One out of eight men believes
that he could score against Serena
Williams in a tennis match. This, to
me, is the epitome of delusion.
Saying that someone is delusional
often
conjures
up
images
of
raging schizophrenics, completely
absorbed by illusions of grandeur
and hallucinations of voices from
nowhere, people who don’t exist
and events that never happened.
But in reality, self-delusion is more
subtle and ordinary. It’s the belief
that you “totally could’ve gone pro
if it wasn’t for your knee injury” or
“definitely could’ve gone to an Ivy
League if I cared in high school.”
It’s that little voice telling you that
you’re on the precipice of being
great at whatever thing you’re
mediocre at. It’s the voice telling
one out of eight men that he could
outplay Serena Williams.
According to this definition I,
for one, am highly delusional. This
diagnosis rests on the fact that I
wholeheartedly believe that I could
get a 180, a perfect score, on the
Law School Admission Test (LSAT)
with no preparation. To most, this
may seem insane and completely
unfounded given that (A) I have
no intentions of ever going to law
school, let alone taking the LSAT;
(B) 0.1% of LSAT takers score a
180; (C) at the time of writing this,
I have no familiarity with the
sections of the LSAT and (D) I have
embarrassingly limited knowledge
about the inner workings of the U.S.
legal system
To these limitations, I offer one
rebuttal: puzzle games.
I am excellent at puzzle games,
and I say this objectively. Sudoku
puzzles were my first love in the
fifth grade; my teacher used to
assign them in lieu of extra credit.
From there my obsession spiraled
into Words with Friends, The New
Yorker’s Cryptic Crosswords, The
New York Times’s Spelling Bee
and, of course, Wordle and its many
variants. Everyday, I go through the
same repertoire of puzzle games:
Wordle before bed, sudoku while
I eat breakfast, The New Yorker
crossword to kill time in class
and NYT’s mini crossword in the
evenings.
The one thing I do know about the
LSAT is that there’s an analytical
reasoning section, better known
as “logic games.” Peers, typically
those who are not familiar with
the LSAT, will occasionally make
remarks like “the LSAT is basically
all just puzzles.” I’m sure they don’t
mean that literally. But on some
level, I must’ve internalized that
notion. And thus, my delusional
confidence that I’m destined for a
perfect LSAT score was born.
I wasn’t serious the first time
I
pronounced
my
belief.
My
roommate was talking about their
upcoming LSAT test day, and I
jokingly told them I thought I could
get a 180. It wasn’t something I had
thought about before, but when I
said it, it felt right. Other people
score 180s for all sorts of reasons —
studying hard, natural ability, etc.
Why was a dedication to puzzles
any less of a justification? And just
like that, a delusion was born.
Perhaps many delusions are
born everyday without us realizing.
In my experience, University of
Michigan students are particularly
susceptible to them. We go to a top
school but not the top school. A
lot of us do well in our classes but
don’t have perfect grades. Many
Wolverines might not get into their
first-choice
graduate
program
or land their top internship, but
they usually manage to come out
relatively successful. I think this
phenomenon of excelling without
ever being number one — making
the podium but always scoring
bronze — is a recipe for delusion.
In
1954,
psychologist
Leon
Festinger
developed
social
comparison
theory,
which
holds
that
humans
have
an
innate
drive
to
compare themselves
with others. Within
this theory are two
types of comparison:
downward
(comparing yourself
to someone “worse”
than you to boost your
self-confidence) and
upward
(comparing
yourself to someone
“better” than you to
motivate yourself).
Festinger
had
clearly
never
met
a
University
of
Michigan student, or
at least a delusional one, because
many of us seem to do the opposite.
When
the
typical
Wolverine
doesn’t land the internship they
wanted, they don’t seriously reflect
on how much effort they put into
their résumé or if the position
was even a good fit. Instead,
they convince themselves that
they never wanted it in the first
place, or that the company isn’t
even that good, or any number of
justifications designed to protect
their sense of self. To the delusional
mind, upward social comparison
isn’t about motivation, it’s about
re-calibration. If you’re literally
incapable of comprehending that
someone might be better than
you, then you need to upwardly
adjust your perception of yourself
accordingly.
Our collective status as under-
achieving
over-achievers,
as
students of a “Public Ivy,” means
that our lives are packed with
downward and upward social
comparison.
But
constantly
comparing yourself to others and
feeling uncertain where you stand
relative to your peers can shake a
person’s sense of self. Cognitive
dissonance theory, another idea of
Leon Festinger’s, “postulates that
an underlying psychological tension
is created when an individual’s
behavior is inconsistent with his
or her thoughts and beliefs.” This
tension motivates people to adjust
their actions and beliefs to be
consistent with one another. For
example, a more psychologically
grounded student might improve
their study habits to align with their
belief that they are a successful
student.
