Danny ChaiI had a strange experience at lunch a couple days ago where, during the conversation, I found myself annoying. And powerless to stop it. It’s like you know how sometimes you get used to doing the same thing over and over, and can’t stop it. Like when you take the same route to work every day, when you go out somewhere different you find yourself mindlessly going to work instead of where you meant to go. Or maybe that only happens to me. In any case, yeah, I think I’m getting more annoying, conversation-wise.
The crux of the annoyingness is a tendency to make overly strong statements that I don’t even agree with. It’s really annoying, and I have no idea why I do it, but I do.
Actually, I have a hunch why it started, and it might be my philosophy class. There’s a modern philosopher, dunno his name, but he argues that scientific knowledge is advanced more when we make grand sweeping theories that we try to disprove rather than small ones we try to find confirmation for. Humans have an inherent bias towards seeing things as confirming what we already believe. It’s only when we look for things that contradict what we might think that we can refine out thinking, on a personal level and on a macro-scientific knowledge level.
And part of that process involves making grand claims. From what I’ve studied so far, the same is true in the field of philosophy. It’s easy to just poke holes at things and not make a stand on anything. But it seems that philosophy progresses more when people make grand claims, like the world is made of fire, or that there exist forms that are the ideal versions of the shadowy copies we experience. Bold claims with many problems, but the process of arguing through those problems brings more advance than making small, safe claims.
I think I’ve internalized that and started making grander claims. But it’s annoying when it’s based on nothing, I don’t really believe it, and I don’t back down. I mean it, I was totally annoying myself, and I’m sure my lunch companions as well. So sorry, lunch companions, and sorry in advance to those people in the future I’m going to annoy. I’m gonna try and get a handle on it.