We learn through feedback. We take some action and observe how the world responds to that action. If the response is desirable, we stick to our ways. If it is not, we try something different next time. The feedback we receive from our environment tells us how we should act in the future by reinforcing actions that have their desired effect and discouraging actions that do not. But what if that feedback, more often than not, is distorted?

The best analogy I come up with is gravity. Any physical movement is regulated by gravity. If you want to dunk a basketball, you’re fighting gravity to reach higher and further. Now, let's say you practiced dunking in a special environment - the moon. Gravity is 6x weaker on the moon. Dunking here is easy, and you’d soon assume that you’re an All-Star. Once back on earth with normal gravity, you’d quickly realize how wrong you were.

I believe there’s such a thing as “social gravity.” If stronger physical gravity makes dunking harder, stronger social gravity makes insincerity harder. In contrast to physical gravity, social gravity fluctuates wildly. For example, everyone I know puts on a particularly kind and patient face for their in-laws (I do love mine, though, honestly), and you know the waiter isn’t laughing at your joke because you’re that funny. Social gravity is weaker in both of these settings, distorted by the relationship between the actor and the recipient. Whenever an actor has something to give to the recipient, the recipient has an incentive to adjust their response. When they do, that interaction has weak social gravity – the action is not being subjected to normal social forces.

We know, thanks to folktales and franchises, that this can cause problems, at least for emperors. But I think the issue is one you should worry about as well. If we learn through feedback, and every piece of feedback we receive is filtered through social gravity, we need to know if social gravity is constant. If it fluctuates, learnings from one environment don’t apply to others. After a week of training on the moon, wouldn’t you also believe that you can dunk? If we have any interest in understanding the world, we need to learn from our experiences. More importantly, if we have any interest in self-awareness, we need to understand how our actions affect others, which we simply won’t do unless we consider how responses are filtered by social gravity.

It feels a bit icky to think about how your environment may be deceiving you, but the alternative of putting my head in the sand seems too costly. This idea has a few implications in my mind. First, it seems valuable to seek out settings where gravity isn’t distorted, so responses can be taken at face value. Second, in settings where gravity could be weaker, we can adjust for it by being doubtful of praises and praising of doubts. Third, maybe it’ll help those around us if we simply signal that we are actually looking for their honest opinions rather than a softball.

All of that said, there are plenty of times when these pompous ideals - “truth” and “learning” – aren’t the top priorities. Life’s too short, we need to have fun too. If we understand social gravity better, maybe we can be better at both accounting for it when we want to learn and ignoring it when we just want to have a good time.