What's wrong with society
(midwest.social)
Stamets
People TwitterI've studied History in university, and have picked up this habit long ago.
source ?
source?
My wife has a law degree, which makes arguing with her really easy.
Either I dont because I know she will win OR I do and she gives up immediately because she knows I have learned only to wade into arguments when I know I'm right and can prove it.
It's made of people, that's what.
and most of the people think citing sources and being factually correct is wrong, and being ignorant and emotional is right.
and let's not forget those who are ignorant, emotional, and cite fake sources as evidence of their 'truth' that the earth is flat or the CCP is a paradise of human freedom and development.
That's kind of awesome actually
It's amazing but emotionally frustrating. The problem with your partner actually always being right is that you feel like you never win or that your perspective may not be properly heard. The flip side is you don't have stupid arguments thst you didn't bring the stupid to and that's also awesome, but rough on the self esteem. Definitely requires learning better emotional processing so you actually understand the need or emotion at the core of what you're saying/requesting
that's a problem with your ego, not the relationship.
the point of a relationship isn't to 'win'. if you are trying to compete with your partner you're going to be miserable.
Yeah, among other things. It's an aspect of the relationship that required quite a bit of emotional growth early on and still requires maintenance work. I mostly commented because it's the sort of thing that sounds awesome when you don't have it, is awesome once you've learned to have it, and can really exacerbate any self esteem issues and highlight struggles communicating issues you're experiencing when you're new to it.
I likely just projected my experiences of the tumultuous early stages of what has grown into a deeply happy marriage onto this post because in it I saw a younger version of myself struggling not to catastrophize and worry that the best person I ever met for me would realize I wasn't good enough for her after a conflict.
I mean, if your partner's right and has demonstrated it, you could just update your perspective and be right too...
A lot of people are assuming that "having citations" is equivalent to "being right". It's not, it also includes one of the most frustrating cases of them being wrong.
Like for example if the citations all come from the bible. Or if the argument is about something personal like wanting more kids.
Or if the sources they're citing are outdated. I've gotten into a few arguments with my wife over topics that were covered in her degree, but new evidence has contradicted what she was taught.
Like wood cutting boards being more sanitary than plastic. Her biology textbook said plastic was more sanitary, which has been disproven.
Luckily she very rarely uses the, "I have a master's degree so I know more than you," card, mostly because I don't challenge her unless I know I'm right.
The whole "I have a degree" is an appeal to authority logical fallacy anyways, with this being one example why (people just lying is another, though hopefully that one doesn't come up in a marriage).
And yeah, I've also gone through the "once preferred plastic cooking tools, now tries to minimize the amount of contact between plastic and my food". And I wonder if it made it into that biology textbook the same way it once made it to the top of my preference list: stupid assumptions based on the look and feel.
Btw, if you don't use ice very often and it ends up sitting in the tray for a long time before you do use it, I highly recommend metal ice cube trays. I'd notice a white film that wouldn't melt and would float on top of water I put plastic trayed ice in. It had a bad taste... not a strong flavour, but a mildly unpleasant one. I still see white on ice from the metal tray, but it's just trapped gasses because it doesn't leave a film on the water and tastes just like frozen water instead of plasticky.
I also notice that frozen veggies smell like that flavour when they are still in the bag. Hard to tell how much of that ends up in the food because the food has a stronger flavour.
I wonder if it could be your water source? We have a fridge ice maker and I've never experienced that, but the water line does have its own filter.
I was using water from my RO filter and still am. I noticed it with other ice trays at other locations, but thought it was just something that happened to ice sitting in the freezer rather than coming from the ice tray itself, until I got one of those silicone sphere ice trays that only has a tiny bit exposed and noticed it was worse instead of better. It was also my first non-white ice tray, and I could clearly see the white film that remained on the silicone, which prompted me to buy the metal tray.
Fridge ice makers probably aren't an issue because the ice doesn't sit in the tray for very long (which also might be metal). They can sit in a plastic tub for a while before being dispensed, but they don't have full contact with that plastic, and ice in the middle wouldn't even have any contact until ice shifts around.
I wouldn't be surprised if it depends on the type of plastic the tray is made out of, too. Like the silicone being worse might have been due to the plastic itself as much as the higher amount of contact with the ice.
