Elevators, Completeness, and Divinity: Musing on the theory of learning

I had finally completed my workout for the day and traversed my regular route, heading towards the elevator, down to the ground floor, then out the front doors. It was the moment I headed to the elevator and clicked the bottom arrow that a musing I had maintained resurfaced in my mind.

I recall creating an amusing theory regarding people and how they behave with elevators. I had devised that, say an elevator was on the 10th floor, and said individual was on the 5th floor with the intention of heading up, clicked the bottom arrow, they did so to “summon” the elevator from where it is to where they are. Thus my theory was stipulated as so:

“Individuals who exhibit the aforementioned behavior with elevators, tend to possess a controlling nature”.

Undoubtedly, the grounds on which such a theory was formed was merely an observation followed by a seemingly selected conclusion pertaining to a certain domain, psychology for instance.

While waiting for the elevator and having recalled the trivial theory, I recognized an error I had unmistakably made. The theory jumped to an unfounded conclusion, whilst a more founded one with a firmer grip on a more definite logical conclusion was so obviously in sight. In fact, the jump characterized a general flaw that seeps through thinking in a plethora of ways; ultimately resulting in a more or less far-fetched conclusion. Whilst In forming my theory I had jumped, and missed an imperative logical step which may be of more clarity than the initial theory.

I had overlooked the true maxim. Which is the following, people who exhibit such behavior had undergone these sequential steps:

a) collected information regarding the current floor of the elevator

b) performed a mathematical relation between the floor they were currently on and the initial floor of the elevator

c) clicked the direction accordingly, summoning it to them

In light of this, suppose I were to draw a theory from this observation it would be as follows:

“People who direct the elevator to their floor tend to be calculating individuals, thus are more analytical in nature”.