Acceptable Flaws and The God Standard
If we are all filled with the acceptable flaw of reference point bias, what then can we refer to as the absolute and the truth?
In our quest for what is absolute and truth, unbeknownst to us we commit acceptable flaws. Yet, we tend to see our conclusions as the absolute and truth. But a quick snippet into those flaws will quickly disperse that. That brings me the question what can be acceptable as absolute? Nothing but the God standard.
Morgan Housel wrote an essay on Acceptable Flaws earlier this year. It was an exposition for me. What makes it even more profound for me was that there are some kind of flaws that are acceptable.
Acceptable means you have to leave with it and not feel bad about it.
Acceptable means they are a common denominator of all human. We all see it ourselves and since it’s a common thing that virtually no one has optimized against it we all have to embrace it. The most efficient thing to do about this flaws is to embrace them just as we do our height as human, just as we do law of gravity and do on.
What makes calling this kind of flaws out is that they often go unnoticed and may stand as a bone of contention where peace is supposed to reign.
Acceptable means the best you can do is recognize it in all humans and interact with them based on those flaws.
Well, I must say the idea of acceptable flaws got me thinking.
What are acceptable flaws?
Morgan started his essay with this statement that will give you an idea of what we both mean by acceptable flaws…
Life is a little easier if you expect a certain percentage of it to go wrong no matter how hard you try.
Smart people screw up.
Good people have bad days.
Nice people lose their temper.
Well, you can’t optimize against some things no matter how hard you may try. Those are what can be referred to acceptable flaws.
Where my idea of God standard and Acceptable flaws intersects is in one of the examples provided by Morgan…
“It’s impossible to think about risk and opportunity without a reference point. And your reference point is at best incomplete if not totally wrong.”
How risky do you think Covid-19 is? What should we do about it? What happens next?
No one can answer those without acknowledging what Covid-19 looks like in the eyes of different people.
An 80-year-old with asthma doesn’t think about its risks the same way a healthy 20 year old does.
A parent with young kids doesn’t think about working from home like a single person does.
A restaurant owner doesn’t think about economic opportunity like a software engineer does.
So people come to vastly different answers about Covid’s future – not because one is more right than the other, but because they’re thinking about the same problem with different reference points.
Morgan’s idea is skewed towards risk and opportunity but I take much deeper. The flaw here is the problem of reference point.
The examples above already make clear how reference point can change our assessment of all things in life.
My question is this, if we are all filled with the acceptable flaw of reference point bias, what then can we refer to as the absolute and the truth?
Puzzling?
Should we take the experience of the health worker treating a Covid19 patience as the truth and absolute? Or
Should we take that of a software engineer who has been getting more job offers because he can now do a lot from home? Or
That of a healthtech startup founder who because of Covid19 secured massive funding to build his ideas? Or l
That of a job seeker who was ongoing a recruitment process prior to Covid19 but couldn’t continue because the process was stopped because of unprecedented times?
All these examples have different reference points and it will be difficult to conclude on the absolute and truth. Why?
The healthcare worker sees it at as more work with increased risk for her life. To her not so good.
The software engineer sees it has a way to spend more time with family and make more money. To her favourable.
The startup founder sees it has the opportunity of a lifetime to secure a long needed. To her positive.
The job seeker sees it as an event that deprived her the opportunity to get the job. Negative to her.
Can a thing be both good and bad? Positive and negative?
Did you answer yes to that question?
Then what is absolute between the two answers and what is truth?
You say the outcome determines the truth and absolute? That will be a conclusion subject to a long conversation I’m not delving into here.
But a problem exist? We want to know what can be seen as truth and absolute but all human references and narration are eternally subjective.
The God standard
This brings me to a simple conclusion. The only way out is to take God’s word as the truth and absolute. It is the only one without the acceptable flaws. What the word says is Yea and Amen. What the word says is absolute and truth. Because every word there in is inspired by HIM, it can be taken as absolute.
Human, we can accept her for her biases. But because it is in our nature to search for the truth (our search for that truth makes us believe our worldview is the absolute and truth), I am posting to you that God’s word is reliable absolute and truth. Simply because I believe in God.
You will have to struggle with my conclusion if you don’t believe in God.
All human references are biased on reference point. But that’s an acceptable flaw. However, because we can’t give up our search for the absolute and truth, the Bible offers us the infallible word of God as the answer we search for.
When you are in trouble for instance, depending on who you seek for advice you will get ranging responses.
However, there is a sure word of prophecy an infallible word that says…
All things work together for good for those that love God and for those that are called according to his purpose.
There you have the answer to your question unbiased and unfiltered.
The God standard is the ultimate that we search for in our quest for absolute and truth. No reference point bias and no flaws at all.