Our Truck Gets 40 MPG and Other False Hypotheses

Rumor is first of all a response to randomness.  It is an effort at sense-making, as DiFonzo points out in his fine little book.  Let me illustrate.

Our truck has a miles per gallon calculator built into the digital odometer display.  The calculator can be reset with each new tank of gas, if we wish.  We often do that.  It is interesting to see what happens in the first few miles of a new tank.  Mileage estimates range from nine miles per gallon to forty miles per gallon.  The calculator has insufficient data for an accurate conclusion.  So it simply does the best it can and produces erroneous results.

It is only at the end of the tank of gas that we get an accurate figure.  But we still look at the indicator periodically and say, "Well, that's pretty good for this old beast!" or "Better not use the air conditioner quite so much!"  Like the calculator we draw conclusions on insufficient data and take action based on those conclusions.

This is the nature of many rumors.  A person makes a few observations which may or may not be related.  Then that person draws conclusions that might be accurate, but likely the conclusions are off-target.  This is typically not the result of malice.  Instead, it is our anxiety to make sense out of things that drives the process.

Randomness is frightening.  If we don't know how things work, then we can't predict where the next threat or opportunity might arise.  If we can't connect the data points, we are lost in the tumbling darkness of disconnected events.  That is, for most of us most of the time, just too bitter to contemplate.

It is not a bad thing to produce tentative hypotheses.  We have to do that or sit paralyzed in fear.  The problem is that once we form those hypotheses, we invest in them.  The longer we hold these fragile figments of our imagination, the more real they become to us.  Hypothesis moves to theory, and theory morphs into fact.  

Our confirmation bias accelerates this process as we sort information according to our existing prejudices.  Information that doesn't fit our hypothesis is excluded.  Information that supports it is retained and magnified.  Our old truck really does get forty miles to the gallon.  After all, I saw that for a few seconds on the gauge.  And it seems like this last tank of gas carried us farther than normal.  Hallelujah!

Most of our explanations are barely accurate and rarely tested.  Then we inject malicious intent into places where things have happened randomly or as a result of incompetence.  This process is the beginning of numerous organizational conflicts in churches and elsewhere.  It is the organizational equivalent of the butterfly effect.  A random event at one end of the system generates a sense-making rumor that leads to gossip that produces division and conflict at the other end of the system.

People who live at the nodes of information systems need to develop high skill levels to gently test rumors.  We need to believe that coincidence does not create causality.  Some things just happen.  Many of our explanations are inaccurate.  Our anxiety fills in the blanks--usually with the wrong answer.

Wait and see...wait and see...wait and see.  At some point the gas mileage will find its way to 23.4 mpg.  And, after all, that's pretty good.