But it seems that my fellow
delusional
Michigan
students
and I have chosen to adjust just
our beliefs. It’s easier — and more
comfortable — to overinflate your
self-perception than to genuinely
work at bettering your abilities.
Increasing your abilities means
confronting
your
actual
skill
level and trying to bridge the
gap between your constructed
and actual self. Self-delusion, on
the other hand, requires no such
negotiation.
Moreover,
positive
self-
perception can quickly become
arrogance, as evidenced by forum
posts deliberating whether or not
Michigan students are actually
“stuck
up”
and
“toxic.”
For
Michigan students, this arrogance
often stems from their inability
to see themselves clearly. Our
sky-high self confidence comes
off as delusional, arrogant and
untethered from reality.
Like the onset of my LSAT
belief, it takes only one comment,
one moment of fantasizing, to
internalize an absurd belief. Rather
than concluding that other people
have different professional goals or
aptitudes than me, I decided that I
must be equally as skilled as those
dedicated to scoring well on this
rigorous test.
In acknowledging my delusion,
I set out to see just how unrealistic
scoring a cold 180 actually was.
My LSAT delusion was not well
received by those familiar with the
test.
Law School student Ryan Comrie
began studying for the LSAT before
his senior year of college and bought
multiple test-prep materials.
Beyond gaining familiarity with
the test format, he learned that “the
time component is a huge part of
(the LSAT).” Each section is just
35 minutes, so being able to solve
problems quickly is crucial for
scoring well. “The first time that I
did a logic game, I took as long as I
needed,” he explained. “Then, the
challenge is figuring out how to do
them quickly.”
Comrie was skeptical of my
puzzle-based
strategy,
saying,
“I guess if you were really good
at puzzles, like really good, like
historically good, you could do
really well (on the LSAT) on the
first try, in that time constraint.”
He did say that my natural talent
would give me a leg up on the
logical reasoning section … if I were
to actually study.
My roommate, who is applying
to law school next year and has
taken the LSAT, put it more bluntly
in a text: “Getting a 180 on the
LSAT would be like me performing
a quadruple bypass and nailing
it because I watched ‘Grey’s
(Anatomy),’” he said.
My boyfriend let me down
the most gently. “I know you test
well,” he said. “But I think that you
thinking that you can get a perfect
score on the LSAT without any
practice is unfair to lawyers who
spend half a year studying — those
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
6 — Wednesday, April 6, 2022
S T A T E M E N T
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
LANE KIZZIAH
Statement Correspondent
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Our Uncanny Reality
Recently, I learned that the
animatronics in the “It’s a Small
World” ride at Disneyland never
turn off.
After all the park visitors go
home, all of the lights turn off; after
the music stops and the gates are
locked, the little dolls don’t stop
moving around the track. The tiny,
smiling figurines keep waving and
dancing and swinging around their
fake little lassos. In the dark. In
total silence.
In one word: scary. In three:
really fucking scary.
That sense of unease we feel
isn’t novel — it’s derived from
a phenomenon known as the
uncanny valley, a term used to
describe that eerie feeling we
get when we see something not-
quite-human. Japanese roboticist
Masahiro Mori coined the term in
1970 after realizing that the more
a robot resembled a human being,
the more empathy a person would
feel toward it. But, once it passed
a certain threshold — once the
robot looked practically identical
to a human without being quite
indistinguishable — people started
feeling unnerved.
It’s that not-quite-rightness that
makes the animation of “The Polar
Express” just a little creepy, and
sends a shiver down your spine
when you answer the phone to a
particularly
life-like
automated
voice.
Think
of
the
movie
“WALL-E” in contrast — he doesn’t
attempt to look human and in fact
looks classically robotic. So, we feel
none of the same eeriness we feel
toward the characters in “The Polar
Express.”
The animatronics in “It’s a Small
World” don’t look all that realistic.
Their bodies are fairly small, all of
their facial features are extremely
rounded and their movements are
simple and isolated — an arm going
up and down to hit a drum, hands
clapping.
What’s uncanny about them,
though, is that they continue to
perform, even when they don’t have
an audience.
I learned about the ride’s eerie
fact on Instagram — where I
consume the ultimate mix of
pictures of people I know, pictures
of people I wish I knew and loads of
useless information I’ll never have
an application for.
But the uncanny valley isn’t
restricted to animation and robots.
As technology creeps more and
more into our lives — and our lives
creep more and more into the realm
of technology — aspects of our
reality may begin to feel uncanny —
mainly social media.
Think about the act of posting on
Instagram: You craft a post aimed
at no one in particular and send it
off to a faceless mass of followers to
judge your digital footprint.
But, just like the “Small World”
ride, you have no idea whether your
online audience is there. Hundreds
of people might be looking at your
photo at any given second. Or none
might be. Either way, it becomes
part of your profile, the digital
approximation of “you.”
