I hate being right. It's a huge pain.

I mean sure, if I think it's cold outside and I put on a coat, that's fine. But you probably know that isn't what I mean.

Being right when other people aren't getting it is a burden.

It's what I do as a teacher, but in that situation, it's my job, and a student who comes to me for help usually isn't offended when that's what I offer.

Democracy needs a major update. A good amount of pop psychology even in 2021 is bogus. Groupthink is everywhere. Polarization is damaging. We have to understand each other.

(Those are some examples. I'm probably right about those things, vague as they may be. But we'll see!)

When I figure out a student's hangup with, say, a computer science concept, when it becomes clear to me why that student is confused, that does not make me any worse at computer science.

We have to stop thinking that by understanding others who we believe are on the wrong side, we are infecting ourselves with a moral contagion.

You will be no worse a person for understanding.

On the contrary, you will probably become a better person. (I know that's a bit presumptuous to say, but hear me out.)

Understanding a person hardly means approving of everything about them. Nor does it mean standing around watching them create havoc for others and doing nothing about it. Understanding means understanding. "Know thy enemy" does not mean "Help thy enemy destroy you." It means "The most effective, efficient, durable, and human solutions come from true understanding."

That should not have been confusing, but I try to understand why people are confused by it.

Most people still seem to be confused by it.

There's a difference between "closed-minded" and "winning this argument."

There's a difference between "defensive" and "critical of a criticism."

There's a difference between "being egotistical" and "putting the truth first."

When people get into arguments, they seem to rush straight into making all those mistakes I mentioned above, the ones from not noticing or not making sure to make those differences.

If someone's refusing to agree with you, it might be because their argument works when yours doesn't. They may see the overview with a level of detail and accuracy you haven't reached yet. That wouldn't be closed-minded.

Often people will end up saying it is closed-minded, but the curious thing is that their own closed-mindedness might be the issue. It's possible, of course, and even likely, for any person to think they're right simply because they're them and they aren't trying hard (read as "don't have to try hard") to process and verify alternatives. That tends to make you feel like you're right, even though it shouldn't. But the principle - this pattern, this flaw so common among humans - cuts both ways. Anyone could be failing to make the needed effort, whether they're calling someone closed-minded or being called closed-minded.

And it's similar with the other two I mentioned: "defensive" versus "critical of a criticism" and "being egotistical" versus "putting the truth first." You have to be careful not to be blind to the difference, when you're listening, and not to fail to make the difference, when you're the one talking.

Is it actually that difficult to look at things objectively?

Here's a trick I learned in a poetry class. You might be surprised. It's... amazingly useful outside of poetry.

When you read a poem, you're aware that there's figurative language - that is, you aren't supposed to take everything literally - there's "poetic license." So immediately, most people are guessing and second-guessing and anticipating and interpreting and reaching conclusions. What does it MEAN? Right?

You don't know what it means, and there's a good chance neither did the poet. Start by admitting that you DON'T know what it MEANS, and may never know.

Now, here's the fun bit. Read the poem perfectly literally.

See it as if every word must be taken concretely, no exaggeration, no metaphor, nothing. Imagine it all as literally and vividly as you can, no matter how bizarre.

When people say what they think, that's how you should listen. Refrain from leaping to conclusions about WHY they'd be saying that or thinking that, or what they REALLY mean. Suspend any paranoias about insinuation or condescension or insult or the right side or the wrong side. Listen to what they say, and evaluate it word for word, phrase for phrase, sentence for sentence. For each one: 1) Is that a fact? 2) Could it by some unexpected fluke BE a fact, maybe? 3) Would it make sense that this person BELIEVES it's a fact?

Quit trying to pin people to motives when they speak. You can pin dead moths to a corkboard. Don't pin people.

I'm not saying be unaware. No way. We'll get to that in a second. Just stop trying to catch people out by stabbing through them. Put the pins to one side. Pay closer attention instead. You don't know what the poem means, but you're reading it objectively.

The next thing you do after reading the poem perfectly literally is you start thinking about all that other stuff - reading between the lines. Once you know what's truly there, you are equipped to bring your own mind and heart to the scene and complete it. With a real person, you have the incredible advantage of being able to ask them point-blank what they meant and why they said it. Allow them to answer those questions. Don't try to answer those questions for them. At this point, you have done your bit and are free to read between the lines as much as you want. Great work!

But if you skimp on the first step, you'll probably find yourself quite lost, or reaching totally unsubstantiated conclusions.

So... assuming what I've described above is a process for being more objective, what do you say? Is this very difficult?

One thing to understand about me is I grew up in an environment in which everyone was always outraged.

When you get angry, I will do my best to understand why and do whatever I can that makes the most sense. (I like to solve problems.)

But understand that I find outrage unhinged. That isn't from lack of experience or exposure or coping skills. It's from an excess of those.

I differentiate myself from others by not being like that.

Maybe that isn't always best, but you know what? It often is.

And I am finite. I do not have to be the be-all end-all. It's ok for my take to be one take, and not fully complete in itself.

Everyone is given a job. I mean, did you pick this person you are?

You help the world along in specific ways that you don't entirely control.

Sometimes the thing you have to say is not the thing you want to say, or would prefer, but what you have. This is the thought I have. This is the change I make. It could be a few bits of information flowing. It could even be wrong. But here: it's what I have.

If you ever feel discouraged by how much more others are getting through or getting to, remember that for any kind of accomplishment you notice, that person had to make sacrifices. Usually that isn't the part you hear about. You don't hear about the times someone got furious with them because they didn't pick up the phone, or the times there was a deadline more urgent but less important and that thing blew up for several people at once as a result of neglect, or the legitimate doubts about the value of what they were doing compared to other life directions they might still take.

You don't hear about the arterial plaque that accumulated while someone sat many hours and days and months in a row grinding away to build this talent. You don't hear about the repetitive strain injuries that could have destroyed a career, or did destroy one before it started. You never hear about the books a person would have read while rereading a classic twenty times so impressively, or the lives they could have saved, or friends they could have made instead. I'm not trying to undermine accomplishment at all. Just remember that everything comes with something else. Usually you only know about one aspect or side of many.

It's easy to look around and see accomplishment everywhere and feel... overwhelmed, as if the average successful person were good at all of these things you are seeing, rather than one or two at a time (in a lifetime), and many, many, many sacrifices you don't see in order to get there.

