Turns out that things in this world don’t happen quite fast enough for a 24 hr news cycle. As a result we spend a great deal of time listening to talking heads speculate on what might happen based on evidence that is far from substantial. I absolutely believe that speculation is what creates the environment for information to be so blatantly aligned to one belief system or another. In the absence of actual news and information we speculate on everything. We speculate on what the President is thinking. We speculate on what the stock market might do. We speculate on what athletes will be drafted in which order and who will be good and who will not.
All of this speculation is built upon so-called expert testimony from people whose proximity and experience are supposed to make them better guessers than we are. In truth they are reflecting on what they would do and have no natural idea of what the people themselves would do. We aren’t dealing with criminal profilers here. We are often dealing with people who had a the same or similar job or once found themselves in a similar situation. The fact that we call them experts doesn’t mean they are doing more than speculating on what might be.
Nowadays we expect the answers and expect resolution so quickly that we are no longer willing to wait for things to unfold in time. Instead we rely on the speculation about what could be to drive our understanding and create our truth.