Jumping to Conclusions

Why IS it that people are always jumping to conclusions? We all do it. There's no point in denying it. So WHY? Why must we always try to enforce what we believe onto a situation?

Actually, it's human nature to try to understand and explain our World. In the absence of hard facts, we tend to want to fill in the blanks... Which leads to many what-ifs.

We see a man who shoots down 20 people with a gun in the parking lot of a grocery store. One is a US Congresswoman. And in the absence of any known fact, we assume that the person responsible, must have political leanings very different from this Representative.

WHY do we do that? Well, for one thing, it is rare that a political figure is the victim of a public assassination attempt for personal reasons. If Ms. Giffords was known to her assailant, why did he not try to kill her somewhere less public, where he had more opportunity to get away? And why take out her supporters in the process.

In the absence of the facts about his political leanings or beliefs, we can safely ASSUME that Jared Loughner did not like SOMETHING about Gabrielle Giffords -- and was angry enough, insane enough, or some combination of the two, to want to do her and her supporters real harm.

If Jared Loughner was just a run-of-the-mill angry and deluded person who wanted to hurt people -- why choose a political figure and not family, classmates, or co-workers? Why not take it out on those who have hurt you? In the absence of any real fact, it is safe to ASSUME that the shooter believed that Ms. Giffords had caused him some sort of grievance.

We all know what people say about ASSUMING. You, I, anyone who does it, is going to make an ASS out of U and ME. Well, is this always true?

What would we know about gravity, if someone hadn't ASSUMED that there was some unseen force attracting objects to the Earth, and then tried to measure it? You might say that if Isaac Newton hadn't done it, eventually someone else would have. And that is probably true. But not without some underlying assumptions.

We ASSUME someone is innocent until proven guilty, because we ASSUME that it is better to free 100 guilty people, than to punish one innocent person unjustly. And when we walk out of our homes each morning, we ASSUME we are going to be safe and sound all day, and eventually arrive back at home, because this is what has always happened before.

People learn from observing their World. We make generalizations in order to understand what is going on around us. Granted, we use both deductive and inductive reasoning -- mostly inductive -- and it is inherently flawed. MANY of the assumptions we form by observing and generalizing, are untrue... And largely, the false assumptions are harmless.

The thing is, sometimes these assumptions are deadly. That neighbor's son is odd, but he's harmless. That guy who pulled up to the STOP sign at the same time I did, is not going to run into me. That so-called Church posting anti-gay material all over their website, is only doing it for attention. Shooting an M-16 into the air in protest of a political opponent, isn't going to harm anyone.

And sometimes ASSUMPTIONS lead to some of the greatest discoveries ever seen. The planets don't move the way I thought they would, perhaps there is a different type of mathematics that would explain it. When people eat moldy bread, they get better instead of ill.

The trick here isn't to stop making assumptions. How else are you going to internalize and make sense of your life? But don't hang on too tightly in the face of your observations and generalizations. Because they, like the World around you, should constantly be changing.