We might call this notion the Mythical Success Savant, this feeling that a truly, respectably successful spirit-person hides behind the examples you see, and accounts for many of them at once. This idea that you're up against a many-armed, many-headed ideal - hello, Mythical Success Savant - that makes you endlessly not good enough. The CEO, the scientist, the painter, the hobby baker turning a side gig into a main gig. They aren't all the same. Each one is only one, a highly finite and imperfect person, and you are generally missing the warning labels, provisos, and other costs. Some traits and habits tend to facilitate success and translate across domains, that's true. But you can always learn and develop more of those. Nothing is stopping you from learning how to be more successful.

I don't like to follow overused maxims when I don't consider them wise.

It isn't that I don't care what people think. First of all, we all do on multiple levels, and second, we should. It's that I get tired of caring what other people think, and it occurs to me that some of it is uninformed at best (or downright stupid, to be blunt).

Also, no amount of caring what people think will ever make those people me, and I am the one who chooses my actions in the end.

TL;DR Care what other people think, but make your own choices.

People say the only thing you get for being right is being right. It can certainly feel that way. I think often we prioritize getting things right because we value truth and being practical, yet we end up hating the fact we're right, because it's such a nuisance - our hard work is not only unappreciated but makes people upset, they don't see it, etc. But being right isn't the only thing that comes with being right. You may also get:

• Practice
• (ie, figuring stuff out, verifying, communicating, persuading)
• All the potentials of knowing how this works
• (including surprise links to similar patterns)
• Respect, recognition, thanks, jobs
• (if people aren't too resentful, and see some value for themselves)
• Responsibility
• (knowing the truth can be a kind of burden, but a good one)

By the time someone can say to you "I hate that you're right," they're over the hump. But part of the responsibility - yours - is finding ways to get them over said hump without hating you for it. Still, it's a two-way street. People have just as much responsibility not to hate anyone for being right, or even just for being honest and trying. Hating someone because they think something is not great. But sometimes it's your role to be the ambassador and help them not hate you for thinking something.

The next time you're starting to hate being right, remember the above.

When you don't have faith in yourself, and you doubt everything, you will eventually notice something. There are things about yourself that you can doubt all day, but they don't budge.

There. You have an anchor.

You didn't have to invent anything, or talk yourself up, or con yourself, or brag.

There's this thing about you that's unassailable. It doesn't even matter whether you have faith. There it is.

I don't advise not caring what anyone thinks. It seems to be reactionary, or else the result of years of experience with people, rules unspoken and not, boundaries, rights, etc. If you don't have to care what anyone thinks because you know this is all within your rights and you can do this on autopilot - then good for you. But a child should not attempt to live on autopilot. And if your airline pilot is bragging about being on autopilot all the time, that would understandably make you nervous and perhaps want to use another airline next time.

What I do advise is self-compassion. Self-compassion means accepting how you feel and trying to understand it. Then you work with it.

This is what you want others to do for you, and if you're empathetic, this is what you want to do for others. But if you are self-compassionate, you do not need others to be doing this for you, or only very rarely. Generally you are content to understand yourself (and others) and adjust things as needed. You don't need other people to become yes-people, reinforcing all your upsets and suspicions, signing off on every emotion you feel as if it were the perfect response bar none.

Oh come on. Right? Emotions are rather primitive, at least at the core. Some are helpful. Others really aren't. Every emotion evolved for a purpose, but when they occur to us, they are imperfect approximations of that purpose and often entirely maladaptive. Adults need to learn to manage that and see there's a difference, and act accordingly, to the best of our ability.

If you are self-compassionate, you don't particularly need someone to validate your feelings. You already do that. It would be nice if they did, and if no one did, it could hurt your feelings. But you don't chastise yourself for this. It's perfectly normal. You understand and accept it. Even if it weren't perfectly normal, you would understand and accept it. And because you don't particularly need someone to validate your feelings, you don't act as if it's a crime when someone invalidates your feelings. It might be a little insensitive or rude, but so would lashing out at someone for it. And a person has the right to validate, not validate, or invalidate whatever emotion they want. They aren't at your beck and call that way. A person in a state of self-compassion doesn't even have to think this, they find it immediately and intuitively obvious. You do not need someone to approve of how you feel, and if they imply it isn't how you feel, or cannot be, that's their mistake, but not a crime.

It is, of course, far preferable if we understand each other.

But self-compassion already gives you an abundance of understanding, and you can extend that to others even when they don't extend it to you. That's a beautiful thing. Someone less self-compassionate and other-compassionate may feel this is akin to being cheated or used, but that is not so. Understanding it not a gift to others. It's first of all a gift to ourselves. Others benefit from the improved version of us in the world. But we are enriched at the source.

When you feel unappreciated, you could think, well, that's because what I'm doing isn't all that good. Or you could think, I'm not bucking to silent expectation and unvoiced, possibly imaginary rejection. I follow my light.

The funny thing? They're both perfectly legitimate reactions.

Don't let someone tell you it's straightforward to grok the difference between where one is needed ("what I'm doing sucks, let's improve this") more and the other is needed ("to hell with your judgments") more, unless they give you a straightforward method for differentiating, one that you can safely test.

Sometimes you need to up your game. In fact, that might not feel good, but it's almost always good advice. So follow your light, but also up your game.

Take the strongest, most powerful, most persuasive strongman in the world. Put him in outer space without a space suit. Don't really do it. Use your imagination for God's sake. Now let's ask ourselves whether "weakness" is objective or subjective. His lungs are a weakness. His internal pressure is a weakness. His need for a certain temperature is a weakness. Now almost everything about him is weakness. There is no way he'll survive if left to his own devices like this. Not even a few minutes.

The next time you're sure something about you is a weakness, imagine the dictator in outer space. "Weakness" is relative, often enough a value judgment, and definitely depends on context.

I used to stand in line to order herbal tea and try not to show I was hyperventilating, and when it was time to order, I couldn't get words out right, which was humiliating and got me some really disgusted and suspicious reactions. People absolutely look down on people who show too much social anxiety and may even think you're a creep, especially if you're a guy.

I worked with an older student with dyscalculia who would start pouring in sweat when he tried to count, from all the accumulated shame of schooling and working at a cash register and not knowing how much money he had or who was tricking him. That's social anxiety with an easily identifiable cause. After a few weeks working with me once or twice a week, he was relaxed, better at counting (by 1s and 2s and 5s and 10s) and simple math operations, and didn't drip sweat on the table anymore, or show any sign of that.

