Yes! Well, sometimes. In this essay I argue that it may be rational for an individual to epistemically insulate themselves from evidence that might dissuade them from a course of action in pursuing a desired, possible world-state, in the aim that the additional resources from the reduced deliberation costs will allow them to achieve their goal. As a result, it may be rational to hope, even in the face of all hope seeming lost. I approach this question by breaking the titular question down into several smaller questions. Firstly, I consider by what means we understand the “Should” of the question, and present that I analyse the question in terms of Humean instrumental rationality. The question, I then put forth, presupposes an active element to hope and as a result I discuss what model of hope we ought to endorse, settling on a compound model of end-setting hopes (Martin, 2014b, 64), in which hoping involves a belief a world state p is possible, a desire to make p actual, and a forward orientation towards actualising p . After defining what we mean by ‘hoping’, I then move to what we might mean by ‘giving up’, presenting that we mean a switching from an aimed at world-state, to another. Having defined what is meant by hoping and giving up, we are now in a position to argue when either is appropriate. I consider Victoria McGeer’s (2004, 111) analysis of wishful and wilful hope, and argue that while the profiles she presents are certainly plausible, their ontological format means that they are of little help for an agent concerned with whether their current hope is or too sensitive or insensitive to evidence. In an attempt to provide some strategy, I argue that it may be rational for individuals to epistemically insulate themselves from further signals in situations in which they stand to gain from the increase in resources coming from limiting further deliberation. Total epistemic insulation, I argue, is dangerous, and individuals who do so ‘drink from the Devil’s chalice’ in that they maximise their chances of success if their desired world-state is possible, because they will be insensitive to evidence that suggests they should give their hope up. However, such individuals will be flying without a parachute, will not be sensitive to signals that will tell them to turn back, and may therefore doom themselves to a lifetime of folly, if their desired world-state is impossible. For those for whom total epistemic insulation is too far, I suggest that they might balance their hopes, by engaging in a practise of ‘closed bidding’ insulating themselves against regret. I consider two rounds of objections, firstly focusing on the strategy of balancing, questioning how it would ever be rational to deprive oneself of further signals, or of deliberation, and secondly focusing on the overall analysis, looking at an apparent tension between an active element in hope, and endorsed Humean model of motivation. As is tradition in the literature on hope, I conclude with a few thoughts extending the analysis to basal hope. Let’s jump in.
1 . In what capacity “Should”?
The very first question is in what manner are we to understand the should in the titular question, what do we mean when we say someone should or should not hope. In this essay, I will frame my argument in terms of instrumental rationality. As such, I will argue that individuals ought to hope in certain circumstances and not in others, because it will help them accomplish and maximise their interests, understood as Humean pre-reflexively desired world states, or ends (Finlay, 2014, 2). The question may therefore be rendered as “Does it serve one’s interests to continue hoping, even when all hope seems lost?”. We will take as an axiom that individuals Humean ends are a sufficiently motivating source of normativity, and shall not concern ourselves overly with metaethical regress (in this paper at least!). Naturally, not knowing the reader’s ends means that if we are to offer a recommendation, it will have to be indexed to them in some manner, and our mission will be to provide at least some sort of “built-it-yourself” strategy, that ought to aid in determining whether or not one’s interests are served by persistent hope, instead of turning back, even when hope seems lost.
2. What do we mean by “Hope”?
Now that we have settled our focus on interests, we can move on to the next chunk “Should we hope”. This question, however, in a Kantian, ‘should-implies-can’ manner, seems to indicate the assumption that hoping is something we can choose to do or not do, in response to rational arguments, and therefore implies the question “Can we choose to hope?”. And finally, to answer this question, it seems we’re at the question “What do we mean by ‘hope’?”.
On the standard theory of hope, hearkening back to Hobbes (Chignell, 2023, 49), and philosophers such as J.P. Day (1969, 89), hope is held to have a conative (desire), and cognitive (belief) component. Here, I borrow Andrew Chignell’s (2023, 48) statement of it:
Standard Theory:
S hopes that p only if
(Cognitive) S presupposes that p is metaphysically possible
and
(Conative) S desires that p acquire, or be true
The issue, for us, with the standard theory of hope, is that it does not seem that there is any room for choice, in either of the two components. And yet it seems that a proper analysis of choice should contain room for an active component of choice, indeed it seems like people can choose to keep hoping, or to give up, and that indeed we can offer them reasons why they should do either of these, and (as this essay seeks to do) circumstances in which one is appropriate or not. We might think that we cannot really choose to believe something is possible or isn’t, and equally, we can’t (at least immediately) choose our desires.