And even without that, the metal one is just nicer to use. It is a normal tray with a metal grid attached to a hinged handle that easily breaks the ice. I've had a plastic tray partially snap while trying to twist the ice out, though even when they didn't break, the ice would also sometimes refuse to break free.
Well yeah, it's the emotional come down from it. Being mad isn't just a logical state, its a biochemically based emotion. It doesn't go away immediately, you gotta take a breather and process your emotions as they cool off. As that's happening you can feel steamrolled or like you aren't being listened to because the reason for the argument isn't actually the thing, it's that you had a need and you got into it about the thing because that seemed a way to get the need met. And like, yeah, that's a skill you need to learn regardless, but it's basically a form of relationship where there's no excuses and you feel like you're always the unreasonable one.
And yeah, this has been how the first two or three years of my relationship with my wife forced me to git gud. Way better than stupid fights, but yeah it was not easy as someone who had had a disorganized attachment style that leaned anxious.
Often times people are incorrect about specifics, but correct or valid in the point they were attempting to make.
It’s obnoxious to deal with analytical or biased people who can never look past the surface level.
The problem with your partner actually always being right
Unlikely, they're probably picking their fights, and/or doing prior research. Either way, if you can't face being wrong, you can't learn, and that's on you. Do the emotional work until you can and learn to research yourself, few things are black and white, your side may well have good arguments and references itself, you'll never know until you look.
This will likely be either very good or very bad for your relationship.
Yeah that's what the end of my comment was about. It also involved a lot of both of us learning to communicate and emotionally process better. We also have moved towards treating the fact finding portion of disagreements as neutral and mutual while framing our understanding of the facts with how certain we are included. "I thought I remembered it being this, I'm going to check" is way more constructive than "no it's this, here's where Wikipedia says you're wrong"
- Learning something new is winning.
- Your perspective is irrelevant when it comes to facts. It only matters when it's about your personal experience, and there are no sources you can cite to contradict those experiences.
I'm the kind of guy who will look stuff up. I think it's really important to admit when you're wrong and the other person was right. Don't move goal posts or claim you misunderstood. Just own it.
Like I was having a debate with my partner about if it was faster to go all the way up and over, or make a lot of turn-right then turn-left. I thought the ladder was faster because it approximates a straight line. She was like no that's crazy. Eventually I found that's called Manhattan distance and she was right, and I fully admitted defeat.
Just a friendly correction in case it's not an autocorrect/STT issue: it's latter
I don't understand your conclusion.
Yes, Manhattan distance exists, it has a name. But I don't understand how having a name makes it faster "a straight line distance" also has a name, euclidean distance. And always euclidean ≤ Manhattan.
So if on both routes you go at the same speed, it is faster to take the one of the euclidean distance.
Well, we were literally walking in Manhattan when it came up, and couldn't take the euclidean straight path. We could only walk on the grid of streets.
(This is setting aside factors like waiting to cross, or a busier street)
Ah. I originally missread your original comment.
Yes, in a grid where the Manhattan distance is the minimum one, taking a single 90° turn is the fastest, since that path will have the length of the Manhattan distance.
However, it's not the only path. The "ladder" one you said will be the same length.
While we are at it, if you wanna search for more. The same flawed assumption of "a ladder approximates a straight line" can also lead to π=2. Since you can enclose a circle in a square (Wich has perimeter 4R), then fold the corners recursively so there is a "stair" along the circle's perimeter. That "stair" would have a length of 4R, but the circle's perimeter is 2πR.
Love this. People who display like trophies the times they were wrong have learned one of life’s simple truths: there are no trophies for being right, just crappy knockoffs of the learning process one forgot.
I've gotten in the habit of being wrong occasionally on purpose so my wife is less frustrated. Kinda like how drug dog handlers will plant the occasional drug if it's been too long without a bust, so the dogs don't get depressed.
EDIT: Not on people. That's a totally separate thing. I'm talking about officers posing as suspects. Probably thinking of bombs anyway.
drug dog handlers will plant the occasional drug if it’s been too long without a bust, so the dogs don’t get depressed
Yeah...sure...that's why.
