Yes, I'm judging you. in Journal

At least I openly admit and accept it.
Value judgment is part of how humans perceive the world, and so it is impossible not to judge. No matter how open minded you think you are.
You see, judgments are so foundational in perception that they are almost the same thing as perception itself. Humans do not ‘see’ (because we’re extremely visual) the world as it is; we see concepts and tools. That is fundamentally how human perception works, and why it is so very difficult to develop AI, as the tech industry quickly found out.
You might imagine a totally judgment-free perception to be a totally naïve and helpless one; that of an infant child. In my mind, it is not at all clear what causes the helplessness of the human infant; it’s physical immaturity or it’s psychological immaturity. An infant cannot act. Possibly, because it cannot perceive anything to act upon or with.
It is difficult to include the infant’s experience of the world in the category of perception at all, because it is utterly devoid of the things that human beings actually perceive, which is to say, concepts and tools.
The infant sees sensory input. This sensory input has no value; it cannot, because the infant cannot place anything in higher or lower importance; everything is equally novel. As the brain develops and the nervous system matures, associations begin to develop. As soon as this happens, judgment begins.
Warm is better than cold. Closeness is better than distance. Mom is better than no-mom.
In the same way, if we were to truly perceive the world without making value judgments along the way, we would listen to all music equally, we would not prefer comfort over pain, we would equally enjoy the company of all people.
But that is just not true.

This little diatribe is not an excuse to judge people. It’s an acceptance of the real laws of our existence. And an intro to realizing how your inner values actually change how you perceive the world.

Last updated May 25, 2019