As a result of the inability for the standard model to accomodate our intuition of choice, this will lead us to to enter the pantheon of compound views of hope, of which there are numerous, each one adding an additional third element, seeking to capture more of our intuitions on hope.
The particular view of hope I am interested in exploring for the purposes of this essay is as follows:
Forwardly Aligned Theory:
S hopes for p, where p is a world-state, only if
(Cognitive) S believes that p is possible
and
(Conative) S desires that p be made actual
and
(Ends-Setting) S is forwardly aligned to making the p actual, such that they are motivated to pursue tasks with the end of making p actual
The intuition that I have in mind to capture is that there is a sense in hope of orienting oneself in a particular direction, and striving, even in situations in which there is no current available option for the actualisation of the desired possible world-state. Indeed, this guiding intuition bears similarities to McGeer’s agency-extending concept of hope, when she writes, that when we hope, even in situations in which “there may be nothing we can do now to bring about what we desire, our energy is still oriented toward the future… we lean into the future ready to act” (2004, 104), and furthermore “that hope is the energy and direction we are able to give… toward making the world as we want it to be” (2004, 105). I will return to McGeer later in the essay, but for the moment, will spend some brief words differentiating the view from some of its related, cousin, compound views. This will serve to quickly illustrate the elements I am attempting to capture, and briefly why I see the other compound as failing to do so.
Luc Bovens suggests that the missing third component of the standard theory of hope is “mental imaging” (1999, 674) and in this he captures that it is not enough that a belief that p is possible and desire for p is latent, but rather, must become salient to the hoper, in that they devote “mental energy to what it would be like” (1999, 674) if p were to become actual. Whilst I think Bovens’ account captures an insight in what happens when we hope, in my view, this mental imaging is a part of striving, checking to see if we can make p actual. For this reason, I don’t think his account captures what we mean when we say, “You ought to give up hope”. We’re not just saying, you ought to stop mental imaging, but carry on bringing it about, but rather, stop trying, stop striving1.
For a similar reason to this, Cheshire Calhoun’s view is closely related, in which the third element added to the standard view is a motivating “phenomenological idea of the future” (2018, 73), something that we are moving towards. It is this sense that I am trying to capture with my talk of being forwardly aligned to some world state, that we are moving towards. In this case however, our phenomenological idea of the future does not exactly seem like something we can control or advise someone to give up, although I will return to this view later.
A close cousin theory of the proposed view is Andrew Chignell’s focus theory of hope, in which his third component is whether or not we focus our attention on the fact that the hoped-for world state is POSSIBLE-but-unlikely, whereas one who does not hope is salient of the fact it is UNLIKELY-but-possible (2023, 55). Whilst I think this is certainly involved when we set our sights on a world-state, it lacks the striving element we seek to capture.
If Chignell’s view is a cousin, then Adrienne Martin’s incorporation theory of hope (2014b, 69) is a sibling, and as such, we will spend more time on it than the rapid-fire treatment we have given so far. Martin, on her view, proposes that hope involves attraction to the hoped for world-state, an assessment of the world-state is possible, and thirdly, that these facts serve as justification for the following hopeful activities: attentively imagining, positive anticipation, feeling hopeful, and relying on it occurring (though only with back-up plans) (2014b, 69). From here, it is easy to a short skip to an ends-focussed theory of hope such as ours, in which the hoper adopts the end of bringing about the hoped-for world-state. Martin, however, explicitly argues against this through the use of two types of counter-examples (2014b, 67). Firstly, she brings up that it is possible to hope in cases where one has no chance of affecting the ends, and therefore does not strive, such as hoping for the weather to be sunny for a picnic tomorrow (2014b, 66). Secondly, she mentions hoping in which one does have the capability to affect the outcome, and yet equally does not strive, citing her hopes that the Republican nominee will be poor, despite not doing anything (such as trying to convince Republicans) to make this more likely (2014b, 66). Finally, she blocks off our chance of easy escape in claiming that hope merely disposes us to act whenever we do have an opportunity to forward the end, as though asked by a genie, because this merely collapses into the standard theory; world-states we desire and think are possible (2014b, 66). As such, if our ends-focussed theory of hope is to survive, Martin’s counterexamples need addressing.
