LeBron James and His Decision: Ignorance, Knowledge, and The Absurd

With the second LeBron James in Cleveland free agency decision looming, let’s all take a deep breath and take a journey through how to deal with ignorance, how we attain knowledge, and what to do in the face of this absurd situation. 

LeCision 3.0

What will LeBron decide?

Do you know? Does LeBron even know?

If you pay attention to the fever pitch that is sports journalism, you are currently being bombarded with rampant speculation and piping hot takes. There’s a chance he’s going with Kawhi Leonard to Philadelphia. The Rockets haven’t given up. He’s most likely going to L.A. The clues have been there since 2017. Paul George making his own free agency decision documentary and LeBron announcing Space Jam 2 right after his decision can only mean they are leaving their current cities and teaming up on the Lakers. Or he’ll stay in Cleveland.

If you look close enough, you’ll see all the signs. There are lots of people with “knowledge of the situation” that can show you the way. He doesn’t want an elaborate free agency pitch! He’s making cryptic Instagram posts! He changed his Twitter avatar! It all must mean something!

And then there are the narratives:

“From the Kyrie trade forward, a lot of the (Cavs) moves have been toward a post-LeBron future.” – Windy

— Jordan Zirm (@clevezirm) June 26, 2018

Sure, having the highest salary in the NBA, paying a killer luxury tax, and trading for George Hill, Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr., and Jordan Clarkson might have been all moves “toward a post-LeBron future.” It looked to me at the time like the Cavaliers trying to “win-now.”

Don’t worry, it will all be over by July 4th. Unless it won’t.

How do we deal with this?

First, calm down. Take a deep breath. Relax. Remember the words of wisdom on the front of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Ignorance

Right now, we are all dealing with an absence of information. The truth is, nobody seems to know where LeBron James is going. LeBron and his close friends may know. Maybe not. And knowing that LeBron doesn’t want an elaborate pitch doesn’t actually help us get to that answer any quicker.

Humans are terrible at dealing with ignorance. We are naturally pattern-seeking animals, always with an eye to make sense of the world. Our ancestors didn’t simply look up into the sky and shout “who knows why the Sun goes across the sky! We sure don’t!” No, they knew the god Helios pulled the sun across the sky every day. Jared Diamond explains in The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies that one of the original functions of religion was to explain the world, “pre-scientific traditional peoples offer explanations for everything they counter.” Also, the absence of information in a risky situation led to anxiety, which in turn led to supernatural rituals to deal with the anxiety.

Diamond gives an illustrative example involving two New Guinea fishing locations, as studied by Bronislaw Malinowski. The first fishing location was calm lagoon, which was “safe, easy, and offer[ed] predictable yields.” The second fishing location was the open-sea, often involving unpredictability and danger. Yet, it was only with open-sea fishing that involved “elaborate magical rituals before embarking.” The reliable and tranquil lagoon had no magic associated with it. Religious and supernatural rituals provided those dealing with uncertain and anxiety-ridden ventures with a sense of control, even though the rituals themselves did not materially affect the success or failure of the venture.

The trouble with how we deal with ignorance arises when we seek out answers and control absent good information. Our humility about the limits of our own knowledge seldom wins out over the craving for any explanation, especially one that confirms our preconceived notions about the world and gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling of contentment.

We can easily fall victim to a number of psychological pitfalls. Those that pretend to speak with the dead and bilk money out of the credulous rely on the psychological fact that we ‘remember the hits and forget the misses.’ Some people still think that horoscopes have explanatory power for their own lives. It’s not that we simply prefer having explanations and control over our lives, we fundamentally crave it as human beings. That craving makes some of us believe things even though all evidence points to the contrary.

Dealing with our own ignorance goes even deeper than psychological bias and motivated reasoning. Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, in The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, speak about how our brains will even completely make up explanations for things without realizing it. To illustrate this point, the authors relay a series of experiments done in the 1960s and 1970s by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga on patients who had undergone a corpus callosotomy, a surgical procedure that completely severed the patients’ left and right brain hemispheres. For a split-brain patent, their two brain hemispheres literally cannot transfer any information between themselves, and each side of the brain is left completely independent in control of some of the brain’s processes. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and is generally responsible for reasoning and speech; the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. The researchers wondered what would happen if they told the right side of the brain to perform an action (through the patient’s left ear), but then asked the left side of the brain to explain why they performed it.

The results were startling. In one experiment with a patient, the researchers “asked a patient — by way of his right hemisphere (left ear) — to stand up and walk toward the door. Once the patient was out of his chair, they asked him, out loud, what he was doing, which required a response from his left hemisphere.” The correct and honest answer for the left hemisphere would have been to say, “I have no idea.” Yet, the left brain of the patient confidently answered the researchers: “I wanted to go get a Coke.” As Simler and Hanson explain, “[i]n other words, the left hemisphere, lacking a real reason to give, made up a reason on the spot.” And the craziest thing? The patient had no idea that his left hemisphere had simply made up an answer out of thin air. As it turns out, you can’t even trust your own brain.