It may have been bomb-sniffing dogs now that I think of it 😉
Similarly, they did basically the same thing on 9/11 for dogs trained to find survivors when they weren't finding many.
You can either be right, or be happy. Sounds like the librarian wants to be right
That's not true at all.
My gf has awful logical reasoning skills. Which leads to her being wrong on many small arguments that can easily be proved with simple logic.
There is no amount of reasoning that will make her change her mind. So in the end, she is always right because there is no other option. That is incredibly frustrating and I end up being neither "right" nor happy.
There is no amount of reasoning that will make her change her mind. So in the end, she is always right because there is no other option. That is incredibly frustrating and I end up being neither “right” nor happy.
that's why you break up. that isn't a good relationship. you are going to be miserable and it's only going to get worse.
I'm much happier single and learning, than dating a stubborn/stupid person who makes both of us miserable with their horrible decision making, who expects me to be the only adult in the relationship. Especially as I want to have kids too, and it would be many times worse.
Yeah, it's tough. But she has in the past shown that she tries to fix toxic traits of her, so I hope with time I can eventually teach her how to use logic for reasoning.
Luckily neither of us want to have children. Because I can handle not being right and I don't depend on her. But a child would live a nightmare.
I think that stance only really holds when talking about arguments where you can't reasonably convince the other person. Like, I'd be frustrated if my wife was conceding arguments just to make me happy, I don't want to stay wrong. But I have had the thought when coming down of "why is it that I'm always the unreasonable one", and given that I was coming down from an argument it was not charitably toned.
Being right or happy is more about someone being in the wrong. If you think it's normal to wear shoes in the house and your partner doesn't, it doesn't matter that your area is largely pro shoe in home, if it matters to your partner the wise choice is to accept that their happiness with the situation is more important to you than winning the fight or even getting to keep wearing shoes at home.
When you have a partner like the librarian you also often have to ask if you want to win or be right. And if the answer is win you need to really ask yourself why, because if your partner is right and you'd still rather win, something is wrong. Hopefully it's that you're like me and needed some maturity and to learn to express needs before they show up in an unrelated argument.
I’m not a librarian, but my friends have realized I won’t die on a hill unless I can prove I’m right with citations. If I’m not super sure I’ll qualify things with “if I recall correctly” or “I’m pretty sure” while actively looking the thing up, and will say “nope sorry I was wrong/only partially correct, here’s the context I was missing”
I can now lie to them and, as long as I’m confident about it, have them 100% believe me. I wouldn’t do that, ofc, or I world have already and they wouldn’t be so trusting, but I could.
When I was in sales, I would tell my customers not to just believe me and buy immediately. They should go home, look up what I'm telling them, and then come back after verifying if I was offering the best product at a good price, because I was a salesman and you should never trust someone in sales.
Of course, that made them instantly trust me immensely, and they'd insist on buying on the spot because they wanted honest Chilie to get the commission.
What they should have done is gone home and looked things up. I was a salesman and I shouldn't have been trusted.
I made more in sales once I stopped giving a fuck and decided I was quitting (or ideally getting fired) the only question was when.
"I want you to give me your best price! I'm doing my shopping around and I'm going with whoever does me the best deal"
"No offence mate but why would I do that? So you can go to the next dealership with my price and tell them to beat it? Why dont you go to them, ask them for their best price and bring that back for me to beat?
"I cant believe this!"
"We all get them off the manufacturer for the same price. I dont mean any disrespect but I'm better off waiting for customers who desperately just want approval for the finance at sticker price. I'll get you the best deal I possibly can but I'm not doing the work if you tell me you're leaving no matter what."
So.. were you generally offering it at a good price? Or did your career rely on the fact that they didn't check
It was an excellent product if I pushed it. I didn't sell shitty stuff unless the customer demanded that specific product, and I'd always ask if they wanted to hear about alternatives.
I did not sell at a good price. I never actually lied, and was in fact very honest. But I used the trust created by that honesty to make sales that were not necessarily great deals for the customer.
Heh, I used to sell computers. If you spent 5 minutes with them explaining Mhz, MB, GB, in terms they could understand and how to go to each tag and understand where they stood in the lineup, I wasn't on commission, I told them they could go anywhere and take those numbers and compare prices and make an informed decision apples to apples, they almost all immediately bought.
