Let me start by saying that this essay will adopt a somewhat unconventional structure. I will state upfront my position on a matter and get toward that destination through a process of elimination. If that sounds like an ignorant student attempting to answer a multiple-choice question by a process of elimination because he is unsure, well yes — today, that student is me.

The topic for today is an individual’s capacity for change. This reminds me of an assignment that I did for my philosophy professor, Prof. James Yess, when we were discussing the topic of free will vs determinism. We were challenged with describing our position with six words, as a sort of homage to Hemingway’s six-word story. I wrote something along the lines of, “Freer — but not free — will exists.” My position here is that of a compatibilist, in short, I believe that individual agency can exist alongside determinism. As it relates to today’s topic, I believe that an individual should only be judged based on the things that they can reasonably change about themselves.

Let us begin by first unpacking the term “self”. We can think of the self from a first-person perspective: a physical body that can be moved by our volition and a conscious mind that thinks, imagines, and remembers, among many other mental actions. Between the false dichotomy of mind and body, we have senses that can receive and interpret external stimuli, feelings that can experience the greatest joy and deepest sadness, and beliefs that seem so deeply ingrained in ourselves that they seem like second nature. Then there are aspects of ourselves that we are often unaware of — the unconscious mind. Before we go through this laundry list to evaluate which elements of the self are more changeable, let us quickly discuss why we would consider changing ourselves in the first place.

If we lived in a world where we were the only human being, we probably did not need to change ourselves that much, with the exception of learning behaviors that prevent physical pain, increase sensorial pleasure and ensure survival by meeting our bodily needs. If we had an anger management problem in such a world, we may not be motivated to change because acting on it may not yield much negative impact. Perhaps we may hurt ourselves if we punched a rock — in which case we may change mainly to minimize pain, as mentioned earlier, but not to address the anger. Fortunately in our reality, no man is an island — we live in an interconnected society that is filled with rich social relationships, where individual acts can have social outcomes. Humans are social creatures and our relationships are very meaningful to us. Therefore, on top of the aforementioned reasons for change, we also try to prevent emotional pain and increase psychological wellness, not just on an individual level but expanded to a wider social dimension. The earlier example of an anger management issue would have more serious consequences due to the potential to harm others. The person would also be more pressured to change due to socioemotional mechanisms of guilt and shame. Many of our personal behavioral changes, therefore, can be traced to our desire to be good for our society.

Now, back to the laundry list – which of the previously stated aspects of the self are we more able to change? Alterations made to the body are commonplace in certain areas of the world and to specific groups of people. However, in general, it is something that is not easily changed. Procedures can be painful, expensive, and sometimes even endanger a person’s life. I guess this is why judging anyone based on how they look feels wrong. Next, the unconscious mind is usually out-of-reach to us unless we seek psychoanalytic intervention, which often requires professional help. It is important to note, however, that the psychoanalytic definition of the unconscious is still debated to this day. If we take the cognitive definition of the unconscious and extend it to the realm of implicit cognitive biases and heuristics (as pioneered by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky), we can counteract some of these automatic processes through conscious compensation. Therefore, we find ourselves in the realm of conscious thought and feeling, which includes sense perception, emotion (a.k.a. affect), cognition, and belief. By definition, we are aware of our consciousness, which makes it the most actively changeable aspect of our self relative to the previous two (i.e. body and unconscious).

We are aware of our sense perceptions, but they are generally unchanged by conscious thought. We can, however, compensate for perceptual illusions by being aware of them. Emotions, especially intense ones like anger and grief, can sometimes be felt viscerally, but they can be regulated through thought. Our emotions often come from our interpretation of certain events that occur in our life. The area of practical philosophy, which aims to aid people in living “wiser, more reflective lives,” has been a central part of philosophers’ work since Laozi and Socrates and likely predates them. Hence, even if we feel strongly about something that happened to us, we are able to respond in a measured way, sometimes by reframing the experience in different ways.

Cognition refers to the mental activities involved in acquiring knowledge and understanding. It can be strengthened through various thinking tools and approaches that we learn and then employ to solve problems and make decisions. It is probably one of the most changeable parts of our mind, as seen from the huge investments that societies around the world put into educating people, especially the young, to read, write and do arithmetic. Based on the World Bank’s figures, we spent around 4.53% of global GDP, equivalent to US$3.68 trillion ($3,682,348,740,000), on education in 2017. Generally speaking, someone who has a better understanding of how the world works should be able to behave in a way that benefits themselves and their society. They may also be in a position that helps them understand complex, strategic, and long-term decisions that require trade-offs, compromises, and short-term sacrifices. Therefore, learning — specifically the acquisition of knowledge and skills — remains to be a powerful force for both personal improvement and social mobility.