Nobody wants to feel socially anxious - or, in vague terms, "insecure."

We should pause before we use "insecure" as an insult. That isn't really fair unless the person is being a big jerk. "Insecure" is not an insult or even abnormal, and I'm not entirely sure that it's appropriate to see it as weakness, either.

Some people are going to look down on you, and most people will some of the time. It happens, right? There are moments when we seem less than we usually are.

IMO the best scenario would be to know that someone's looking down on you (you might occasionally need such information), but not really be bothered by it.

Looking down, looking up. They're just emotions. Curious to note. Not nearly as significant as our old monkey brains want us to believe.

Social anxiety has something in common with paranoia and schizophrenia. Your detectors are at full volume. You pick up on little signals that everyone else either can't see at all, doesn't notice, or chooses to ignore. Sometimes, these tell you useful, verifiable tidbits. Other times, you're just too high-strung, and you're picking up noise and reading it like tea leaves, seeing faces in the clouds.

There have been many times in my life when I've had an active imagination about what groups of people were saying about me to each other. Mostly it's a type of daydreaming, reflection, introspection, and brainstorming. It gives me ideas, both about the people and about what I could do to clarify things.

There are times I get delusions of self-reference - my mind interprets all kinds of little things as about me - people reacting to me, instead of to themselves or the environment - little details in my surroundings that feel like they were hidden there by a diety for me to pick up on and read as personalized messages and warnings.

I recognize that these mental states can verge on psychosis. But generally I know the difference between what I actually know, and what I only hypothesize, suspect, or fear. It can be very difficult to tell the difference sometimes, believe me. But all mental health professionals I've talked to have called my reality check "excellent."

One natural strength I get from social anxiety is reading people. That's something I've relied on in my tutoring work. And I've noticed something - I want to say this in a humble way, as it is decidedly not about me - but at almost every tutoring center I've worked at, the top tutor there had obvious social anxiety. We often have a superpower for reading people and understanding. Even if we don't know how to respond (we could be very anxious), we're often very good at picking up on little clues about how you feel and what you think. This isn't just a personal theory or an observation about coworkers - psychologists have found it true. 

Social anxiety and empathy are positively correlated on an emotional level, as well.

Another strength is that I'm very, very often running through possible conversations in my head. The easiest aspect of fiction for me to write is the dialogue. For me, writing a story means writing conversations between people, then filling in settings and actions. When I start writing dialogue, it writes itself. And I've gotten nice compliments on the realism.

I recognize that I write too much, and sometimes in a one-track or overly diffuse and hard to understand way, on social media. And I'm constantly acutely embarrased by it. Or ashamed, humiliated, worried, sometimes downright exhausted by all this. But... after all my efforts to be more normal, I feel like this is just kind of how I am and I hope people get it, and that I'm absolutely not trying to be jerk. The more words I type your way, the more that's a compliment... even if it doesn't seem to be.

Insecurity often has components of mental illness, or just not being quite normal. To hold everyone to the standard that we should all be equally confident, and be judged on how well we manage that - that is not good social or cultural policy in the end, I think.

I feel like talking about this today because I don't think public awareness of social anxiety is nearly as advanced as it is for introversion.

Many good, empathetic people suffer from a misconception. It's totally understandable that we have this misconception, but it's still a problem.

We've had experiences of someone yelling at us, and making us feel really bad, and maybe we were hurt or angry in that moment, maybe we felt it was somehow unfair, but we thought about it, realized they had a point, and incorporated their feedback into our lives, becoming better people.

Sound familiar at all?

Let me zoom in on a detail.

"maybe we were hurt or angry in that moment, maybe we felt it was somehow unfair, but we thought about it"

That's perspective-taking.

"making us feel really bad"

That's our own personal conscience, the other person's persuasive delivery, and our natural capacity for empathy.

When someone attacks you for what they see as an error you made, it takes empathy to redirect any hurt, frustration, anger, or sense of unfairness that rises up in you, and focus on connecting with and understanding that other person despite these feelings.

It takes empathy. And you are an empathetic person.

You forget that someone with less empathy will probably just feel hurt and angry (because attacked) and think you're a moron and their enemy. They are naturally missing the link you followed to your insight here.

They will not learn from you when you attack them. You will drive them further away from seeing.

Remember this. It will probably not change in our lifetimes. Not unless we reformat ourselves genetically for a new human nature. In other words, it will not change in our lifetimes.

If you didn't fully understand this before, now you're closer to understanding it. You're quite welcome.

Use what you know? Please, for the sake of the future of humanity.

When someone is angry with you, it takes extra empathy to see it their way, rather than as a vicious, unbidden, selfish, low, unfair attack from an enemy. Even very empathetic people can find it difficult not to get defensive or feel the person is being unnecessarily mean.

If you're angrily criticizing someone who has less empathy than others, and probably criticizing them all the more harshly because their behavior is probably worse, you're asking them to respond to you as if they have substantially more of what they have substantially less of.

You're trying to fix them by hitting what's broken.

This is one reason psychopaths/sociopaths often cannot seem to learn from punishment. The punishment seems like an attack from an enemy who pretends to be better than them (and pretends that this "consequence" is natural and inevitable and undeniably right, rather than artificially imposed and a bit of an experiment or crapshoot). The angry person pretends to be better but is, in the unempath's eyes, a sanctimonious hypocrite and no better, and probably weaker and more foolish. This sets them up to like you even less, listen to you even less, want to launch some kind of counterattack, and possibly turn against society at large.

That isn't really the thought process you want when you take someone to task. But it's what you'll likely induce when you attack someone who's too lacking in empathy.

(I know this from reading the experts, from dealing extensively with abusive people including standing up to them and influencing them, and also because I feel this way myself at times, and it's empathy that allows me to rise above it.)

To influence almost anyone well, you need them emotionally on your side, on some level. It's just a prerequisite.

Getting yelled at, feeling that was maybe a little mean but we get it, fixing our behavior because we've learned our lesson - this is what empathetic people do.