There are four possible responses. Firstly, we might capitulate. Secondly, we could deny that these are genuine examples of hope (but they certainly seem like they are). Thirdly, we could offer an explanatory story for how the hopers in the cases actually are ends-focussed. This seems trivial for the second case, we can argue that whilst the possible and desirable world-state of a poorly performing Republican nominee is within the set of Martin’s ideal-world world states, we can argue that putting effort towards it is irrational in light of other, more rewarding ventures. In other words, she does hope for it, is forwardly aligned to it, but it’s not yet made it to the top of the to-do list. For examples of the first case, we can instead argue, borrowing from McGeer, that in fact when one hopes one “create[s] a kind of imaginative scaffolding” (2004, 105), one turns the world-state over in their mind, looking for ways to forward it. Whilst in the weather case, one doesn’t find an immediate avenue, this doesn’t mean it isn’t an end. It’s further worth noting that when Martin defends that these are genuine hopes people hold, (for we might wonder how instrumentally rational it is to persist in hoping for something one cannot affect), she appeals to a broader, more explicit end, that one is trying to woo someone at the picnic, of which the weather being sunny is only one element that might forward that end. As such, we might argue that one can hold ends, even if they aren’t currently forward-able, nor evaluated as worthy of immediate effort. How does this not collapse into the standard theory? Because we still maintain that there is an additional third element, this ‘turning over’ and forward aligning, in which we balance the ordering of the possible desirable-world states that we see open to us. This, process, which I am calling hope, has a cost associated with it, and therefore matters for us to get it right. Fourthly, we could argue that while Martin’s argument demonstrates that not all hopes are associated with ends-setting, there are hopes that do, and it is these hopes that this essay explores. As such, I will endorse the third option, with the fourth option a back-up if the reader is unpersuaded.
Finally, as a sibling of Martin’s view, our model equally falls under fire from Michael Milona and Katie Stockade’s critique concerning recalcitrant hopes (2018, 209), in which someone finds themself hoping for something they deem horrible, such as a car crash, and so does not view it as a reason for engaging in hopeful activities (for Martin) or striving towards (for us). It seems to me however, that our model solves this problem, in that either the agent does strive to actualise the desirable possible world state, in which they do hope, or we can account for it in terms of conflicting, and uncomfortable desires, which they ultimately do not strive to actualise, and therefore do not hope. As a result of these arguments, then, we will proceed with the end-setting model of hope.
3. What do we mean by “Giving up”?
Having detailed what we mean by ‘hope’ it will be beneficial to define the other side of the coin. The specific motivating image I have of ‘giving up’ is as follows:
Swim Up: Your car has crashed into the lake. You swim towards the surface, struggling to drag That Which Is Quite Important up with you. You glance upwards at the surface to gauge how long you have left, and as your vision starts to blacken, loosen your grip, and let That Which Is Quite Important go.
Specifically, I mean to capture the sense of one’s broader interests no longer being served by a particular path, in terms of likelihood and utility, and therefore making the difficult choice to reallocate one’s resources and align to actualising a different world-state.
This is much easier said than done, however, and hopes tend to be sticky, in that those hopes we have held for a long time (cf. Calhoun, 2018, 73), have articulated just so, have already picked our side of the bed and the colour the wallpaper will be, certainly resist being given up on, even in the light of seemingly better options. How can we account for this? If we claim that our estimation of the desirability initially presents a range of desirability, but through our turning over, mental imaging, we are able to make it more specific, fit us like a glove, at the higher bounds of that range. In that sense, an individual may seem to hold on to hope that they have held for a long time, and specified, instead of a seemingly better option with a potentially higher average return, though wider range. To give up, then, is for the calculus to finally pass a stage in which an alternative world-state can no longer be denied as maximising our interests, and for us to forwardly align to it instead, letting go of our previous hopes.
4. How sensitive should our hope be to evidence?
Having now defined both sides of the coin, we are now in a position to begin assessing when hoping and giving up is appropriate. To this end, it seems that the question “How sensitive should our hopes be to evidence?”, is pertinent; should we persist in our hope even when the world tells us we shouldn’t, when it seems lost? It’s important to get this right, give up too early, and we needlessly give up our interests, give up too late, and waste our limited time engaging in folly.
