The word ambiguous is an adjective that relates to something and has more than one meaning or possibility.

In other words, what is being said or done can be interpreted or understood in more than one way.

So, can we say that we live in an ambiguous world?

I think so! After all, the eclectic notion that there can exist many different meanings and interpretations simultaneously is what creates this diverse human experience. We see it in the business world, in our personal lives and in the arts especially. As creative beings and problem solvers simultaneously, we interact and relate in ambiguous terms and expressions.

Take for example, the arts. This is a necessary part of human evolution and perception/interpretation of our world and human experience. We see it in literature, music and in the visual arts.

And beyond the surface of this ambiguity, lies a deeper aspect as we are also taking in mass amounts of information and ideas all at once while simultaneously parsing these pieces into an individual perception necessary to function and survive. However, we can all have different experiences which further lend to the ambiguity of life.

Are things always as they seem and do we always see the full and complete picture? What is true and what is false? Who is right and who is wrong?

Some examples of 'ambiguous art' I thought perfectly reflects this:

Young or Old?

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Duck or Rabbit?

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Interestingly enough, in approaching the modern age, we find that ambiguity begins playing a more important role in helping us express ideas and emotion. It has morphed into our daily lives in less obvious and direct ways. Perhaps, even in ways we are not sure of ourselves how to express.

To exemplify this, with the advent of the 20th century, we witnessed a stark transition in the art world as a reflection of this. Artists moved away from representational art, which aimed to represent a depiction of a visual reality to a more ambiguous form of expression such as Orphism, Suprematism, Neoplasticism, Optical art and most prominently Abstract Expressionism

Talk about AMBIGUITY! Yet, somehow this new concept in ambiguous art was very compelling because it spoke to the inner perception rather than the outer - a new way of looking at life and the world through perception and interpretation with unlimited possibilities.

A humorous little 'digression':

I'll never forget a few years ago visiting the Joan Miro exhibit, the curator of the gallery asked our group of kids what they thought Miro was saying with this painting. Having spent the last hour viewing a life's work of vividly painted abstracts of primary colors, THIS painting was simply a black, jagged line across a stark white, VERY LARGE, canvas. My youngest child raised his hand with a big smile on his face (clearly knowing the answer) as the curator pointed to him with curious excitement, "Yes?!" And my child said....."I think it was the end of his life and he just ran out of paint!"

The point of the above digression is to add that our perception and interpretations of ambiguous ideas and concepts also reflect our life experience, body of knowledge, emotions, history, environment, culture. We gather the available information we have and apply it to our life experience. A child's perspective would be different than an adult's perspective.

All this plays into what we see and interpret and what we see or in the next example 'don't see'.

An interesting experiment done in the 70's

In this experiment, participants were asked to count the number of basketball passes. Incredibly, half missed seeing the man in the gorilla suit. This experiment highlights our ability to concentrate on a specific goal of reasoning which allows us to concentrate on a particular task (counting passes) excluding all other distraction but when asked an 'open question' like, "What do you see?" the end result is a much broader visual scope of perception. In this case, people spotted the gorilla more easily when asked an open question.

Hmmmm

Yes, the mind is an interesting place to inhabit.

And while ambiguity is often considered a negative state, we have to take into account that it is not only a necessary part of the human experience but it is also a reflection of this very complex open system of this thing we call life - which is ever changing depending on what we can evaluate and see. The world can be understood and anticipated only 'sometimes' and in different ways. Life, by its very nature (created by us), is ambiguous.

Of course, all ambiguity all the time is just not fun. We do require a bit of balance in the mix in order to have some organization and forethought. We have to be able to throw ourselves into the future and compare what is known to what is possible (ambiguous).

Balance allows us to take a break from exclusive thinking into the realm of organized 'outside of the box' thinking.

It is in this “both/and” world of ambiguity that we progress instead of stagnate. It is through this exploration of both these complex and novel states of mind that new opportunities for engaging each other and our world emerges.