Writer’s note: I realized that this topic cannot be adequately discussed in a single 1000-word essay. Click here for part 2.

We communicate numbers as a natural part of our everyday lives. If someone tells me that they are 1.9 m (6’3”) tall, I know that they have a towering physique. If someone shows me a score of 200 on an IQ test, I may think, “she is either really smart or faking it… maybe both.” However, quantities are not created equal. While it is relatively straightforward to measure physical properties like height, the measurement of conceptual properties like intelligence is far more complicated. Oftentimes, we tend to accept both types of quantities as equally factual when that is not the case. Numbers tend to be communicated in a manner that makes them seem objective and truthful, causing us to be fooled in the process. Perhaps this Jedi mind trick is a by-product of a world where science is regarded as the best descriptor of objective reality. A claim seems more credible if it states a number or quotes some statistics. It comes as no surprise that the presented number is only as good as the methodology that the researcher used to derive it. A recent example of this abuse of numbers is the Texas Attorney General’s claim that Joe Biden’s win of four swing states has a probability of “less than a quadrillion to the fourth power”, which has since been refuted by mathematicians.

We use proxies to count the uncountable. Oxford dictionary defines the word “proxy” as “a figure that can be used to represent the value of something in a calculation.” To use words from this essay, a proxy is a countable approximation of a conceptual property. Let us take the prior example of intelligence. There is no way of physically measuring someone’s intelligence. Intelligence is an individual’s ability to solve various types of problems, which can only be demonstrated when they solve such problems. Neuroscientists may find correlations between the physical structure of the brain and intelligence in the future, but it is important to remember that they are still separate measurements. This is akin to the difference between a person’s muscle-to-fat ratio and their athletic performance — related but distinct. The widely accepted approach for measuring intelligence today is the IQ test. An IQ test focuses on abstract reasoning, meaning that its definition of intelligence is extremely narrow. Alfred Binet, whose Binet-Simon Scale formed the basis of IQ tests today, said himself that such tests are inadequate for measuring intelligence as they do not consider other important aspects like creativity and emotional intelligence.

Another example, one that is close to my heart, is the measurement of learning through testing. Since my days in teaching school, the notion that assessment is one of three key pillars of any teaching practice has been firmly impressed upon my mind. On its own, learning is an internal phenomenon, known only to the learner. Assessment, which often takes the form of tests and examinations, is used as a means to measure if students have learned knowledge and/or skills. It is important to remember that while assessment seeks to represent student learning accurately, it is at best an approximation of that invisible process. The gap between learning and tests has been and will likely continue to be a matter of debate. 

The impact of proxies often extends beyond the immediate measurement. School examination results impact the wider society by allocating greater educational opportunities to better-performing students. Public education serves to provide equal access to students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, therefore acting as a social-leveler and enabling social mobility. However, recent research has shown that a student’s “social class is one of the most significant predictors… of their educational success.” IQ tests have a particularly dark history due to their ties to eugenicists who, based on a simplistic understanding of genetics, believed “that society should keep feebleminded people from having children.” 

Proxies also affect our understanding of ourselves. Nowadays, it feels like for something to count, it needs to first be counted. There is even a cultural movement known as the Quantified Self, whose tagline reads “self knowledge through numbers”. To increase our self-esteem, we often chase countable goals — Instagram followers, tweet likes, salary, grades — but to what end? Do we question whether or not these numbers are truly meaningful? The use of proxies will likely only increase with time as computers and artificial intelligence become a bigger part of our everyday lives. Behind any recommendation made by a computer is a series of measurements, sometimes defined by a handful of data scientists, computer programmers, and user experience designers, that make assumptions about our personality and desires. This applies to a wide range of interactions, from the ads we are served on Google to the matches we get on a dating app.

Every time we accept a proxy figure, we are relying on an individual, group, or institution’s approach to measurement. Oftentimes, this approach is informed by theories, specific definitions of the measured property, and sometimes value judgments. This renders the proxy figure to not be objectively factual as it is derived from a particular perspective. We need to be careful about the numbers that we come across in our everyday lives. The statistician George Box once said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Proxies are, at their essence, models for approximating abstract quantities. While proxies can be useful, a healthy dose of skepticism should be maintained to ensure that they are working properly and to our benefit.