In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman uses the acronym WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) to refer to the fact that when System 1, the unconscious, constructs a story to interpret or explain something, it can only base the story on the information it is aware of—that is, what it sees.
System 1 is very good at creating coherent, convincing stories; after all, each of us fully inhabits the role we are playing in The Story of Us as told by our Inner Narrator. We have a well-developed capacity for suspending disbelief.
System 1 aims to construct the best possible story based on the available information. That information may be incomplete, false or inaccurate, poorly understood, or even tangential. But information of poor quality or limited quantity does not deter System 1 from coming up with a story. It doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, so it fails to recognize gaps or faulty or illogical conclusions.
For the most part, neither do we. In fact, as research repeatedly reveals the less we know, the easier it is for us to construct a coherent story—a good example of ignorance being bliss.
Cognitive Ease Is Compelling
A coherent and consistent story generates a feeling of confidence. And we tend to believe that the degree of confidence we feel about something is an indicator of its accuracy. But confidence is a feeling. It is also highly subjective, more an indicator of cognitive ease than of anything else. We like cognitive ease because, among other things, it gives us a sense of safety and familiarity.
So as long as the story delivered by System 1 provides coherence and consistency, we are good to go! Although System 2 (consciousness) could challenge or even veto any of System 1’s stories, it rarely does. You might think System 2, being the analytical and critical thinker, would notice gaps or faulty logic. But System 1 has another trick up its sleeve, which is the suppression of ambiguity or doubt. Certainty is easier on the brain than uncertainty, and our brain is all for taking the path of least resistance. As a result, most of System 1’s stories go unquestioned.
We tend to take System 1’s stories at face value—as if they’re entirely factual. We may, and do, question other people and their stories, but we tend not to question our own beliefs, cognitive biases, or assumptions. We take our perceptions at face value (WYSIWYG). We’re quite confident we know who we are, where we are, and what is going on around us.
By design, the modern human mind craves knowledge, especially in places where we can find none. When faced with an absence of information, we’ll make something up—we will believe and assume. This tendency appears to be universal. —Peter Ralston, The Book of Not Knowing
We think it’s what we know that matters. So why bother asking ourselves what we don’t know? Well, because it is more likely than not that there are things we don’t know, the knowing of which would alter our understanding—and our subsequent actions—perhaps significantly.
You Are Here
Here’s a current example. For many years I’ve been aware that people have a difficult time identifying what I call juicy desired outcomes: the changes they want to make to their status quo. That’s one of the reasons I focused three Monthly Meetings on the topic last year. I believed that was the greatest challenge to creating transformational change. There is lots of evidence to support that conclusion. I assumed identifying the current status quo was the easy part, given it consists of knowable factors. But that assumption was wrong. First, not all aspects of the status quo are in fact knowable. Second, even if they are knowable, they are not necessarily known.
So accurately identifying who we are and where we are may be even more difficult than identifying our desired outcomes.
This realization came about because my clients and I were engaged in an inquiry. We were curious and open to the possibility of learning or discovering something new. Now we’re running experiments to identify tools that can help us get a better handle on the status quo. This is a useful exploration because if we don’t know our starting point, we’re going to have a hard time mapping the route to our desired destination.
We can’t know what external events will take place in the future. We don’t know how our perception will change once we stop planning and start taking action. We don’t know whether our endeavors will succeed or fail. We don’t know what other people are thinking or feeling. We don’t know why we hold certain beliefs. We don’t know everything about anything. We can’t count on the accuracy or veracity of our memories. In short, the sum of what we don’t know is far, far greater—and always will be—than the sum of what we know.
What Else Is It Telling Me?
Another Nobel Prize winner, Jim Allison, says that you can’t really prove anything with science. All you can do is disprove. The data from an experiment may be consistent with your hypothesis, but it might be consistent with another hypothesis, too. So you need to ask, What else is it telling me?
That’s exactly the kind of question that can expand our perceptual field and burst the bubbles of both WYSIWYG and WYSIATI.