(Sometimes we then do unto others who are making similar mistakes, assuming that's what'll teach them. Ideally we'd be so kind and understanding we'd neither misstep nor need harsh words to recognize it and course correct, apologizing and making amends as needed. But even the most empathetic people have occasionally failed to see a thing fully until the pressure was slathered on with anger. Subsequently, we may find ourselves assuming this is what's needed when others aren't responding. Occasionally it is, but it probably works better the more empathetic the person receiving the intervention. And the more empathetic they are, the more they'll probably respond to gentler feedback, obviating the harshness and making it inefficient, gratuitous, or unskilled. This probably works best with normal people who have repeatedly not improved, maybe because they're distracted or less sensitive in some area, but who fully possess the empathy to eventually understand the criticism, the anger behind it, how to deescalate it, and what they can and should do to make all this better. But that person sounds pretty empathetic already, and it's quite likely the issue is a communication problem.)

One way empathetic people have often failed to understand others is that people with sufficiently impaired empathy probably do not work this way. They need a different approach.

I'm almost above all else a proponent of good, wise, balanced, constructive, curious, empathetic, open-minded criticism. Everyone's got stuff they're unhappy about. The world is full of hard struggles to take up as good causes. And when your toothache gets bad enough, you will inevitably start feeling that toothaches are just the worst and most maddening of all the kinds of pain possible. This might seem short-sighted or self-absorbed, and even might be, but pain reminds us to fix what's damaging us first, lest we lose our abilities or our lives. An infected tooth can after all kill, as would losing too many teeth have done in prehistory. The pain isn't there to make us wimps or selfish or moral or tough. It's there to save us.

Not every pain is an existential threat. Sometimes it's an existential threat, contrastingly, to let your pain distract or stop you. As the Serenity Prayer suggests, it takes "the wisdom to know the difference." And wisdom is not automatically available to everyone at birth in equal amounts. We're born slightly different and develop even more differently. We can and should expect to see some who are wiser than others, or wise in one way, foolish in another. Noticing this in the wilderness of daily living should not surprise us much.

By the time you feel it's important to admit and talk about some pain, whether it's medical or social or anything else, it's usually bothering you or someone you care about enough to make you a little frantic, and not necessarily as rational as you would be otherwise.

The stigma against speaking up and speaking out about what bothers you (especially you yourself: and this is why allies are so important) is therefore not only that 1) humans tend to automatically prefer victim blaming ("you must have done something wrong to bring this on yourself"; this belief allows me to feel more secure, because by the unconscious and rather lazy logic, I'm safe as long as I'm not an idiot making obvious mistakes like this "victim") and 2) the status quo magnetizes brains, distorting or damping out some of their perceptions, making it difficult to see/recognize the causes of others' pain even when we're told point blank and 3) people interpret others' victimhood in the frame of resource fairness, as an imposition on them and an unfair claim for special treatment or even an excuse, but also, crucially, that 4) when you're in pain, you're likely to speak in a way that's charged.

Exaggeration, simplification, cherry picking, magical thinking, emotional reasoning, defense mechanisms, and the whole range of human biases - these are no less likely in someone in pain. (Putting aside limited benefits like "depressive realism," which is the tendency to be in some ways more objective when unhappy - feeling threatened usually triggers our defense mechanisms, which, while they evolved to save us just like pain, are primitive biases and a factory of delusions.) You can expect a person upset to be about as irrational as others, and probably more so. They may be angry, and the anger probably isn't perfectly accurately, precisely, provably, reliably, undeniably, or even fairly directed. There will be some scatter; it may look/feel more like a sawed-off shotgun blast than a sniper bullet. They can also seem selfish or self-absorbed, for the natural reason previously mentioned - pain evolved to tend to collapse us in on ourselves, to focus us on our own problems so we can fix the situation.

Choosing to focus on others instead of your own pain can be a super useful way to deal with it; but the same tactic can also kill you. Expect people not to always know which is right.

The solutions we need most aren't always straightforward or visible at all. Not finding a way to repair in spite of all the pain and focus can exhaust us on every level. Sometimes we need to talk about problems not only for connection or protection, but to find out from others any factors and details and solutions we're missing. There's a conventional wisdom against giving unsolicited advice, but sometimes people fall into exhaustion and hopeless mindsets. Sometimes it might be your responsibility to risk being douchey and give advice where it isn't asked, because the alternative is watching a friend remain hopeless and gradually succumb or self-destruct.

People need to make effort for themselves, but a person who has lost hope may need your help. The risk of not helping them see from another perspective, and notice possible solutions or measures, is greater than the risk of seeming annoying or full of yourself for giving advice. Getting offended by advice is also rather childish; if it's bad advice or the person really isn't listening and is advising simply as a casual brush-off or put down, that's obnoxious. But I find it's important to recognize the good aspects of thoughts and efforts. Any kind of advice may qualify as some kind of attempt to help, and that's a thought that should count for something.

There is a presumptuousness in any person believing they know - or might know - what another person doesn't - ESPECIALLY if that person really needs to know it. A person not knowing something they desperately need to know - something others casually happen to notice - is a vulnerable and possibly pathetic picture. This in no way lowers the value of imparting that information, or trying.

Sometimes the best way to do so is with nuance and balance. Other times we've got to be really punchy. Yet other times we should wait for a good moment. Which is better when is not something anyone is born knowing the first thing about.

Good criticism essentially means "the wisdom to know the difference."

Everyone's so focused on confidence that they don't realize they should be going the other direction.

Get some facts? Keep your ears open. Question how you feel. Confidence is often totally irrelevant.

I don't say this because I dislike confidence, or believe it has no use, or resent people who are feeling confident. Listen, I often feel confident (and who doesn't love feeling that way?), and am often drawn to people's confidence (though that's not the only thing, and I can also be drawn to hesitation, etc). I'm just trying to correct a bias.

We have a bias *toward* confidence. Someone's got to be the annoying person pointing out that it's a bias.

If I could be like any artist, it would be Hayao Miyazaki. I don't mean I'd imitate his works. I mean I wish I had that much imagination, heart, and work ethic.

Watching a documentary about Studio Gibli in my early 20s convinced me I really did want to be part of artful storytelling. In a sense they had no lives, and in another sense you could see them as exploited. But they weren't. At least, not the way I saw them. They were fully dedicated to creating these wonders, and I loved them for it.

I fall so far short of them almost 20 years later, as I try to focus on my chosen work.

When it comes to writing fiction, I'm not bad at descriptions - I have that clinical knack of saying what's there precisely, quickly, and vividly - but what I think I'm actually good at - the hook that makes me want to write stories - is dialogue.

I get plenty of rough story ideas just from being a human planetside. But the stories I start - I basically always start them as conversations. The easiest way for me to write a story is to write one or more conversations between characters, then fill in with setting and action details.

