you are wrong!

the story of interpretation and reinterpretation, 12 Apr 2019

Have you ever known a man who blames a woman for giving false impression on him after giving chocolate on last valentine’s day? The man thinks that the woman is interested in him because of the gift on valentine’s day. Have you ever been so excited after looking at a X% cashback promotion banner only then to come up disappointed after finding out that the amount is limited to certain threshold. These are examples of misinterpretation. In other words, I would say that this is an example of being fooled/lied by ourselves. Without understanding, we might never know how many times we are fooled by ourselves; which might be more than lies from other people. Interpretation and reinterpretation are common to everyday life. Understanding this might help us treat our own interpretation better to achieve better results in the future.

We keep interpreting, then reinterpreting, any information that we receive. The way people do this also differs between each other. So, which one is true? I definitely don’t know. Chances are one of them could be true or both are wrong; clearly impossible for both to be true. However, deciding which one is true is not the goal of this writing. The goal is to gain understanding about ourselves, preventing being fooled by ourselves.

Interpretation is our self-conclusion regarding a fact existing around us. Our way of interpreting depends on our past interpretations and all information what we have, both past and current information (called model/pattern). This supports different interpretations among people. I would say that true interpretation only comes from complete information. Since, we, by ourselves, will never have complete information, we can’t achieve true interpretation. We might believe it’s true; but that doesn’t make it really true. Furthermore, combining interpretations of many people will certainly improve its quality because it is based on more information, though still incomplete. It is indeed better interpretation.

Now, let’s take a look back to the examples in the beginning. The fact the woman is not interested in him, even after giving him chocolate on last valentine, forces him to produce new interpretation. Now, he has new information: the woman is not interested in him. By connecting these ideas, he probably come up with new interpretation: giving him chocolate on valentine’s day doesn’t necessarily mean she’s interested. This new interpretation replacing the previous one is what we call reinterpretation. Now, let’s take a look at the second example. New information introduced is that the available cashback is limited only to certain threshold. This triggers reinterpretation that says having shown the percentage of cashback doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the only rule applicable to the promotion system. From these two examples, we can see that reinterpretation always produces good fruits. However, these two are simplistic example. These two reinterpretation only relies on one new information/fact. In reality, our way of reinterpretation could not only include new facts but also previous interpretation, which most probably wrong. Wrong previous interpretations combined with new information doesn’t guarantee that it will produce better interpretation. This might sound scary, but sounding scary doesn’t make it untrue. However, I think there are three steps that I believe could help us achieve better interpretation as time goes by.

First, we need to understand by heart that we are wrong. We have wrong interpretation simply because we have incomplete information. Knowing this will make it easier for us to be open to new information and interpretations from other people. Not knowing this or believing that we are always true will make us trapped and keep being fooled by ourselves.

Second, we need to isolate information and interpretation, both from our own or other people. Then, when we are doing reinterpretation, we should rely more on information than interpretation. The reason is simply because interpretation from others is also prone to errors just like us. Though interpretation from more experienced people could be given higher value to certain extent, that still doesn’t make it true.

Third, we ought to exercise this actively. We shouldn’t wait until reality struck for us to do reinterpretation. We can actively spend sometimes to pick one of our interpretation and ask ourselves a simple question, “What if I am wrong?” This simple question could trigger us to collect more information that could prove our interpretation wrong and produce reinterpretation. However, this is not necessarily easy as this requires humility. It’s not natural for human being to look for information proving his own belief wrong. We naturally select information that supports our own arguments. Yet, after knowing the benefits of active reinterpretation, we can intentionally defeat our own natural tendency.

These are all I can share with you about this topic for now. Let me know if you have new interpretation that could trigger my reinterpretation about this topic. You can write on the comments section below. I would highly appreciate your comments.