Why I believe the Jazz could win a championship

This is kind of a continuation of the last post. I have many thoughts on the subject, as you can see.

This particular thought is on the fallacy of predicting future behavior according to past events. Yes, I see the logic, but I also see some limitations.

As I discussed in the last post, though, it only takes one instance to provide us with further insight, or to prove something that we once thought impossible is indeed possible. It could not happen 999 times, and we would think we knew all about it. Some would even say it's never going to happen, and people would agree with them because for the last 999 times, that's been true. If you looked only at what had been, there would be no reason to believe it would happen. It only takes one time, though, to alter everyone's thinking and become "possible."

This is a very hopeful principle. It applies to nearly everything we do. We are not a creature of probability. We love the one time out of a thousand. We love when the underdog wins. We speed everywhere hoping this won't be the one time we get caught. We (some people) buy lottery tickets believing that this will be our one in a million. We eat at McDonalds because they give us Monopoly pieces that mean we might win something. We go one date after date waiting to find the one. We cheer for our team, honestly believing that this might be their year. We hope. We hope even when hoping might end up hurting. We hope because we don't want the alternative. We know that it's a long shot, but we hope.

There seems to be one area that we don't carry this principle over very well, though. When it comes to other people, we bind them to probabilities. This is what Christ never does, and what we must become. Christ sees the best in us and believes in what we can become. We can make the same mistake over and over and over, yet He believes in us. He is waiting for that one time in a thousand that we decide to act differently.

There are times that we do this. This principle is demonstrated with the mother who offers prayer after prayer that her wayward child will come back. She is waiting and hoping for the one in a thousand. It is demonstrated in the bloody knuckles of a missionary. He is looking for the one door in a thousand. It is demonstrated in the home teacher who goes month after month even though no progress is readily apparent. He is persevering until that one month that the message gets through. It is demonstrated by the single mother who persistently takes her children to church. She will not let them follow the statistics. It is demonstrated by the sinner who repents after years of sin. He is realizing his one in a thousand, and with open arms the Savior welcomes him back. Letting people change is a manifestation of the hope that is in us.

 

What seems impossible is not. Regardless of how many times something may seem to fail, it must not fail forever. Our understanding is limited by our perceptions of what is possible. I believe this is one small part of what is meant in 2 Nephi 9:29 where we are taught that "to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God." No matter how learned we become in this mortal realm, we do not know as much as God. No matter how hopeless a situation may seem, it is not. God is in control, and He is not bound by the frailty of mind with which we bind ourselves.

Hope is an eternal principle. As we learn to hope we become more like Christ, which is the goal of this mortal existence. As we are doing the things that the Master has instructed us, there is always hope. Impossible is a word of the devil. Each situation requires varying degrees of hope. It is in the ones that seem hopeless, though, that we must remember that people call things impossible until someone does them.

How do you know?

Ok, so this post will correlate with my previous post. If at any point you have no idea what I'm talking about, I've either done a terrible job of connecting some dots or you  need to read that post for context.

In this post I would like to discuss the fluidity of human knowledge, and how that fluidity leads us to limit both ourselves and our opportunities unnecessarily. As humans we seem to have a need to explain things. We try to assign causality to everything, most commonly after the fact.  This is seen frequently in sports, and since I love sports, I'll use this comparison. If a basketball game is tied and one team makes a half-court shot at the buzzer to win the game, what will happen? "If they had not left the guy open...", "If they had made their previous shot...", "If the coach had left player X in...", and on and on and on. We MUST find a reason to explain why our team lost that game. The other team, and the fans and coaches and pundits, though, seem to realize that they just got lucky with that half-court shot. They rarely go in, and this time they happened to be the beneficiary of some good luck.

We've all seen this happen, right? It happens. There's a problem with this thinking, though. We have NO IDEA what actually caused that shot to go in or what should have been done differently to produce a different outcome. Where are our recommendations coming from? Things that worked in previous games, things that "experts" tell us, probability equations, etc. Guess what, though, in a game with as many moving parts as basketball, all of our "reasons" for losing, are complete guesses and do no more to explain the loss than a fan sneezing during the second quarter.

Ok, so what's my point?

We humans have a need to explain. We love to "know" things. The problem comes when something happens that is contrary to our "knowledge."

The Titanic was unsinkable, before it sank. The laws of gravity would never let a chunk of steel fly, until it did. A human could never run a mile in under 4 minutes, until Roger Bannister did. The earth was flat, until it wasn't. It was impossible to find the instantaneous rate of change of an object moving along a curved trajectory, until Sir Isaac (or Leibniz depending on your school of thought) did it.

You get the point.

Let's take Mr. Bannister's four minute mile a little further. Why couldn't a human run a mile in less than four minutes? Because no one had ever done it. There was no evidence to the contrary. Herein lies a human fallacy. I will type two sentences that are too often used interchangeably, but are not, and have very different meanings and ramifications.



1) There is no evidence that a human can run a mile in under 4 minutes.
2) There is evidence that no human can run a mile in under 4 minutes.

Do you see the difference? It's slight, but it makes a huge difference. Far too often, we say sentence 2 when we mean sentence 1.  Please see the principle behind this. Just because we can't explain something, doesn't mean it can't be so.

I will liken this to dating. I was single for several years (and three times as many in Mormon terms). I fell into this trap over and over and over again, without realizing it, until one day I did. I would go on dates. I would put myself out there. I would buy girls flowers. I would walk them to their doors. I would open car doors. I would do everything that I believed would get a girl.  Everyone else told me it worked. It worked for them. Date after date, door after door, flower after flower, I did these things, yet I remained single.

1) There is no evidence that what I'm doing is working.
2) There is evidence that nothing I'm doing is working.

Which one was true? Sentence 1 was true. But I kept telling myself it was sentence 2. Do you see how different those are? Had I stopped doing the things that I was doing, I may never have found the love of my life. As soon as I found her, both sentences were false. There WAS evidence that what I was doing was working, and there was NO evidence that nothing I was doing was working. It only took one instance to change what I "knew". Again, just because you can't explain something, doesn't make it untrue.

So, as this is getting really long, and you're probably bored to tears, here's my point. Human knowledge is based on things that can change. Things that may seem true today may seem false tomorrow. Ultimately, though, we must choose what we believe. During that choosing, would it not be wise to seek advice from someone beyond this mortal realm? Someone who is not persuaded by human evidence or earthly phenomena?

I believe in a God because I choose to. I believe that He can see further than I can see, that He can see causality much more clearly than I can. I believe that He has given us principles and invites us to live by them because they will lead to happiness, both now and eternally. There are things I can't explain, and there are situations I wish were different, but that doesn't make those principles any less perfect. Just because I can't make every free throw doesn't mean He doesn't know the perfect form.