I have all the hallmarks of a creative person. The only problem is I'm not creative.

I'm being a little facetious. I think that's about 75% true. I try to use the remaining 25% of wiggle room.

If I were less logical and less shy, I would be more creative. But my creativity involves both logic and shyness. So there.

I like something that's subtle (shy) but that actually works (logical).

That doesn't mean I'm not also bold sometimes. That conclusion (that I'm not) would be overly simple. In fact, avoiding the overly simple is a lot of why I'm creative in the first place. After all, we could have gone with the first two sentences above and been done with it. But they weren't good enough. They weren't true enough.

Society has cognitively dissonant relationships with masculinity and femininity. These characteristics didn't appear in a vacuum or on a whim, nor were they (originally) a conspiracy. However, it's a gigantic falsehood to assert that women should always strive to be feminine, and men should always strive to be masculine.

But even today - if you go against your apparent sex and adopt different gender characteristics, you're going to be punished. Sometimes it's by family, sometimes by friends, or mentors. But you know what? Often it's by the people you're romantically interested in.

I truly don't care if a guy calls me a pussy. He just sounds like he doesn't realize he's giving me a compliment. He sounds like a fool. Maybe that's just me. I like feminine, a lot of the time. You think I'm feminine? Why thank you!

But when it's obvious someone I feel I'm in love with (it's a feeling, ok? I don't have to justify it, share it, keep it totally quiet, or feel ashamed of it) thinks I'm not really a man, certainly not one of interest, even though she was clearly intrigued by me at first, or I see that she's now actively, though quietly, disgusted by my femininity/shyness, that really ends up hurting a lot. Like almost nothing else, sometimes.

Let me make a wild guess: I'm not the only one.

When men are telling women how they ought to be, that's wrong. But when men prefer a woman who is more feminine, and leave a woman who shows more traditionally masculine characteristics hanging, sad, rejected, as part of a depressingly consistent pattern, then that isn't any sort of malice, but it certainly has an effect on people. And the same goes the other way around.

As I said, I don't care if a guy thinks I'm not manly. But the pressure to be manly enough that someone I like sees me as not pathetic - that's kind of intense.

And I mostly ignore it. Mostly. But that's a little unusual, and I don't feel it's understood. (This kind of "being yourself" doesn't seem to work out well for men who like women. There's a mating ritual of sorts that women respond to, and it isn't about showing off your femininity.) You can mostly ignore this and be how you prefer, but it results in more pain, probably, not less.

There's natural selection and there's artificial selection. In the second category, you have sexual selection. Men's tastes in women and women's tastes in men are an enormous presence in how we think about what it means to be a man or a woman. And some of that stuff - for the same reason that being gay is not a choice - is not a choice. Men believe they ought to be a certain way partly because that has helped men in the past find women they liked who liked them; being sufficiently different from that may well have led to that person's genes disappearing from the gene pool. The same goes for women and how they believe they ought to be.

This isn't a claim that stereotypes are good or right or a-ok. Nor does it make any assertion about what traits are "masculine" (because they turn women on naturally) or "feminine" (because they turn men on naturally), versus what traits are attractive or unattractive for purely socialized, cultural reasons.

I don't need an opinion on any of those specifics to make the point that there probably are such specifics.

And I can tell you about one: being relatively shy and getting anxious and a bit tongue-tied when you like someone is generally perceived as neither attractive nor masculine. You might feel that the way you feel would be totally understandable and is itself a sort of (or a really major) compliment to another person. How you feel feels like a very positive thing, the discomfort or jitters of not knowing aside. But many women seem specifically on the lookout for any such signs and find them gross. At least, if they are anything beyond momentary.

That's one repeat experience that I can vouch for with a lot of tears.

It takes a certain kind of guts to say that, or where, common sense is wrong. And it isn't the kind of guts that's much appreciated. People will feel vaguely implicated. They'll quietly find excuses to dismiss you and what you say.

It's exactly why whistleblowers at organizations get ignored. Some observers will connive by trying to shut the person up, or paint them as unreliable or crazy. But many don't realize how they're playing along. They revert to their previous common sense without looking closely enough. They just think the whistleblower is a fool.

If you want to discount what a person says, you can always find a reason you'll want to believe. Is it a particularly good reason? You should be very suspicious of yourself here.

I've always been very, very distrustful of persuasion. The way the word is typically used, it means trying to convince someone using emotional means and other ploys, rather than advancing the empirical case. The reason I distrust it is that I grew up in an environment in which I didn't know who to believe. Also, given relatedness to people with mental illnesses, which I slowly realized was a fact, I was deathly afraid of being crazy. That was a real-life education in filtering out persuasion and other guff, and going straight for what counts if you want to know what's happening. It also taught me that often I simply will not know, and convincing myself it's A, or B, or C, is ill-advised if I don't know. Often in life the best answer is: "I do not have enough data. I could guess, but it would be a guess, and I have to remember that. If I get sloppy and start forgetting where I guessed, that's bad gambling, and the house will definitely win over time."

So, do unto others, I don't persuade others. Or as little as possible. I give people the information I think they might need, and I let them decide.

This is a handicap. I know. But sometimes there's a strength in taking on a handicap. So far, I'm not dead, homeless, friendless, or entirely unhappy, so maybe it's working ok.

But it all leads to a much bigger question. Because I'm interested in both human and animal psychology, I've become aware of many quirks in our nature that seem pretty weird and could be exploited. I'm not the kind of person who feels ok about exploitation. In fact, I'm sensitive enough to it that normal persuasion strikes me as exploitative. When people persuade me, I know what they're doing. It's almost like they're yelling at me what they're doing. I'm very aware of their tactics. If I'm convinced, it's because I like the person and wanted an opportunity to be pushed into what they're pushing for; in other words, persuasion can work on me when it's encouragement, but not when it's trying to make up for a weak argument. You can persuade me to go and see a movie when I didn't feel like it (because I generally value movies and time with friends), but not to view a poorly-substantiated position as well-substantiated. People's efforts to persuade in place of giving good arguments will often lead those people in those moments to call me stubborn, but that's because they're using the wrong tool for the job, not because I'm being stubborn.

I'm very careful in how I curate what I believe, and that you're my friend is irrelevant there.