Unrelated Photo

So what do we know? Absent information about the world, we seek patterns and make up explanations for events we cannot understand. We become anxious about uncertainty and develop rituals meant to deal with our ignorance. Even in the modern age, we can fall into the traps of credulity, craving control and explanations for things absent good evidence. And even if we keep a careful watch, our brains still might unilaterally fill in the gaps in our ignorance.

So where is LeBron going? If we let our ignorance drive us to make up conclusions absent actually knowing, we might believe any of the following: LeBron is certainly going to L.A. because of Space Jam 2. LeBron is certainly going to Philadelphia because he’s chasing Michael Jordan’s ghost, looking for championships, the West is loaded, and Phily has LeBron’s little brother, Ben Simmons. LeBron is certainly going to Houston because of his banana boat buddy Chris Paul. LeBron is certainly going to stay in Cleveland because the Cavs give him the best shot in the East to compete, Northeast Ohio is his home, and LeBron said that, “I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there.”

But remember, Don’t Panic. One thing is certain. We don’t know with any certainty where LeBron will go, and our ignorance will drive us crazy in the meantime if we let it.

Knowledge

How should we deal with ignorance? How can we actually know anything? Luckily for us, philosophers have been thinking about this subject since Ancient Greece, and philosophers call this field of study epistemology, or the Theory of Knowledge.

via GIPHY

To be brief, there are several ways to attain true facts about the world, and many ways to be fooled. For example, a rite of passage for all children is to discover that their parents’ dictum because I said so is an unsatisfying answer to a question. Similarly unsatisfying is the because that’s the way we’ve always done it. As adults, we often run into arguments from emotion, where people argue that their passion, pain, and self-assuredness should be enough to overcome any doubts; yet, emotions by themselves have no truth value. Just because you feel something doesn’t make it true. So what can we rely on?

Our memory is decent for a general picture of our life, but remains deeply flawed. Just because you feel like you remember something doesn’t mean it happened in the way you remember it. Famed Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson often points out that “eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence in the realm of science.” Bart Ehrman, in his book Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of Their Savior, explains at length that our memories are incredibly fallible and prone to making mistakes. Even the moments in our life that we remember best and most vividly, called flashbulb memories, are surprisingly unreliable. Do you remember where you were when the Challenger exploded? Or when you heard about 9/11? You might be wrong.

Memories can even be completely made up, either by mistake or through deliberately planting them. You may have heard of the Mandela Effect, the curious way we all collectively remember something as happening, but we are all collectively incorrect. Many people thought that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. Remember that great kids movie Shazam with Sinbad? Turns out, it never existed. And there are many more examples.

Planting a memory can be even more harmful, as discussed by Lawrence Wright in Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory. Wright describes the situation in the 1980s where a number of children were having their memories “recovered”, unveiling an epidemic of torture, sexual crimes, and satanic rituals. As it turned out, these memories had been planted through recovered memory therapy, a method that involved suggestiveness and hypnosis. Frighteningly, it can be as simple as asking someone to simply imagine an event that never took place.

What does this have to do with LeBron? Don’t trust someone who is certain where LeBron is going because they said so. You have a gut feeling that LeBron is going to [insert city here]? Don’t trust it. Remember when LeBron teamed up with Jordan Clarkson and Sinbad for Shazam 2: The Magical Dinosaur Riders and announced that he was retiring from basketball to create the Space Jam Cinematic Universe? Probably never happened.

So what can we trust? Remember rule number one: Don’t Panic. There is good news. We do have two tools at our disposal that work: Reason and Science.

Reason is the only universal human language we have to convey information and change minds. Steven Pinker points out in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress that every conversation to find truth requires reason as the medium to communicate.

Reason, through deductive logic, gives us what Immanuel Kant described as a priori knowledge – knowledge we can deduce independent of experience. Think of Descartes’ I think, therefore I am and mathematical equations like two plus two equals four. We can rely on these conclusions as true pieces of knowledge. (Semantic aside: “reason” can refer to both deductive and inductive reasoning, as well as other forms of “reasoning” or “reasons” generally. I’m not trying to be particular about terms here; I’m simply trying to paint this picture in broad terms.)

Science also helps paint a true picture of the world. The foundation of science is empiricism, the pursuit of knowledge through gathering evidence and observing phenomena via experimentation. This source of knowledge is at the heart of much of what we do and how we think. If you see the sun rise in the east and set in the west for 1,000 straight days, you can reliably predict that the sun will do the same tomorrow. If you look at the data for airline crashes, you can reliably predict that the next flight you take will land safely.

