You are probably aware of the “observer effect” – the principle that by observing something, one changes its behavior. To see an electron, one has to bounce a proton off of it, and that changes the behavior of the electron. The implication of this principle is that one cannot observe something in its “natural” state.
The “observer effect” is often conflated with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which it closely resembles, but the two are not the same. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is more specific to particles, and states that there is a tradeoff between precision in observation of location and observation of momentum. Not that the observation itself is altering the particle’s behavior.
Anyhow, I’m talking about the observer effect. And I was thinking that it would be very useful to have another, related idea (with a catchy name) about how acting upon something – of which observation is a subset - also changes the actor.
The station this train of thought pulled out of was my son’s daycare. I was contemplating taking a day off to spend some time at the day care, watching my boy and seeing how the daycare ran things. Not so much to make sure they weren’t beating him or teaching him Conservatism or anything but to learn some tricks for child-rearing from professionals and to watch how he behaves when I’m not there.
Which, of course, couldn’t happen, because I would be there. The observer effect at work. The daycare center we send him to doesn’t have much in the way of one-way glass. And of course if I’m there, he will want to interact with me; I’d certainly not be able to restrain myself from interacting with him. (Playing, at least. The daycare people can still take care of the diapers.) And even if I could, he’d know I was there and probably act differently because of that.
But the one-way glass had me thinking; were I able to watch him, through a remote camera, say, that might not change his behavior but might instead change mine. And unlike the observer effect, I don’t know of a snappy term for that phenomenon.
Nietzsche, of course, put it very forebodingly in Beyond Good and Evil: “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” But I don’t think one even need quantify the statement with the adjective “long”. The understanding of the existence of the abyss alone is enough to affect the gazer.
To put in modern political perspective: how is Iraq affecting America? We are quite clearly the actor – had we not taken action upon Iraq, nothing would have happened. And the effects on Iraq are obvious (some are subtle but many are perfectly clear).
But what of the effects on the actor? The Iraq war, the lies it was based upon, the shameful by-the-nose groupthink that supported it, the sheer incompetence of the execution, the effects upon opinions and attitudes that will linger for years – clearly the actor in this farce has been affected by it, too.
What do you call that?
As compared to, say, the invasion of Grenada. Or the removal of Manuel Noriega. The ramifications of those actions upon the actee were significant, but upon the actor barely perceptible.
I’d suggest calling it the “actor effect”, except that sounds like a new bodyspray. Ideas?
- Sun Ra