One way of reading McGeer’s analysis of wishful and wilful hopers (2004, 111), is as an answer to this question. McGeer provides us with two profiles of hopers that are misaligned, and vulnerable to despair. The first is a wishful hoper (2004, 111), personified by Fred Vincy of George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1996), who’s forward-aligning agency is underdeveloped, is overly sensitive to the signals of his family, and falls too-early into despair when his hopes are not realised, instead of rallying. Dialectically opposed, McGeer positions the wilful hoper (2004, 114), also personified by Middlemarch character Nicholas Bulstrode. Bulstrode, and wilful hoper’s McGeer lays out, have an overly rigid sense of agency, pushing through signals and warnings the world throws up, enforcing his will on the world, ultimately equally vulnerable to despair, when his brittle machinations snap suddenly. In this sense, then, we might think the right level of sensitivity to evidence for our hopes lies somewhere in between McGeer’s wilful and wishful hoper; insensitive enough to evidence that we push through when necessary, but equally sensitive enough to the signals of the world that we back off when we’re wasting our time.
The issue I see, is that this is not very useful to a hoper who is attempting to determine whether they ought to push through, or turn around and go back (and indeed, this may not have been McGeer’s aim). Certainly we have all been in situations in which we are uncertain whether pushing through or backing off is the optimal move, and the reason that McGeer’s answer, although it illuminates two pitfalls, does not help us, is because it is essentially an ontological goldilocks argument, that tells us that the just right amount of sensitivity to hope is ‘the exact right amount to avoid these two pitfalls, and despair’. This, then, leaves the question open for us hopers, “How much is that?”
McGeer’s analysis does offer us some practical advice though, that furthermore works in tandem with that offered by theorist Bert Musschenga (2019). By opening ourselves up to the signals of others (cf. Jones, 2024, 106) and engaging in socially scaffolded hope, McGeer argues that we can allow our hopes to be infused with “the agency of others” (2004, 118). In this sense, we can improve the quantity of our signals from the world. Musschenga, (2019, 431) offers similar advice, in order to make sure our hopes are appropriately aligned, we ought to ensure our probability rankings are in line with experts. In this sense, we increase the quality of our signals from the world. By leveraging our social interconnectedness, then, we can increase the likelihood of of our hopes being aligned by increasing both the quality and quantity of our signals.
5. Can we offer a strategy?
It’s all very good to increase one’s quantity and quality of evidence, but can we go one step further than McGeer, and offer a strategy? I hope we can. We will begin by looking at a limit case. Is it ever rational to have your hopes entirely insensitive to evidence? Is it even possible to maintain them, even in the face of an apparent impossibility? The common ancestor of all the compound views, is that they all hold on to the the possibility component, that a hoping agent must believe p to be possible. However, I think we can defuse the tension between this component, and hoping for an impossibility, by noticing that metaphysical impossibility is not epistemically accessible to us, is never encountered. In this sense, when the probability of a world-state obtaining reaches sufficiently low, we slap the label “impossible on it”, usually underlyingly meaning “not suitable for consideration”. This has the upshot, however, that someone can maintain hope, and forwardly aligned to a world-state, even when there is the merriest sliver of a chance, and we might colloquially say hopes are lost.
Would it ever forward someone’s interests to do this? Yes, but here I argue that an agent that does so drinks from the Devil’s Chalice. For in declaring their hope, their alignment towards actualising a world-state will remain no matter the possibility of success, they maximise the possibility of finding success, if it actually is metaphysically possible. If it isn’t, however, and they have gambled wrong, then they will be doomed to spend their time searching, and no amount of headwind evidence will suffice to convince them to come back.
Would it ever be rational for someone to adopt such an attitude? I think so, in cases like the following.
Possible Recovery: Joanne has cancer in her bones, chest, and lungs. She is informed her chances of recovery are slim if she continues treatment, and asked if she would like to switch to quality of life care. Every world-state she desires involves her recovering.
In cases in which every desire is stacked on the side of a particular venture succeeding, there is nothing for such an agent to lose in maximising the possibility of that world-state obtaining (Calhoun, 2018, 73) (Musschenga, 2019, 433). It is therefore rational for such an individual to continue hoping, even when all hope seems lost.
