The humans, they yearn for control

Control is a very interesting concept. I believe that most people take comfort in being (or believing that they are) in control.
What do you mean by that? Are we all control freaks?
Well - no. Being in control means on a very basic level that some action that we take directly results in a certain predictable outcome. We encounter this a lot with objects - We can predict how a machine will behave depending on how we use it, we can predict how objects fall or move depending on force we apply. That’s why I love mathematics, science and engineering because it is in essence really predictable and thus simple (If you think math is hard, try guessing people’s zodiac signs ;) However, we don’t encounter this in when dealing with people. Have you tried guessing exactly how people are going to respond to a question before you ask it? Think of people you know really well - how accurately could you predict their behaviour in certain situations? And how many people do you know really well? ;) (Could you even predict your own behaviour when confronted with a completely new situation?)

The complex nature of culture

Culture as in everything that is created by humans - I really wanted to make that wordplay.
Let’s scale this idea. How accurately could anyone predict how a group of people reacts to a certain situation?
It’s very plausible that predicting outcomes that are directly linked to behaviour and reactions of people are very unpredictable. In science, we distinguish between natural (actual) science and social (you wish) science. Natural science predicts outcomes that are predictable, quantifyable (is that a word?) and repeatable. Social science predicts outcomes by taking outcomes from different (but similar (or what we find to be similar)) situations and abstracting these. Interestingly, an anology comes to mind - think of how programming works and then how AI works ;) This is not to discredit social science - I just want to show that everything that is linked to humans and their behaviour is so complex that we need a different scientific method to make predictions.

Humans are out of control

As a kid I used to think that most people know what they’re doing - the adult world seemed so responsible and serious.
At some point I realised that we just tell ourselves that most of what’s happening is somehow predictable and we are in control.

A little confidence booster

Once you realise that most people have a lot less control than they seem, you already have more control than they do :)