To See It, Squint

Have you ever squinted to see something more clearly? I’m not talking about blocking out bright light. I’m squinting right now at our family room to get a sense of where the new chair should go, the overall balance of pieces, the negative space. Squinting is helping me blot out the details, particularly the crack in the tile over the fireplace that keeps driving me nuts.

For completely different reasons than interior design, I think I’m “squinting” when I have conversations with my grandkids, especially my 4-year-old grandson. I choose words I think are in his vocabulary or analogies to things he’s experienced. “It’s like that time when Llama Llama got upset at the grocery store. See?” I simplify things down so he can see the basics — the form of an idea. I verbally squint so he can see wide-eyed what I’m saying.

But this information reduction feels like an aberration in the Information Age, right? As I think about it, I must admit that more information helps a doctor make the right diagnosis. I ask questions to gather product details to help decide which car to buy. No one in our intelligence services says, “If only we had less information.” And yet, eliminating information has its place, too. It’s as though our brains have a switch for determining when less is more.

I think of this switch as like two kinds of election voting going on in our brain, specifically between the cortical columns of the neocortex. There are regular primary-like elections and occasionally, off-cycle elections. Please excuse me while I liberally borrow from the research of neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins and his team. The flights of imaginary fancy are mine, not theirs.

It’s Election Day in my neocortex. Actually, every moment of every day is Election Day. Most of the time, it’s a caucus — the Cortical Caucuses — where columnar homunculi debate back and forth on which candidate hypothesis to support. Many are primed to favor a position, while others have objections. Back and forth, they argue for milliseconds until one side prevails. “It’s a snake in the grass.” “No, it’s a stick.” “Then touch it.” “No, YOU touch it.” (A finger runs across it). “Stick!” “Told you.”

These ongoing regular elections are messy affairs. There are voting blocks involving many candidate hypotheses, each block arguing its case in support of its favorite hypothesis. They put the “prime” in “primary election.” It’s a special election held to fill a temporary seat in my family room.

But the off-cycle elections eliminate the rancor, the shouting, the never-ending arguments. That’s because far fewer homunculi turn out for these contests. That’s sort of the point behind “squint” elections — fewer candidates and fewer voters.

Every time I squint to see the basic form of something, I see it more purely. This intellectual squinting makes my talks with my grandkids so rewarding. “Papa, why do we wear safety belts in the car?” “Because [studies have shown…squint] they keep us safe from bumps that might hurt.”