Scott Van Den Plas : Philosopher

Lately, I have been thinking about how we learn language, and what teaching methods are available to a widespread audience in order to learn language. I find it shocking how little is actually available.

This lead me to thinking of various testing methodologies, including computer adaptive testing. I have taken a number of technology certification exams in this format. They vary in length based on how you answer, and try to narrow down your exact skill level by changing the difficulty of the questions asked based on your previous answer. It is somewhat like the Socratic method of test taking. The machine asks me a question, and based on my answer, modifies its next question until it can figure out where i stand. Buried in this logic is what’s called Item Response Theory.

Item Response Theory takes into account a number of assumptions, including error rates in various ways. This got me thinking about another concept called the paradox of choice.

From wikipedia:

Observed in many cases is the paradox that more choices may lead to a poorer decision or a failure to make a decision at all. It is sometimes theorized to be caused by analysis paralysis, real or perceived, or perhaps from rational ignorance. A number of researchers including Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper have published studies on this phenomenon. (Goode, 2001) A popularization of this analysis was done by Barry Schwartz in his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice.

Essentially, the more choices you have, the higher the likelihood you will make an error. I think it is a reasonable assumption that the more choices you get in testing, the higher the error rate will be… and not because you know less, but because there is a certain amount of paralysis when selecting from many options.

I wonder how this is correlated to the idea of universal truth. I don’t believe in any gods, and I have a hard time believing that there is any sort of Universal Truth. I am a bigger fan of the philosophy that collective small personal truths give you the exponential decay of Big T Truth. But in a world with the paradox of choice, the reality could very likely be that little T truths in sum may cause paralysis in decision making. Too many realities, too many truths, too much for us to process. This could also be why humanity is so fond of declaring their own personal truth as universal truth.