Such cases, when every single desire is stacked on one side, are exceedingly rare, and hard to generalise from. Consider the following case:
This Prison of Mine: You have been captured and held in an abandoned iron mine, of which the many exits are bricked up. You scrape and scrabble against one of the stones, your fingernails painfully start to peel, it barely budges, but holds firm. There are more stones to check than you could in a lifetime.
This is a deliberately engineered situation, in which everything you want is presumably on one side of an equation, with your presumed desire to avoid pain on the other. Assuming your probability of escaping is being updated in a Bayesian fashion, and each non-moving stone decreases the likelihood of the world-state actualising, when should you stop hoping? How many stones should try?
Here, we can offer a strategy in the form of closed bidding.
Closed bidding is an auction style in which an individual is encouraged to bid an amount, only receiving the item if it is over an undisclosed value. In this sense, the individual is encouraged to bid against themselves, up to the maximum value that they would pay for the item. In This Prison of Mine, engaging in closed bidding, you yourself the maximum number of stones that you are happy to possibly attempt, and in doing so, will eventually reach the equilibrium of where the chance of success, would not be worth the pain of another attempt2. If done correctly then, if you chose, say, 6032 stones, and it was truly the maximum amount of pain that you thought you could endure, and in the afterlife it was revealed that the 6033rd stone would’ve been the one that did it, then you ought to be at peace, having done your absolute best, and having balanced your desires. In this sense, then, by engaging in closed bidding, an agent may merely sip from the Devil’s Chalice, offering a period of time in which they will maintain their hopes, no matter whether they appear lost or not.
I did say that Possible Recovery was hard to generalise from, and then moved to discussing being trapped in an iron mine. In real life, our desires are rarely so cleanly delineated, as everything on one side in Possible Recovery, to everything but one in This Prison of Mine. Consider the following case:
Actor’s Deal: River is an actor. Or trying to be. Their partner is getting antsy. Between them they agree that if River hasn’t made it by their 32nd birthday, River’ll sign the mortgage and sell cars with their partner’s Dad.
In this sense, River has presumably engaged in a lengthy balancing process, in which they are balancing multiple different desires. If they’ve balanced correctly, however, then they ought to be at peace with the amount of possibility-maximising they will engage in, and have straddled the disjunction of whether the make it or do not. By engaging in this closed bidding then, we offer a strategy to those concerned with how sensitive their hopes ought to be to evidence, in that a period of non-sensitivity, hoping in the face of hope seeming lost, may be justified to maximise the possibility of success of a venture, balanced against other desires such as lost time and social obligations.
6. Objections to the offered strategy
How does this interact with the technical model of hope that we have proposed? What is it we are actually saying when we claim that someone can ‘epistemically insulate’ themselves and therefore hope even in the face of hope seeming lost?
One option is to claim that one who does this is attempting to restrict the intake of probability data. This is the equivalent of clenching one’s eyes shut in Swim Up, such that one no longer has the data to decide whether or not it’s optimal to switch course.
The issue with this is that on our Humean model, the purported motivational drive for agents is to maximise the actualisation of their interests and ends. Therefore, it always seems like the dominant strategy to accept as much information as possible, and switch when your expected utility is higher on another course.
A second option is to claim that perhaps, in setting oneself on a course, on merely deliberately places their lower bound for it to be reasonable to continue on course infinitely low, such that it will always be viable to continue (cf. Musschenga, 2019, 438).
The issue with this is, again, it contradicts our previously endorsed Humean model, in which it is not the case that people set a satisfactory bar of probable success an then choose among such options, but rather selects for the option that represents the highest expected utility / ends-actualisation, regardless of probability.
A third option, then is to claim when one claims that they will remain unbudged from their hoped-for course, is that they simply have an impossibly high desire for it, such that it it remains the best option no matter how slim the possibility, as in Pascal’s wager and Possible Recovery.
The issue here, as while we have seen that this may occur, it seems that there is no choice being involved here, to be epistemically insulated, set a course, or otherwise, just a straightforward evaluation.
