On other paths and in other skills, the names of those who are good at their own skills come to be known to people. However, this path of the shinobi is different from other arts; those who are known as good are only medium-grade ninja and are not as accomplished as shinobi no mono.

– Bansenshukai

Studies have persuasively shown that the greater the ambiguity in what is being measured, the greater the resulting biases in comparative judgments.

– When Good = Better than Average

Attention is to direct resources towards an object which may or may not be capable of flight. Such resources could be cognitive, emotional or physical, individually or in some combination. Attention can be a good thing or a very bad thing. Attention is imbued with some intentional force. Attention imbued with a negative quality could become harassment.

In Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett, the following conversation occurs between Sergeant Jackrum and Maladict (better reproduced in part than rephrased):

Sergeant Jackrum (looking at Maladict who has a sword): You any good with that?
Maladict: Not really, sir. Never had training. I carry it for protection.

At this point, Sergeant Jackrum asks a most insightful question. He was de jure leader and some de jure leaders feel compelled to convince they are better through display of some superior quality.

Sergeant Jackrum: How can you protect yourself if you don’t know how to use it?

Poor Maladict wonders if he should contradict his leader and tries his luck with tact, hoping the superior even if not superior would be content not to press the latter with the matter.

Maladict: Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me.

The sergeant sees the opportunity for Omoplata and seizes it post haste.

Sergeant Jackrum: Yes, but if they did lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it.

Faced with such an incisive observation, Maladict should have smiled sheepishly and ingratiated himself. He might have done so if he was like everyone else. Then again, if he was everyone else, he would have trained with the sword. Why did he not despite knowing he needed a weapon?

A blunt sword may not be effective. Without training, a sharp sword is also not effective. This much was obvious to the sergeant. That this would have been obvious to just about anyone else, though, was not obvious to him. There could be two reasons why the sergeant persisted in his approach. He could have esteemed himself too highly or Maladict too lowly.

Placed in an invidious position, Maladict opts for the safest route; to state it as it is.

Maladict: I’m a vampire. I’d probably rip their head off, sir. That’s what I meant. It’s for their protection, not mine.

Maladict was trying to be inconspicuous by carrying a large sword around. In nature, wisdom recommends blending in. Animals which are salient are usually very poisonous if not venomous. This is known as aposematism; “Warning signals” which “manipulate predator foraging behaviour by sending a signal, which can be a distinctive colour, odour or behaviour, to the predator that the prey is unprofitable” (Mappes et al., 2005).

Some predators get the hint too well. Mappes and others (2005) add, “by sending conspicuous signals, prey also increase their own risk of damage or death” if the predator,

a) is immune
b) has forgotten association between signal and cost
c) is naïve (like Sergeant Jackrum)

We could add that the signals themselves could attract rather than repel a predator if its predator status is plain for all to see. In such circumstances, knowing full well that every other animal would avoid it, the creature would relish what to its mind is a challenge issued. The challenge helps the predator feel alive. This is an issue of crossed signals. What in fact should have been an obvious, “Find someone else” becomes “Come get me”. This is most unfortunate.

In Chapter 4 of Zhuangzi, a carpenter, Shi went to Qi with his apprentice. The apprentice stopped to gawk at “a serrate oak standing by the village shrine”, “broad enough to shelter several hundred oxen, and measured a hundred spans around, towering above the hills”. When Shi carried on with nary a glance, the apprentice is distressed and blurts out, “Master, I have never seen timber as beautiful as this. But you don’t even bother …”.

Shi explains not without some exasperation, “It’s a worthless tree!” and “It’s not a timber tree – there’s nothing it can be used for. That’s how it got to be so old”. This tree later appeared in the carpenter’s dream and revealed, “The cherry apple, the pear, the orange, the citron and the rest of the fructiferous trees and shrubs – as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse. Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs yanked around. Their utility makes life miserable for them…They bring it on themselves – the pulling and tearing of the common mob”.

The conclusion of this passage was it is sometimes not very clever to be useful or saliently so.

