Context Matters

Knowledge is not a series of random, isolated ideas. Knowledge is, as Leonard Peikoff puts it, “an organization or integration of interconnected elements, each relevant to the others.” That integration is the context, and context matters.

If we fail to consider all of the relevant facts we are guilty of dropping context. Important information does not enter into our evaluation. We will attempt to make a good decision while ignoring facts that could enlighten us. When we drop context, bad decisions are almost guaranteed to follow. If we look at issues in isolation, we may make policy decisions in one area that has a detrimental impact in another. Considering the full context means connecting and integrating all of the facts issues pertaining to the topic we are considering.

Dropping Context

As an example of dropping context, many tenants and housing advocates loudly proclaim that “the rent is too damn high.” To illustrate this point, one housing advocate wrote, “In 2019, Zillow recently reported, Los Angeles renters paid landlords a whopping $39.1 billion. In San Francisco and San Diego, renters shelled out $16.4 billion and $10.3 billion, respectively, to landlords. It’s no wonder that California’s housing affordability and homelessness crises haven’t improved.”

The author implies that those numbers explain the high cost of housing. But the amounts paid for rent are only a small part of the context. There are many other factors that are a part of the context, and the failure to identify and consider them can lead to erroneous conclusions. As a small part of the context, in 2019 the median rent in Los Angeles County was $1,577 and the median income was $68,000. A renter making the median income and paying the median rent would spend just 28 percent of his income on housing. This is within the range that is considered affordable and presents a much different picture than the raw numbers.

Granted, these numbers are medians, tell us nothing about specific individuals, and are not the full context. The point here is that when context is dropped the conclusions that we reach will be misleading. The full context matters, and if we want to make wise choices, then we must continually consider the full context.

Context requires Effort

It isn’t easy to identify and consider the full context. It takes effort, and that effort isn’t automatic. One must consciously choose to identify all of the related issues and all of the relevant information, and then one must engage in the effort to discover that information and integrate it. In doing so, one can’t start with a preconceived conclusion that one wants to find evidence to support. One must look at the evidence and then draw conclusions based on the evidence. In a court of law, justice demands that one must consider all of the evidence and nothing but the evidence. We must do the same when considering any public policy.