The Definition of Insanity

Yes, I do own a mirror, why do you ask?

Wisecracks aside, these are some thoughts about the old cliche "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results." I once asked a psychology professor how his profession actually defines insanity. He says they don't use that word, preferring more specific descriptions of mental illness. In that sense, the cliche is not well formulated enough to even be wrong. But even if the psych boys don't use the word in a formal context you, me, and he know roughly what I mean when I say it so we'll roll with it.

Right away that old firebrand Heraclitus pokes his head in to ask "What do you mean you're doing the same thing?" Heraclitus was the ancient Greek geek who famously said "You can't step into the same river twice." Here he might have a point. Whatever thing you're doing, iterating it in time changes the parameters at least a little bit. A man might wake up every morning with the premonition that "Today is the day I will die". More often than not he's going to be wrong about that. And yet though he lives eighty, ninety years eventually he'll get that question right.

A little more broadly than that, it's worth considering whether it's the same thing after all. I spent about a decade troubleshooting industrial machines. One of the first steps in any problem is "do it again, and see if it happens again." Aside from all the times the machine started working as mysteriously as it stopped (a frequent and gratifying occurrence) doing the same thing again gives you the chance to watch what's going on and see if you can figure out why.

Right this moment I've got a lawnmower battery on the charger. It's blinking red at me. Pull the battery off the charger, reseat it. Now it's blinking green, which ought to mean it's charging. It will blink green for a while, but it'll be back to red sooner or later. It takes a couple minutes though. Checking ... yup, it's blinking red again. Time to reseat the battery again.

On the one level yeah, definition of insanity, it isn't likely to suddenly start working this time. On another level maybe it will; maybe scraping the contacts this time will clean them such that a good connection is being made. Maybe thinking about the battery will allow me to divine something of the inner logic of the charger --- how does it know to blink red or green? --- that might tell me what I'm doing wrong with what's ostensibly a binary choice. Maybe it's charging in the first bit, and by manipulating it over and over again I'll be able to finish mowing my lawn. Maybe the whole thing will annoy me enough to go back to John Menard and demand a refund.

That last point is worth dwelling on. Even if the circumstances don't change, people do. If you see someone run full tilt into a brick wall, odds are he didn't realize it was there. If you see him run into it twice, then he's got a reason for it. It might be a stupid reason (the latest TikTok challenge), it might be an understandable reason (drug dealers holding his wife at gunpoint making him act stupid for their own amusement), or indeed it might be insanity in the literal sense. Though that last seems rare. I've met plenty of neurotics (speaking unscientifically) but very few who were psychotic enough to actively and purposely hurt themselves.

If we extend the question to metaphorical brick walls we find much the same categories. The teenager who's rebelling in the old predictable ways will get himself into trouble because he can't see the brick wall that's so evident to those of us who have already hit it. A man might do all kinds of stupid things either because he's wanting to communicate something to those who are watching, or because he's acting off of information that we as observers don't have.

The trouble is when you're stuck riding along. This is the most frequent context in which I hear this cliche; that the political party or the company management or whomever is acting insane. It's one thing to slam yourself into a brick wall for reasons you deem sufficient. It's quite another to be slammed for reasons that bloke over there fancies. Reasons he hasn't adequately explained to you. Sometimes he has those reasons, and if he had stopped to explain them properly to you you'd agree the wall was necessary. But sometimes he's just an idiot.

Hanlon's razor advises us to never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. (And let's be honest; the word "insanity" in the cliche is really a slightly nicer way of saying "idiocy". Nobody thinks a fly buzzing against a window is crazy, just of insectile intelligence.) That's good, but it's only part of the puzzle. It's dangerous to attribute to stupidity that which is best explained by malice. Absent either, actions may appear stupid because the actor is operating off of information you don't have, or off of beliefs that you don't share. It's unwise to judge decisions too harshly when you don't and can't know all the facts. That said stupidity and malice are never too far from any human decision.

One last thing to discuss before I go, and that's the guy who's creating his own problems. Let's say, hypothetically, you've got a person who lets his lawn grow too long because he doesn't want to mow, and so when he finally drags himself out there to mow the grass is thick and long and it takes three times the effort. You'd think he could save himself trouble by forcing himself out there regularly to mow while it's still shorter, but somehow he keeps running into the same problem over and over again. Definition of insanity. How do you help someone like that?

Heck if I know. Best I've figured out so far is to let him keep hitting that brick wall until either the wall gives or he does. Because the truth of the matter is that we all do this, to some extent or another. Hitting that brick wall comes after a calculation; will I endure less pain doing this or in going around? Don't think that going around is free; the guy's got his reasons for avoiding that option even if they're stupid reasons. Hopefully he'll decide that he's being stupid, that he'd rather take the other option after all. In the meantime, he'll keep engaging in behavior that, to the rest of us, looks insane.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. I've got to go reseat the battery on the charger again.