In what used to be the World Wrestling Federation, Shawn Michaels was as flashy as they came. In 1995, he got a shot at the Championship title though he was as yet not one of the more well-known contenders. To allow for equitable distribution of opportunity and to subject those hiding snugly behind a fortress of privileges which cannot be earned to the redistributing power of randomness, ordinary wrestlers were given a chance to leapfrog or slam their way to the good life.

The Royal Rumble was this chance. It begins with a single wrestler entering the ring. At standard intervals, a new wrestler would enter the ring. There is a total of 30 wrestlers. The last man standing wins the Royal Rumble and gets a title match. The last one to enter would be in the most advantageous position and the first one most disadvantageous.

Shawn Michaels won the Royal Rumble. He also made history by being the first wrestler to have done so having entered the ring first. He did this by hiding. Every single time there was a fray, he avoided it. He could be seen resting in some rare empty space in a very crowded ring as much as possible. The only times he deigned to fight were when he had to disengage an attacker. He waited till the last possible moment to expend himself and only made the effort when it counted most.

When an Iga warrior was asked for the names of the eleven masters of in-nin, he provided a list of names. He qualified this list by adding the highest-level Shinobi “look like ordinary people” – there was no list for such. When Yan He asked Ju Boyu for advice on how to deal with a difficult person, the latter said, “Be careful, be on your guard! If you offend him with your store of talents, you will be in danger”.

There are several reasons why it is better to not stand out in any way or to be as ordinary as necessary. Ordinary is not the same thing as plain; it is being the same or useless, at least plainly. We have seen two. Firstly, no predator would be attracted by a challenge. Secondly, no one would think of abusing a useless tree.

There are at least two other reasons. It is difficult to handle positive emotional responses. Saliently positive qualities attract criticism.

Even when the viewing entity has no predatorial or exploitative intention, it has been found that it is difficult to simply appreciate salience. Salience evokes positive emotions and the more remarkable something is in relation to its environment the greater the emotional response.

Aragon and others (2015) found that it is difficult to process a flood of positive emotions and that this would cause panic in the brain. “Overwhelming” positive emotions could trigger either an instinct to conquer or to nurture. Both require drawn out commitment. This is costly in attentional terms.

To “regulate positive emotions” people exhibit, “dimorphous expressions” (Aragon et al., 2015). Dimorphous expressions are negative reactions to positive feelings and vice versa. This is when someone feels like plucking a flower, leaving the environment and the brain balanced again.

People would react negatively especially when they evaluate something positively for another reason; “to give important events the appropriate gravitas” (Aragon et al., 2015). In Asian culture, if someone is salient in some way, they could be ignored so such salience does not get to the head. This is done with good intention though it can be bewildering to those who depend on affirmation of caregivers.

The other more self-preserving and less allocentric reason for negative reactions to positive evaluations is to convince oneself that commitment of resources is not necessary. In this paradigm, one would go all out to find any reason to disqualify something. This is based on loss aversion. By creating evidence of some flaw, one convinces oneself there has been no loss sustained.

Someone salient is more likely to be put down or repeatedly challenged, either with good intention or an egocentric one. Such a person could find themselves trying to qualify for a prize which cannot be won or does not exist.

Moore (2007) writes about how people tend to compare themselves to some notion of average; better-than-average (BTA) and worse-than-average (WTA). He shows how people evaluate themselves BTA on easy tasks and WTA on hard tasks and how this self-evaluation is often wrong.

He says the reason for inaccurate self-evaluations is “conflation” which is “the error of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one”. Self-evaluations were often wrong because people, “routinely conflate absolute and relative evaluation with each other when making comparative judgements”.

Absolute self-evaluations need to be accurate because objectivity from others is an ideal. With accurate self-reflections, one can grow or bloom quietly without interference from over-concerned or overwhelmed others. Even positive comparative evaluations from others are problematic.

If predatorial, exploitative, overwhelmed or concerned others view someone or something as BTA, too much attention can be a bad thing. If concerned others view someone or something as WTA, too much attention can be a bad thing.

It is very easy to come across BTA or WTA and very hard to come across completely average. Only by giving the appearance of average can one have a shot at something more.

To avoid unwanted attention, it’s good to be mean.

The Brain Dojo