Binary Thought

I'm a geek and I have great appreciation for the alacrity of binary logic. Every response is a 1 or a 0, yes or no, true or false, right or wrong. Unfortunately for the real world life is not binary. Infinity exists between 0 and 1, and "maybe" can answer more questions more completely than all of the other one-word responses above combined.

As a people, however, we prefer binary. We use almost exclusively. This is not for appreciation of the Socratic method which employed binary logic to deliberately yield absurd results (like valor is evil), but for ignorance of its demonstration of binary logic's fallacy.

Considering how old this logical constraint is, I am tempted to say that it is part of human nature. We seek to explain things by reducing even complex problems to a series of binary questions and answers. Binary thinking does remarkably well in fields like science: "What happens if I do the same thing but raise the temperature by 10 degrees C?" It isn't so good when it comes to things like health care reform, which seems to play out as free market or socialism, no matter what the actual reform proposed is or what the status quo is.

Testing is [almost] always binary. Multiple choice is no less binary than true/false, it just has different probabilities of a random choice being correct. Even less inherently binary testing like short answer or essay often boil down to a series of binary responses: you get 2 points for including this bit, 3 for this other, 5 for the big one, and maybe another point for spelling/grammar/complete sentences.

Binary thought is not necessarily simple. It's root is to hold on to one thought and compare another. The better answer between those two is then compared with a third and so on. Awareness of complexity means that after checking and finding '[a < b < c]' we would have to check a vs c and if we find that c < a we have a problem. The continuation is to determine the quality of the various less and greater than's in similar one to one comparison. This is the equivalent of making a list of advantages and disadvantages. The length of the list is important, but there is quality assigned to each as well. All of this can produce very complex logic, that is binary in its base nature.

It seems to me that things are too often reduced from the complex expanded binary problem to the simple binary question. This is particularly true in politics and on television where sensationalism and soundbites are the standard operating practice. I don't know that our attention spans have actually shortened as much as it has been that the arrival of abbreviated media, specifically computers and the internet, that has made it easier for us to demand quick definite responses. I don't deny that science has played a part in this. People expect answers to questions, particularly science questions e.g. those concerning global warming. We believe that there is an answer to anything and when that answer is less than clear, then many people become frustrated to the point that they can even believe false answers (global warming doesn't exist), or at least believe that people are hiding the real answers for some devious reason.

Binary thinking is perfectly acceptable so long as people are aware of the underlying complexity. Expecting simple answers to complex questions/problems is bad, and has become more apparent if not more common.