the drowsiness that comes free with my cough syrup. But as long as I don't cough anymore, one wouldn't really mind. That is where the we bring in the blinkers. The Americans never believed there was any way possible to minimize inventory costs more than they already had. They never believed that there could be a way to eliminate inventory altogether.

In other words, I think it's quite the other way round. You only see what you believe. This shakes the entire "Existence of God" debate in my mind. In fact, so many other debates. Wanderlust.