I spent a few minutes this afternoon trying to figure out if there is ever an instance where a false signal is better than no signal at all. I couldn’t think of any.
(I asked Ana, and she couldn’t either. In fact, she’s been waiting all week for a call from a prospective employer and she was quite sure that she’d rather continue waiting than be lied to about her getting the job.)
An hour later I decided that my question was flawed. No signal is a kind of signal and one of three that can be ranked, from most to least desirable:
1) true signal
2) no signal
3) false signal
This sounds pretty abstract but it’s a common preoccupation. For example, New Edition’s song “Mr. Telephone Man”:
Mr. Telephone man
There’s something wrong with my line,
When I dial my baby’s number
I get a click everytime
The narrator is willfully misreading a true signal (click) as a false signal (she can’t really be hanging up on him) and brings in a third party to entertain the possibility that there’s no signal (something is wrong with his line.)
In missing persons dramas on TV, grieving family members are often presented with a similar choice: they can accept a likely false signal — the discovery of unidentifiable remains — or they can stay in a state of indeterminacy with no sign of their missing loved one.
This may be a false choice as both options have the same outcome: keeping the case open.
“I’d rather believe a lie than not know” is a bit of a paradox. If you believe you’re being lied to, you know the truth of the matter is otherwise. Accepting a possible lie is a way to postpone the conclusion. It’s a way to bury the hope that one day the lie will be exposed by the arrival of the truth. What is presented as a way to “get closure,” is in fact quite the opposite. It’s a way to secretly keep the case open.
So why not just accept the lack of a sign? What’s so bad about no signal? Like the Telephone Man in the New Edition song, the families in missing persons dramas turn to a third party, the police, to establish the truth. Perhaps, it’s just too disappointing to accept that these arbiters of truth are unable to solve the case?
The worst possible outcome then is for the police to conclude there’s no signal. For order to be maintained, someone must know. Thus, the family member who accepts the possible lie is helping the police save face.
I should revise my list then: a true signal is better than no signal which is better than a false signal which is better than no signal is possible.
Nothing is worse than the possibility that something is unknowable.