We did NOT generally have the best price, but would price match. They wouldn't even look elsewhere. You know what you're talking about, we're sticking with YOU!
That one does 120 million things a second, this one is the newer chips, it bascially does two things at a time, so they're both 120 but this one gets 240 million things done. This is the hard drive, it's your file cabinet, this is the ram it's your desktop. The file cabinets are huge, but you can only get a couple things out at a time if you don't have enough desktop space. All these systems have 3 basic options, low, medium, high. Buy medium. It'll last another year or two longer than low and the price isn't that much more. If money is no concern, buy high, it'll last the longest.
They all just made a quick decision and got the hell out.
Not a salesman personally but I was raised by one. I think he tried to get as good a deal for customers as he reasonably could, but the thing that’s always stuck with me is when he told me: “People don’t buy from me because I have the best deals. People buy from me to buy from me.”
Some salesmen may offer good or bad deals, but ultimately what they’re selling is themselves, their personality, their companionship to some degree. My dad could talk to anyone and build a relationship within an hour. It’s who he was, and he leveraged it to make a lot of money because his customers liked talking to him.
Buying through a commissioned salesman will likely always be at least a few percentage points more expensive than using an online portal, but there are a lot of people who will feel like it’s worth it if the salesman is doing their job right.
wife: X is Y
me: ...
also me: whips out phone
wife: Why don't you just believe me? Why do you always need to look it up. Why don't you trust me.
me: I only look up stuff that doesn't seem right. Would you rather I tell you why it doesn't seem right to me, or have me look it up and leave you be right or wrong? Either way, I must know, and those worms are not going back in that can
I actively mistrust people who don't behave that way in an argument. If your response upon finding yourself to be wrong is something other than admitting you were wrong and correcting yourself, you can't be trusted to set your ego aside.
Sounds like a guy that’s been coasting by being wrong about stuff finally being called on it and losing.
Or she's smart enough to know when to bluff and get away with it
Reads like a good girlfriend, that I want to be friends with.
Please tell me she pulls out an index card for said citation like a main character from Yu-Gi-Oh.
"I are you certain of that?"
"Pretty sure."
"YOU'VE JUST TRIGGERED MY TRAP CARD!"
"It's time to D-D-D-D-Debate with credible source citations"
What like... In conversation?
Yes arguments are a type of conversation. Like every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square, every argument is a conversation but not every conversation is an argument.
No I mean, it's very hard to APA style talking.
I realize what I'm saying is basically the same point as the post, but I can't help myself..... What was that moron talking about? When normal people get into arguments, it's over mundane everyday shit like forgetting to wash dishes or being irritated about friends or activities. Not stuff that you can cite.
Normal people don't get into arguments with their partners about shit where the answer is already known and you just have to look it up on Wikipedia or something. And only a moron would argue against the already proven truth.
I can definitely cite sources on why it's your turn to do the dishes.
Somethings are more ephemeral, philosophy, political and social sciences, that sort of thing. And arguing vibes against a person who can quote Hobbes, Foucault, Spinoza, Butler, etc. Will not go well, but doesn't necessarily lead to a resolution
I may have an explanation. I'm gonna guess this guy probably talks out of his ass, like me, and bullshits a bunch of vibe based conjectures.
Harry Frankfort wrote an essay and then a book called "On Bullshit," and he talks about how people often times don't necessarily lie, but they bullshit. Bullshit is something based on what we don't concretely know, which is different from a lie. A lie is when we tell someone something that we believe to be true.
Like if I saw someone who looked like friend's girlfriend cheating on her with another woman, and I tell my friend her girlfriend isn't cheating, then I lied. Whether or not I actually know if the girlfriend is cheating is irrelevant to the truth (truthiness?) of my statement.
Dewey Decimal for the win.
Dewey was an asshole. source: am librarian.
Ok mood though. My wife's really smart and autistic while I'm pretty smart and just adhd. Arguments basically go with her steamrolling me without meaning to because she makes good points and can bring evidence if need be. She's gotten better at letting me say my piece over the years though