But all of us are social creatures, and usually we aren't dealing in STEM-style proof in everyday life (though there are many situations where that is or would be an improvement, as science is incredibly useful, even in places where people have historically believed it isn't applicable). The funny thing about the word "manipulate" is that it has a negative connotation, yet everyone's constantly manipulating. I'm manipulating my keyboard. You might be considering manipulating me by responding to this post. When you say "Hello," it's a manipulation of the air and ears that often leads to a "Hello" or similar back. Our understanding of human nature and each other improves our manipulations; we interact better.

When I teach, I cannot avoid considering things like the effect of my emotional tone, or the damage I could do by saying additional true things that would only confuse right now.

So I'm often asking myself what knowledge is fair game to use, and what isn't.

For example, if I know that you like coffee, then I might consider giving you a coffee-themed gift over the holidays. That is a positive manipulation/exploit/tactic, because the idea is to get you something you'll actually enjoy. (Whether it's a successful gift or too simple a guess, we'll put to one side.) Sure, if the gift works out, the giving might go along with you appreciating me more overall, but that's always a possibility when we interact positively with others. Nothing really wrong with that. (Some would disagree with the latter, and say a gift should be entirely and scrupulously selfless in every way, but I think that's unrealistic and shows a lack of understanding of the motivation subsystem in brain tissue. No matter how selfless an act, in the end, the person acted that way because they valued it, and found the idea satisfying in some way, which meant they somehow felt good about it, or thought they might.)

For another example, I read about some research showing that if you are going to do someone a favor, they may actually appreciate it more if you don't hide that you aren't super thrilled about it. Favors can actually lead to resentment (we don't like feeling we owe someone), or else to people taking you for granted. But if you are open about the fact this is a hassle, or time-consuming, or effortful, or really not what you were planning to do, etc, and you do it anyway, the atmosphere kind of shifts to the person simply appreciating that you went out of your way for them. They take it less for granted, and they're less likely to feel a weird resentment about owing you, since you gave them a slightly hard time about it. Since reading that, this is a trick I use regularly. Not always; it's an option. If people know me well enough, I've mentioned the article, and presumably they know that I'm "manipulating" them or "exploiting" human psychology in this way. So in this case, I've decided that something potentially debatable falls on the side of "really ok and within anyone's rights to use." That's because the result seemed to be better relationships between people, people feeling more appreciated, less resentment, etc.

There are many other quirks and tricks like this I'm aware of but don't use. Many of them are evidently things people do use, because I see it. And it isn't wrong that they do. Not necessarily. My self-standard is not my other-standard. And I think that's an important distinction to make, for a variety of reasons. When we're good at something, for example, we typically raise our standard; that doesn't mean we should harshly judge the people who are average or decidedly untalented at it. When I misspell a word, I feel stupid, but that's because I'm good at spelling; when you misspell a word, I don't think you're stupid, I just think you aren't that good at spelling. In my opinion, this is exactly how self-standard versus other-standard should work. But that would be my opinion, given it's how I try to go about it, wouldn't it?

The emotional, relational subtext of all the above, beyond just some concepts and sharing something I've thought about a lot - in other words my unconscious motive behind speaking in the first place - is almost certainly along the lines of, "You may think I'm socially incompetent and bad at persuasion, but there's something you don't know: it's a conscious, effortful choice, one based on hard experience, and what I consider to be a higher standard in some ways, though I'm not judgy about this."

In the end, most of us want to be understood and appreciated, so it's pretty safe to assume that's the motive behind most of what people share. Some people are more skillful at disguising this, or convincing themselves they really don't care how they're evaluated, but that's mostly a ruse. Motivation is primitive, and the engine is quite similar for all of us.

My own motives aside, I hope you have a feeling of some small new insight.

If I think about it, there really aren't any digital games I regret spending money on. That's an interesting little thing I never fully noticed before.

The context is... I see this work I do trying to develop the craft of making interactive, artful, meaningful digital experiences as something that isn't likely to pay financially. Maybe I finish one of my experiments to my heart's content, maybe I'm proud of it, but it wouldn't be something anyone would pay for, or almost no one.

Then I look at this little factoid. I don't regret any of the dollars I spent on digital games. Most of the ones I've bought, I've never even installed or played. Yet I like having them. If they suck, I'm interested in analyzing why, and seeing what still worked regardless.

So if I were selling a game to me, just to me, I wouldn't feel bad about selling something I'd worked hard on and was proud of, for the humble but operational and possibly novel and moving thing it turned out to be. I wouldn't feel bad at all. But then, I'm really not a tough customer. Oh, I'll be dissatisfied with everything on some level. Nothing meets my overall standard anymore. But I'm not interested in games just as an escape - in fact, I'm a little bit allergic to that. Most games I play, I feel like they're trying too hard to draw me into a seemingly infinite world full of trivia and "lore" to memorize, stuff that sounds really half-baked to me and corny and I don't know why I'd want to remember any of it. But that feeling doesn't make me regret buying the game. It makes me regret my allergy, and I put aside the game and think, "Maybe some other time."

I'm not trying to be mean. But in some ways my standard is very high, almost impossibly, and I recognize that and don't hold it against a piece of software that was very difficult to create. (Also, there is still magic in these works. I still feel it.)

So maybe I should try a little bit harder not to hold imperfection against my own projects. Maybe I'd feel less blocked, get more deeply absorbed in the work again, and more consistently, and make quicker progress.

I kind of feel that seeking out delicious food is putting the trailer well before the tractor.

Figure out what foods are nutritious - that is, do the job they're meant to do - and sit best with you, in terms of how you feel the rest of the day or week.

Then get creative with those foods.

Normal dietary/culinary practice is backwards.

You know, sometimes when I feel attracted to someone, and she seems really special, I look around. There are the couples, younger and older. There are... everywhere... the people. And just about every person started this way, as someone feeling someone was special. And most of the people don't seem special. Every jerk, every racist, every murderer - they all started as someone having the hots for someone. Or, pretty much all of them. And if some started some other way - say as IVF - it probably doesn't correlate much with who they are themselves.

You feel a person is really special, and they are - but that's just because everyone is. You want to believe this person is extra - better, smarter, kinder, more aware, healthier, stronger, more determined, funnier, perennially cuter - than the average person. And... is s/he? Maybe it's all an illusion, and you're just looking at another one of the jerks and fools - special, yes, but that's because we all are. And you - you yourself, you're another one of the jerks and fools. So why would anyone find you special, except through an illusion, or simply because we all are special?

