The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up
Your Vote Does Not Define You — Based on Information Theory
We cannot declare ourselves the rightful owner of another person’s truth — stop assassinating the character of those who voted differently than you.
It is unreasonable and unscientific to gross generalize people based on one choice they make, regardless of what that choice is. According to studies on information theory, we can only consciously process 50 out of the 11 million bits of information per second, gathered by our senses from the environment.
50 out of 11 million. Every. Second.
Think about that.
When you start adding these seconds up over a life span it becomes too much to comprehend. Calculator? No, it cannot even give you a number. Unless you understand 2.52288e9, of course.
For every second that we have each lived, we have each received a different 11 million bits of information. That’s around 31,536,000 seconds a year. So for every year a human has been alive, they could receive 11,000,000ish bits of information 31,536,000ish times. No two humans are receiving the exact same bits at any time.
There is much left to be discovered about how this great compression of information takes place. It is safe to say though that if every human received a different 11,000,000 bits, every second of their lives, and the brain somehow compresses that down to 50 bits every second — the information that every person has processed consciously is inconceivably different. This goes without mentioning how each person interprets that information based on a plethora of other variables.
We simply cannot be everywhere all the time. It just isn’t humanly possible. We only live our lives and we only feel our own experiences. We only read the books we read. We cannot read them all. We have only lived where we have lived, grew up where we grew up and have only ever eaten what we have eaten. Only our parental figures raised us (or not) and we have only experienced what we have experienced. We have not lived the life of anyone but us. We. Just. Haven’t. And, we cannot.
The tiny fraction of information we have retained, people we have met, places we have explored and things we have witnessed is mind boggling. When we compare the things we have experienced, to the things we have not, the difference is astronomical.
Only if we could see through all the processed bits, of the billions of other people on this planet, could we declare ourselves the rightful owners of another human’s ultimate truth.
It matters not how extreme the situation is. It matters not how strongly we are convicted. We cannot rationally declare a label for other humans based on a gross generalization. The numbers just don’t add up. The resources needed to know something like that are simply not available.
Someone voting for Trump does not mean they are cruel or vicious.
Someone voting for Biden does not mean they are pro-pedophilia.
Someone voting for Trump does not make them racist.
Someone voting for Biden does not make them racist.
Someone voting for Trump does not mean they don’t care about the environment.
Someone voting for Biden does not mean they support rioting, looting and violence.
Someone voting for Biden does not make them stupid and someone voting for Trump does not make them stupid either.
I will not declare any political affiliation, but I will declare one thing — these people, the ones who think differently from you, they are just like you. And just because you cannot fathom why they would vote the way they do, doesn’t make them bad people.
We are all here, subconsciously sorting through 11 million bits of information a second and doing our best with the 50 we get to keep. No matter who won this election, we are all still here, facing the most challenging times that many of us have experienced in our entire lives.
Now is the time when we need each other the most.
Takeaway
The bottom line is simple. Regardless what your choice was — I respect your experience, your story and your right to sort through all of that and make the choice you chose. Just because you voted a certain way does not make you bad or stupid. It does not make you less than or less good or less worthy of my love. I do not have the right to declare who you are — based on what you declared to be your truth — from my limited, itty-bitty, teeny-tiny perspective.
Written by Holly Kellums