Empiricism is also the basis for most of our basketball knowledge. We know that, in order to score points, the basketball has to go through the hoop (deductive reason). However, the empirical evidence lets us know that players under 5’0″ don’t stand a chance getting into the modern NBA. Modern analytics is rooted in empirical data. Those that criticize “analytics” as a vehicle for knowledge really don’t know what they’re talking about — all it consists of is the practice of trying to use data to predict results and improve your team. That’s why you don’t see teams that emphasize the three-point shot trot out a lineup of five 7-footers who can’t shoot more than 20% from three. I have an intense (and sometimes irrational) love and appreciation for Anderson Varejao, but I would still not call him a 3-point specialist.

Just as reason and science let us know what we know, it has a powerful and profound effect in letting us know what we don’t know. Science teaches us about the fallibility of because I said so authority figures, of strong men, of emotions, and of our own memories. It teaches us about our own ignorance, cautioning us to be humble in the face of the great unknown. We are taught to be comfortable without knowing everything. Despite our ignorance, science and reason compel us to continue searching for more and more knowledge. Incomplete evidence doesn’t mean we should jump to conclusions, but rather to maintain our humility and to continue searching for the truth. Ignorance isn’t scary — ignorance simply means we have so much more to learn.

What can reason and science tell us about LeBron? We know he’s currently a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He’s won the NBA Finals and has been named as the MVP. Empirically, when you compare the career statistics of LeBron James against the rest of NBA players, you realize he’s one of the best ever to play the game.

Reason and science also tell us to be humble. If past empirical evidence is a guide, his last two free agency decisions have been made in a deafening echo chamber of sports journalism speculation. Remember in 2010 when James was certainly going to play for the Knicks? Or, in 2014, James was leaning heavily towards re-signing with the Heat? If this past data is any indication, very few people actually know the truth, and importantly, even if they announce it to the world, it will be impossible for us to tell the difference between the truth and rampant speculation.

Simply put, there is no way to tell where LeBron James will end up. We are all ignorant about his decision until he actually announces his decision. With science and reason as our guide, we must be humble, guard against our baser instincts, and become comfortable with simply saying we don’t know.

The Absurd 

We don’t know what LeBron James will do in Free Agency. The information so far — the cryptic photos, the wild speculation — none of it has given us any reliable empirical evidence as to what LeBron James will do. Absent actual knowledge, we are faced with a great, beckoning, unknown abyss.

We are faced with The Absurd.

The Absurd, coined by French writer Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, occurs in the clash between the human need for answers and the “unreasonable silence of the world.” Since the dawn of mankind, we have sought to explain away our ignorance; and yet, even with the tools of reason and science, we still can only explain a fraction of the mysteries of the universe. Big questions still loom. What caused the Big Bang? What is dark matter? What does it all mean?

Where will LeBron James go next?

Let us first think of Sisyphus. According to Homer, this Ancient Greek was eternally condemned to roll a boulder up a mountain, only to watch it roll back down under the force of its own weight. For Camus, Sisyphus represents a hero of the absurd, a hero in the clash between our desire for meaning and the indifference of the universe. Sisyphus rebels against the indifference and revels in his eternal struggle. Being faced with a path without answers, without meaning, “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition” and presses on, with passion, with rebellion, with a zeal for his task. He embraces the absurdity of the situation with full knowledge of his eternal sentence — and in doing so Sisyphus becomes free. For Camus, the path Sisyphus takes is the best option — the only option we have in the face of our own human struggle.

Here we find ourselves with LeBron James, Sisyphus, and The Absurd.

We find ourselves at the bottom of the mountain of Sisyphus, rolling up a boulder of yet another LeBron Decision. We could give into the temptation of incessantly checking social media for any update on the situation, hoping that a “source with knowledge of the situation” can be our guide. But no, we must turn away from that temptation — there is no escape from our ignorance, from our boulder. Realize that our tools of reason and science can only get us so far — that absent LeBron James’ own words, our cries for answers will only be met with the silence of the universe. We are powerless in this struggle for answers. We know the full extent of our wretched condition, of waiting, for yet another LeBron James heartache or triumph.

We must press on. We must accept the limits of our knowledge, holding steadfast against the temptation of the false promises and comfort that credulity brings. We must continue to push our boulder, knowing that next week, next month, we shall watch the boulder roll back down the mountain after learning of LeBron’s next decision, and we shall start again with something else.

Embrace the fate of Sisyphus:

All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

We must embrace this moment in history. Our history. Our torment. Our ignorance. Our uncertainty. It is all ours, our collective journey as Cavaliers fans. Revel in this moment, and in all the moments of LeBron James. Embrace our own boulders, of every Finals against the Warriors, of dealing with Ty Lue’s rotations, of yet another LeBron James Decision. Embrace everything. Embrace the Absurd.