As a Political Science major, I analyze a lot of things: court cases, government policies, rulings, news reports--the list goes on and on. In drafting an earlier article for Odyssey, I wondered if maybe I overanalyze. With analytics in my brain, it often gets to the roots of my own ideas. And it isn't just me; the entire world analyzes every expression and every gesture. Media analyzes every aspect of every speech imaginable. Critics harp and pick apart every piece of work done by artists. People analyze Facebook posts all the time. In this train of thought, I scrapped my article and I raise the following question: is overanalyzing good or bad?
I start by looking at overanalyzing in a sense of overreading. Everything can be overread and interpreted in a variety of ways.
Let's look at a simple phrase that someone may post (for the sake of this example, this is a generated post and not an actual published post).
Now to me, this can be read as one of two ways. One: it can be an optimistic post about genuinely having a good day. A second way it can be read is that someone had a bad day yesterday and hopes for a better one today. If one can take a serious analytical approach and can actually identify John's feelings, he may feel really depressed and is trying to hide it. People can analyze this to mean whatever they want it to be meant. Nobody will actually know.
An ideal example of overanalysis in recent weeks has been this famous tweet by President Donald Trump:
While at the gym, I saw four different news sources giving their own opinions on this tweet. Democrats and Republicans alike have tried to figure out what this means. Is it Russian? Is it a typo? Is it a secret code? Nobody has the answer and so many questions spawn from it. Overanalyzing has caused a frenzy in the political world. Even if this has a solution, the responses will be analyzed as well. Nothing has a straightforward response.
In the two examples mentioned above, this shows how overanalyzing is prevalent with overreading. We look forward to hearing reactions from comedians on the internet, but we hear so many responses on the same issues. It becomes too much and often overwhelming. The world overanalyzes everything and that is a problem.
I have mentioned two ideas of overanalyzing in the negative sense and reading too much into things. Where can analyzing be a good thing? People use analytics for good. Overanalyzing can be used to detect hidden bits of information. Look at this map for example:
This is an HDI map of 2017. It shows the amount of development of countries compared to the rest of the world. While this may not be as relatable to the article, this shows an example of positive overanalyzing. It looks at all different numbers and overanalyzes them to create a positive result and possibly work its number into future studies and ideas.
So I refer to the original question: is overanalysis a good thing or bad thing? The answer is really debatable. Yes, humans overread everything and overanalyze every detail of life. But sometimes, it can be a good thing as it can lead into future developments.
Or am I overanalyzing too much into this?
