The futuristic film The Minority Report features Tom Cruise as the head of the PreCrime division. The division has the technology to determine ahead of time whether someone is about to commit a crime. The division’s patrolmen assemble at the location when the crime is expected to occur to arrest the “perpetrator.” Tom Cruise’s character (and the general population) have full faith in the system. His beliefs reach an impasse when the technology predicts that he will — within 36 hours — murder a man named Leo Crow, whom he does not know. Upon hearing the prediction, he bolts — truly believing that he is not capable of murder.

At the introduction of the film, Tom Cruise’s character is revealed to have had a young son who was abducted or murdered years ago. This traumatic event tortures him subconsciously. As the plot progresses, he does encounter Leo Crow at Leo’s place of residence. He sees photos of his son at his residence and “connects the dots.” This triggers him into a fit of rage, and he is on the verge of committing murder — until he manages to consciously will himself to not …

Introduction

Everyone has complex ideas in their mind. Sometimes they want to share their ideas. Other times they want to persuade others their point of view. For elaborate thoughts, the written form is the most efficient and effective form of communication at present.

The corollary procedure — reading — is far more complex than what most people imagine. When a writer transcribes their ideas into text, there is abundant room for misinterpretation. Most people have experienced this ample times in their life — perhaps even daily if they look hard enough. This article is not about misinterpretation of facts. It’s about how The Gutter is used to reverse the course of a natural tendency.

The purpose of the story above is to highlight a few concepts that you are already intuitively familiar with. The first is how certain factors — when present — lead to a particular action. It’s analogous to a very basic stimulus–response model. The second is that sometimes it is possible to break the inevitable chain of events, at enormous pressure to your “will–power,” in order to reach a rationally more beneficial outcome.

An analogous phenomenon can occur when reading. It is possible to subconsciously allow passion and prejudices to get in the way of processing information rationally. It can also cloud the reader from interpreting the text from the writer’s point-of-view. This can be just as serious, as it curtails the reader from fairly fulfilling their ethical duty to interpret the writer’s ideas in the “best possible light.”

The Gutter is a tool to facilitate a conscious reversal of the reader’s natural tendency to misinterpret the writer’s ideas or intention. It consists of (usually) 3 vertical strips that run alongside the text. It is used as an extra-verbal signal from the writer to the reader to be more attentive. Alternatively, due to the substance of the section, it encourages the reader to consciously activate their “reverse-gear.”

The three vertical strips represent logical complexity, pressure on model and offensiveness. In practice, the vertical strips are usually merged to form one strip prior to a final rendering on screen. A real-world example of its usage can be viewed here.

Logical Complexity

Most people have different reading speeds in different contexts. Studies have shown that the reading speed for learning is significantly slower than reading for comprehension, which is itself significantly slower than skim-reading speeds. Usually, faster reading leads to a decline in comprehension.

Through life experiences, most people have calibrated their reading speed for different types of material. Most people would read a newspaper at a different speed to reading an email. The issue lies in the categorization process. The cues used to determine the context is very crudely defined by the subconscious, despite perhaps being accurate on aggregate.

For this reason, The Gutter can be used to signify that a particular section or passage should be deemed an exception relative to the text as a whole. It allows the writer to convey that the section is more logically complicated than average, despite not being noticeably so. This invites the reader to potentially “stop and think,” rather than powering-through.

Model Pressure and Counter Intuition

A model is one’s understanding of a particular topic or subject matter. Amongst other things, it encompasses how it works and expectations of how it functions (it being the system that makes up the subject matter). Usually, for a given topic, the model is underpinned by numerous “paradigm–examples.” A paradigm–example is one that is by fiat considered unshakably true and correct by the reader’s subconscious. This causes numerous challenges to the writer because typically any attempt to argue otherwise will immediately lose credibility.

As an example, if I were to present a mathematical and astronomical case that the world was not round, I would immediately lose credibility even before the reader processed the content of my argument. If we rewound the clock 600 years and attempted to prove the contrary statement, we would again be met with similar resistance.

Intuition, on the other hand, is based on simple logical conclusions that derive from paradigm–examples. They are usually 1–2 hops of logical reasoning away from the paradigm–example.

Regardless of whether the writer is challenging a paradigm–example or the reader’s intuition, the final result is the same. The writer’s credibility will be devalued, and any logical deductions made that are inconsistent will be a moot point.

The Gutter can be used to signify or warn the reader that a particular section or passage will be counter-intuitive. This has three effects:

1. It acknowledges that the writer potentially understands the reader’s model.
2. It challenges the reader to be open-minded.
3. It invites the reader to adopt the writer’s perspective temporarily.

Although The Gutter assumes a typical model of the typical target audience, this can be improved upon in The Future. For information about the special-case mass model, see here.

Offensiveness

If the writer’s piece contains sections that are offensive, then it is wise to brace the reader beforehand. A philosophical discussion on the concept of offensiveness, and a comprehensive exploration of the objective factors that cause offense are outside the scope of this article. One obvious factor is whether the reader infers that the writer intends to offend.

The Gutter can be used to mitigate this concern. Most readers will appreciate the warning. Highlighting that a section is potentially offensive may temporarily “open the reader’s mind.”

The Future

Currently, The Gutter is used as a mechanism for the writer to signal to the reader that they should consciously activate their “reverse-gear.” This process of placing the shading of the strips is subjective, but in theory, it need not be.

In the future, with advancements in machine-learning algorithms, the strips could be objectively placed by computer systems.

Algorithms could analyze the concepts discussed in the text and objectively determine their logical complexity. There is already research in progress in applying algorithms to legal cases in order to determine an individual judge’s intellectual threshold for logical reasoning.

The publication hosting the writer’s work could also have sufficient data on the reader to infer their model on the particular subject matter. It could be obtained covertly or with the reader’s consent, perhaps by questionnaire. This information can then be used to dynamically generate a customized Gutter.

Conclusion

The Gutter is available to journalists, academics and bloggers. It is designed to be simple to use with minimal setup or configuration. It is also Hugo compatible. It can be placed to the left or right of your text and can mark a single sentence, or a range of sentences centered about a particular key sentence.

The documentation can be found here. An example of real-world usage can be found here.