Going a bit deeper, we can even interpret ourselves as ambiguous in that we have an 'inner' and 'outer' world view simultaneously which is always perceiving and interpreting. These two intersecting perspectives exist as we are both living among others in the world and at the same time living from the originating source which is our own inner world. Are we not ambiguous by our very nature then?

Along these lines, I had to do a little research deeper on the topic and I ran across a very interesting philosopher named Maurice Merleau-Ponty (known as the philosopher of human ambiguity! Perfect!). I won't go into his body of work in this article as I have yet to dive in fully myself, but I would like to share one profound interpretation he makes in human ambiguity:

He states that we are both 'visible (are seen) but we are also invisible (because we see). In other words, the visible is seen and the invisible is seeing.

The wonderful thing about language is that it promotes its own oblivion: my eyes follow the lines on the paper, and from the moment I am caught up in their meaning, I lose sight of them.
— Maurice Merleau Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

I think we are meant to never stay in one place of thought for too long.

My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be reached, since it would be one more moment bounded by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn, further developments in order to be understood. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

Unlike much of the general study of psychology today, Ponty's view of the human experience and our perception of the world is overlapping with a much deeper and richer complexity of understanding intermingling with consciousness itself. We are not merely subjective but objective as well.

That being said, our modern world and the rush to advance technology has created additional complexities and perhaps even misguided pursuits in order to create a less ambiguous world in which we can control and predict more easily future outcomes.

This, of course, opens up a pandora's box of rather intrinsic concerns.

One of the main areas in which technology is being guided is utilizing artificial intelligence to automatically guide human perception based on what has been accumulated using meta data gathered along with decades of behavioral and social sciences studies and research.

Are we really that simple? Nah! Remember, we are ambiguous! Ambiguous is good!

As it turns out, there's a little glitch in the artificial intelligence field.

Behold the culprit!

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e·mo·ji (/ēˈmōjē/) - Noun

[a small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc.]

The wonderful ambiguity of the common emoji! Those little ambiguous, sometimes misinterpreted, emotional supplements to our thoughts and communications. They simply throw a wrench in the AI computer's data collection. Why? Because computers are subjective and don't have the amazing capacity to feel and objectively interpret ambiguous emotion for all their possible variations. Nor do they have the capacity to predict our unique ambiguous reactions and thoughts that create our inner and outer ambiguous world. Yes, cognitive scientists in AI, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, or theoretical linguistics seem to be having quite a difficult time translating this modern form of cartoon-like hieroglyphics.

In fact, the University of Minnesota has begun emoji research. No, I'm not making that up and you didn't misinterpret my words.
Emoji research is serious research!

According to Dr. Brent Hecht (Advisor for the emoji research):

It’s not just human interaction this research could potentially impact. The ambiguity of emoji also raises an interesting question as to how computers can learn to communicate: If people don’t have a concise understanding of what emoji mean, how can we train artificial intelligence to recognize and use emoji in conversation?

He is also right in that we ourselves often misinterpret each other's emoji speak. This was made very clear in Hannah Miller's research and article, “Blissfully happy” or “ready to fight”: Varying Interpretations of Emoji

A study done in 2006 showed flaws in digital communication regarding sarcasm and humor especially. Thirty pairs of students sent 20 emails in a sarcastic or serious tone. While senders mostly expected the recipients to correctly interpret the tone of the email, recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time. Source

The reason for this seems to be that Emoji usage falls into two categories of interpretation: in addition to intending to communicate meaning, they also require perceptual interpretation to derive meaning.

According to Hannah Miller, "researchers barely scratched the surface on the potential for emoji research." She wants to expand the study to include "cross-cultural emoji use and how emoji meanings can vary in different geographic and demographic areas."

Another aspect to emoji interpretation lies in the diverse cultural and demographic component when we are exchanging ideas and emotions across the world. We are learning this new way of communicating with one another, but don't always have the same reactionary or emotional patterns.

So in a world where much of our day is now interlaced with communicating through short and hastily composed messages without facial expressions and hand gestures, it's easy to see why emojis have become so popular. They do help us convey those subtleties of in-person communication by adding back into the conversation the human element. Of what makes us human.