Instead, what one is doing, I put forth, when they epistemically insulate themselves, and commit to hoping in the face of hope seeming lost is refusing to do the costly re-evaluation or balancing step. In the same way that River, in Actor’s Deal might rightly object to their partner picking the same fight next week, when one sets forth to hope even in the face of lost hope, they set themselves against doing that reevaluation that might determine whether they should change their course, equivalent to setting a course on an auto-pilot and then smashing the console.
We might object in the same manner as before, surely it is a dominant strategy to be constantly re-evaluating. Can you not, in This Prison of Mine take it stone by stone, and simply evaluate if you can bear ‘just one more’? Indeed, you can in This Prison of Mine, but there, the calculus is simple. In highly complicated evaluations with a high deliberation cost, such as faced by River in Actor’s Deal, or a student deciding to mix their philosophy with commerce or teaching, in situations in which the success of those goals may depend upon all resources being devoted to it, it may in fact be prudential to restrict oneself from deliberating further, to fly without a safety net, once one has set a course. Therefore, when one opts to set their level of world-sensitivity to hope as low, we can understand this as them refraining from further deliberation from their course, which may be rational to the extent that these re-allocated resources promoted the actualisation of their aimed at ends. Therefore, inside these balanced periods, or in the more extreme all or nothing case, there exist circumstances in which one should hope even when hope seems lost.
7. An Objection to the Overall Analysis
One might object to the whole analysis, claiming that a tension exists between the insistence of a choice-based model of hope, and the endorsing Humean motivational psychology. The issue, is that the Humean model, as Martin puts it, does not include space for the mechanism of choice (2014b, 55), it seems that people simply ‘automatically’ do whatever they perceive as maximising their ends.
Here, we have two options. Firstly we can, as Martin does (2014b, 58), propose an additional rationalist motivational source on top a Humean calculus, in which there are other reasons that might motivate an agent. This path however, is not without peril, as it encounter the difficult task of explaining why someone who ever choose an option which, by their own metrics, is not their most desirable option. The previous discussion of ‘sticky’ hopes represented the provision of a Humean explanatory story of such appearances. Furthermore, they must explain how these rationalist reasons and Humean desires interact and are not incommensurable in motivation.
Our other option is offer a Humean explanation for the phenomenology of choice, explaining our original guiding intuition. On this story then, our awareness of choice, our sense of choosing is exactly the computation calculus of the interplay of our desires and beliefs in determining which is the optimal (by our own metrics) path forward. On this story then, what differentiates this account from the standard theory is an elaboration on this deliberation process, that it is precisely not an ‘instant’ occurrence of beliefs and desires, but has a cost to it, that means that in certain instances it may be instrumentally rational to, after deliberating, cease deliberating, and stay the course.
8. Some thoughts on Basal Hopes
It is traditional to extend some at though towards basal hopes at the end of an essay on hope, and so I will say this: It is possible, on our analysis, for not only all world-states to appear not worth the price of investment to actualise, but for this to extend to the world-state in which one perceives world states as ‘worth it’ (cf. Ratcliffe, 2013, 608). Thus, one can lose hope for hope, ad infinitum, rendered motivationally adrift. In this instance, it seems we can only rely on our social hopers to jump-start our engines, demonstrate possibilities or sell us on with desire on the ‘worth it’-ness of the future. To such ends, we should hope we are not entirely epistemically insulated to such efforts.
9. Conclusion
This essay therefore concludes, having argued that there exist situations in which we should hope, even in light of hope seeming lost. How did we get here? To begin I argued for what I called a ‘forwardly aligned’ end-setting theory of hope, comparing it to other related compound views. Then, I set out to improve upon McGeer’s ontological argument for how sensitive our hopes should be to evidence, endeavouring to provide a “Build-It-Yourself” strategy. Did we succeed? In truth, I offered an ontological argument of our own design, indexed to the specific ends of agents, in which agents engaged in balancing of their desires, undergoing a period of epistemic insulation to further their interests. Whilst this would maximise the chances of their ends being achieved, I argued that this was dangerous, and sipping from the Devil’s Chalice, as they may lack feedback to save them, if they gambled wrong. In the consideration of objections, this was to forward interests through re-allocating resources assigned to deliberation, and furthermore that we could extend our Humean story to an analysis of choice. Finally, I briefly extended the proposed analysis to basal hopes, arguing that in situations of totally lost hope, we had better hope we left the door open for our fellow hopers to help.
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