"Not caring what anyone thinks" can be itself, and not so subtly, a form of approval seeking. We all know we're supposed to be this way. Society says it's good. According to the theory and sometimes in practice, people will respect you more if you don't care what anyone thinks, if you go and do you. But not caring what anyone thinks is reactionary, and it's in essentially all cases a lie. If you really didn't care, you wouldn't be making a big kerfuffle about it. (Nor would it be healthy or sustainable.)

What does it take to find the humility to say, "I do care what people think, but I'm the one charting my course. If some people like what I do, that's great. If some people don't like it, then I'm sorry or possibly not sorry. But I'm the one living this life, not anyone else. I choose." Is that very difficult? It's certainly more honest. All this posturing and convincing yourself that you truly don't give a fuck what anyone thinks - honestly, I find it sounds very gullible.

But you wouldn't be interested in that, because you don't care what anyone thinks.

Hell, you don't even care what you think. You're an anyone. What does coherency matter, anyway?

-

It's normal and human and healthy and constructive to care what people think. There's no good excuse for ragging on people who want the approval of others: you do also, whether or not you're putting on a big show (or blank facade) about not wanting approval. We evolved to be like this, and it holds society together. Good grief, people will devote themselves to cultish ideas at the drop of a bowling pin.

I don't find it brave or intelligent not to care what anyone thinks. It seems like a deficiency that might in some cases work in your favor - for example, if you're a hermit, or you spend all your life in the same room doing mathematics.

What is sensible, though, is taking charge of your own responsibility to chart a course through the universe that's available to you. That's you. You make those calls, in the end. You can care and still choose for yourself. Caring what you think doesn't mean I must do what you say. Since when did that even look like an equation?

If you tell me what I wrote above is highly delusional, I will care - I will take it seriously and think about it. But I'll probably end up concluding that it isn't delusional. No need to get reactionary. No need to declare my allegiance to the flag of not caring what anyone thinks.

Dating - attraction - relationships - we have this inner sense that it's all so incredibly important and meaningful, and that there's something wonderful at the other end of the rainbow. Then we look around us and see where people get when they follow their rainbows. And it doesn't look anything like what we'd have hoped for. (Or if it does, fast-forward and it really doesn't. I mean, being in the ground isn't that sexy, ok?)

We could forge ahead, hoping against hope.

Or we could say, "Maybe not in this life. Maybe it would have to be another world."

I'm pretty stupidly idealistic in my own way. The latter seems like the only sensible answer so far, for me.

There are certain defects my writing tends to have. At first, either I don't notice them, or I think I've fixed them and I haven't, or I feel utterly hopeless and stupid and egotistical even for trying. (Feeling that way doesn't mean you are, but I'm sharing the feelings.)

Over time, most of them I can spot and fix.

Common defects:

• I'm so confident about my grammar that I've really stretched it
• The sentence is too long
• I've said this in a way that's so ordinary that I now believe it was too obvious even to say
• Hedging against being seen as too facile, that is, after my efforts to be ultra-clear, I make too little effort to de-academicize, or, worse, I puff up my language semi-intentionally
• There are too many syllables in this phrase
• In an effort to be fresh, I've used a metaphor or analogy or word that seems pretentious or precious - it stands out, but not pleasantly
• Too many fucking qualifiers
• Too many fucking adverbs
• Saying "like" as often as I and others do in speech doesn't make this writing conversational, it makes my tone curiously slobbish and complacent
• Sure I can justify a tangent, but it's going to sound like rationalizing and maybe it is
• I talk about myself too much, and admitting "I think" and "I suspect" so often actually makes the impression worse, not better, because it keeps pointing back to Numero Uno
• My paragraphs don't have topic sentences, and I break them up by feel too often, rather than sticking to a clear thought for each, or, can you imagine, actually writing from an outline
• I bury the lead - my introduction would make even a ghost impatient
• My thinking is abstract, and I'm not actually very good with examples
• For all that I talk about arguing with solid evidence, I don't provide many citations at all

There's a difference between deterring bad behavior and letting yourself become animalistic and hoping that's a deterrent.

In psychology, we have this concept of reinforcement. It isn't what most people assume at first glance.

If your son keeps playing video games instead of doing math homework, and is getting a C- in math, and you take away the video games for a weekend, but then later he plays video games even more instead of math, and now he's getting a D- in math, that isn't just his spite, or a punishment that didn't seem to get through to him. You just reinforced his behavior. (Specifically, you did so by taking something away. This is technically a "negative reinforcer" because of the taking away, but functionally resembles a reward.)

A reinforcer is any intervention that leads to more of what you're giving feedback on.

A punisher is any intervention that leads to less of what you're giving feedback on.

It doesn't matter how intuitive or counterintuitive.

If your reward - offering to pay someone - results in less of what you were hoping for, that is a punisher, and for many practical purposes, a punishment.

If your punishment - assessing a fine - results in more of what you were hoping to prevent, that is a reinforcer, and for many practical purposes, a reward.

What you think you're doing - making it pleasant, making it unpleasant, etc - takes a seat way at the back of the caboose compared to what the data say actually happens as a result.

If you want to deter consistently or encourage consistently, you cannot ignore data.

A strong belief is actually a brittle opinion. The idea isn't new, but it hasn't reached its tipping point yet, hasn't reached wide adoption, does not seem standard, still strikes people as peculiar.

If you really want demonstrably strong beliefs, here's a counterintuitive but effective trick: start imagining that everything you believe is wrong. Just imagining. Don't go crazy. Test and critique everything. And imagine that what you believe is wrong is right. Just imagining, again. Don't go crazy.

Never assume you're above considering what you're certain of to be potentially uncertain or false. Your name: couldn't it be something else? Maybe you're dreaming, and when you wake up you'll remember your actual name. (That's actually happened to me. In more than one dream, I've had a different name. And I thought about it and was sure about this other name, and didn't even think of my real name.) It's a fact that you are not quite 100% sure about your name. Close but no cigar: practical, colloquial certainty, yes, but actual, literal, total certainty? Sorry, but no.

If you can let go of the absoluteness of knowing your own name, you can do that for any fact you're sure about. It's work - but that work enriches you with beliefs that can legitimately be called strong, because the ones you keep finding in your back pocket will tend over time toward accuracy, truth, and reliability.

The brittle kind of belief is just bluster.