Just like the dolls engaged in
their ceaseless dance in California’s
Disneyland, still dancing as I’m
typing this, there is no “off” button
for our digital personas. Our digital
selves work around the clock.
I know plenty of people who
have taken “social media breaks” to
temporarily escape the pressure of
that online image. But even when
people have checked out and deleted
the app, their digital approximation
is still there. Unless they fully delete
their account, their public image
remains published, waiting to be
looked at, judged. Just like the tiny,
spinning animatronics, our profiles
are always performing, regardless
of whether or not anyone’s there.
Still, this reality doesn’t give
me the same chills as poorly done
CGI or hyper-realistic baby
dolls. If social media
functions in a
way much similar
to the characters
in the “It’s a Small
World” ride, why doesn’t it feel as
unsettling?
Maybe it’s because we’re able to
distinguish between social media
and real life fairly easily. I cannot
count the number of times I’ve
read or heard something telling
me not to trust the things I see on
social media. It’s a highlight reel.
It’s touched up. It’s a competition
to see who has the most friends,
whose life is the most aesthetically
pleasing, who looked the best on
Spring Break.
Or, maybe, social media has
become so entrenched in our
perception of reality that it’s
become
indistinguishable
from
real life. While in the past, we
could always see the unsettling
delineation between social media
and reality, we’ve evolved past the
awareness of the uncanny valley.
There’s a calculated casualness to
our social media presence — photo
dumps and seemingly random
posts aimed at making our profiles
reflect a beautiful life.
In the throes of the pandemic,
I used to do YouTube workout
classes made by an Australian
influencer named Chloe Ting.
She had the most defined abs I’ve
ever seen, but there was always
some indefinable quality about
her that felt off. People heard that
she was a robot or an animation
or some kind of AI. But, in a video
titled “Answering Your
Assumptions
About
Me,” she addresses the
rumor, claiming to be real.
Still, it wouldn’t have been all
that surprising if she wasn’t. Lil
Miquela, “19-year-old Robot,” has
racked up over 3 million followers
as a CGI influencer. Her account,
which started in 2016, features
hyper-realistic photos of her taking
trips to Los Angeles, getting ice
cream and reading. She posted
a picture last month wearing
sweatpants that say “I (heart) real
life.”
The funny thing is that, as
someone who interacts with the
two influencers only on social
media, their robotic status does
not dictate the ways I interact
with them online. I consume their
content in the same way I consume
a real person’s. I see the things on
their profiles that they — or in the
case of Lil Miquela, her creators
— want me to see. I have my own
perception of who each of them is,
even though one of them doesn’t
exist in a human sense.
Even though one is decidedly
real and the other not, they occupy
the same space for me as a viewer.
As someone who’s never going
to meet either in real life, their
online personas are my only point
of reference. It doesn’t matter to
me whether they’re out walking
around in the world or not, because
their profiles are always up, proof
of their existence. Does a physical
footprint
mean
much
when
our
digital
ones
can cover so much more ground
for longer, even infinite, periods of
time?
20 — or even 10 — years ago,
questions like this would be
nonsensical.
Gen Z has been around since
the very start of social media. The
first recognizable social media site,
called Six Degrees, was created
in 1997. MySpace launched in
2003. Facebook came out in 2004.
Twitter followed in 2006. In both
their design and function, the
original social media sites served
an entirely different purpose than
they do today.
I
remember
when
I
first
downloaded Instagram in 2012,
about two years after the app first
came out. I was finishing sixth
grade, and the first thing I posted
was an oversaturated picture of a
Pez dispenser shaped like Ferb from
“Phineas and Ferb.” I think my next
photo was posted later that same
day (there weren’t yet any rules
advising against multiple posts):
me, standing in my
kitchen wearing my
outfit for the last day
of school. Also heavily
edited.
Before
Instagram
became widely used enough
to spawn its own conventions
— ideas of what’s an acceptable
number
of
likes,
what
your
followers-to-following ratio should
be, how frequently you should
or shouldn’t be posting — there
wasn’t much stake in what was on
your profile. Instagram was more
of a mindless game and less of a
projection of one’s entire essence,
or what they wish their essence
was.
While this was the origin of our
never-ending performance, it didn’t
resemble reality enough to fall
under the uncanny valley. No one
could mistake my Pez-dispenser
post as an approximation of my
real life. It was an online forum to
display what you were up to and the
kinds of things you liked, not who
you were at your core.
Now it feels like the things we
post have some sort of bearing on
who we are in “real life.” Posting is
no longer a way to tell people what
you’re doing but to curate a certain
brand or aesthetic.
Delusional logic: My puzzle-based
LSAT strategy
HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Columnist
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