There is a resentment to being told you're judged on confidence. First of all, what kind of way is that to judge someone, assuming you're even judging at all? We all know that everyone has flaws and insecurities and things they struggle with; why is knowing and feeling this about yourself in a particular moment derogatory? Couldn't it simply be more aware or more honest or both, rather than worse? And second, if you're judging others on confidence - if that's really what you're doing - why are you proud of it? It seems as if you're using someone's current feeling about themselves as a cheat sheet instead of using your own intelligence. And third, if you think the method makes sense, then why are you suggesting that someone falsify it? Either confidence is an honest measurement and we should respect people who are honestly and openly low or high on it, or it's everyone's responsibility to show a brave face because ya gotta; is there a good argument that it can be both?

It's a bit like telling the kids who come in for a test, "Now, class, you will be judged on whether what you write down matches what's in my key. If you don't know the right answers, copy from your neighbor!" We use this metric of confidence - we believe - to measure something important. And then we tell people it's their responsibility to falsify the metric - or talk themselves into feeling it - or in the example, copy their neighbor's already confidently written answers - so that everything can go as planned.

It means something or it doesn't. And what it means is relevant or it isn't.

There are people who will say, "Look, this system you're using seems absurd to me, and you can't explain how it makes sense. You aren't even trying. I will not participate." And then those people, for not falsifying their metrics (in other words, not going out of their way to feel and present as confident), and not participating in what seems absurd, will be interpreted as hopeless. Diffidence is insecure is weak is pathetic is no good. But they could have falsified and puffed up and played the game like anyone else. They just found the proposition distasteful, and they refused.

Often people are upset to find out that translations make little changes intentionally. The layperson, on cottoning on to this, loves to call the translation "bad" or "terrible" or "way off." That might be - I'm not claiming translations are good by default.

The best illustration of the value of "dynamic translation," which is the kind that consciously changes some details to save the overall intent of the work in the new language and culture, is comedy. Go back a couple thousand years and pick a comedy. Hmmmmm. No... not that one... ah! Let's go with Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes, a social conservative of his day who knew Socrates and Plato personally, was wildly popular because his satirical plays reliably got laughs, and this particular play was well-known enough that it (inadvertently, we hope) led to Socrates' execution. Despite the macabre aura, a translation of Clouds should probably be funny, as we have every reason to believe the original was funny. Now, we all know that in comedy, timing is everything. The smallest detail can hinge, unhinge, or rust over a laugh. So do your tally and weigh it all out! Do you want your Clouds to be funny, or do you want wording that's as close to identical as possible, but unlikely to make you laugh... anywhere... at all? Because both options can be called excellent translations.

Dynamic translation allows tweaking the wording and timing of jokes, the way a comedian might without changing the gist, until they actually make people laugh. A strictly formal translation might try to keep the word order and number of words the same, yet sacrifice the original result: mirth. Neither approach seems inherently better or truer: while the direct kind ("formal translation") seems more intuitively correct, in some instances tweaking can arguably produce a more faithful, not less faithful, translation. Sometimes the spirit of the law and the letter of the law are in conflict, and following the letter would actually be incorrect.

If you read a good example of each kind of translation, footnotes and introductory essays too, that's about as close to putting on 3D glasses and seeing the real, deeply authentic meaning as possible. People often daydream about learning a language (or they even do) to read a work they love in the original, so they can get the true experience. The funny thing about that, though, is that you're highly unlikely to master the language enough to get more from the original than from the "stereoscopic" approach above. Oh, you may understand most or all of the words if you're advanced enough, but unless you live in that language for years, you'll lose lots of nuance without realizing it. You may even feel qualified to poo-poo well-known translations for their departures (or "departures" sometimes); sometimes the problem will be your lack of expertise in the language and knowledge of how translation works.

What you do get from reading the original is a feel for it that can't be put into words. You taste the author's stylistic brew directly. This is their own breath. The aroma, the sound, will be much different. At the same time, you might want to remember that it also feels much different to you than it felt to the author and the original readers - the strange qualities of the language are at the forefront of your mind, while they were far at the back of the original minds most of the time. The intentional and perceived art will have been in patterns that you aren't experienced enough to notice as unique to the author; you have little to no way to know the difference between the author's style and that culture's style, or the author's rivals' style. Shakespeare, for example, will strike you as jarringly less unique when you read passages from his contemporaries and realize that in many cases you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. This is not to put down Shakespeare in any way; but what jumps out to you today, in any given instance, is relatively likely not what's unique about that bit. And what's unique dovetails with what's intended.

This in no way downgrades the value of originals. It's just trying to correct some subtle misconceptions.

I tried on some shoes via Amazon's try before you buy plan, then sent them back using an Amazon locker outside a gas station's food mart.

Surreal as hell.

You scan a barcode they sent and you printed, a door spontaneously opens somewhere in the array of doors, you put in your item to return and close the door with the fatalism of nailing a coffin.

Even though there's no voice, somehow the door opening itself feels sentient.

Rather than the long arm of the law, the long arm of the Amazon cloud.

I don't hate semicolons, I like them. But I've found that most of the time when I believe I've stumbled on a great place to fit a semicolon, when I look again later, I think a period or emdash is better there.

All respect to Kurt Vonnegut, of course, and his opinion has shaped how I understand and use semicolons myself, but I don't see more than the tiniest modicum of shame in using a semicolon where another scratch would do.

Most writers, especially today per fashion, hate the idea of seeming pretentious or forbidding, and mostly so do I. But people also read the way they watch violent movies: to exercise something otherwise unused. It's a bit like the hamster chewing to hone perennially growing teeth, scraping them down on wood (or cage bars?) to adapt and accommodate them. When we speak, we're often mucking about far from the high watermarks reached in our culture's language. We may not use a semicolon this decan or moon, but we want to know why they're used, and see a good example. Just to keep our feet wet.

So a writer who shows off a little isn't doing what a reader doesn't want. We want to learn. We want to stand in awe, a little.

Most of my usable energy every day is spent writing. At times I've broken out of that, but I don't feel more productive at those times, unless I happen to be on a short-term project that's really captivating me and helping me turn the gears.

I've made almost no money writing, and generally am not thinking about publishing or selling my words. Often I'm not even thinking about sharing them, or an audience. You could say I write for the future world - for the person who would understand - any person, no boundaries in place from the start.

-

Mostly I fall short, and usually the writing is more of a nervous tic or a hint of OCD - I must write these thoughts before they vanish, much as I might idly avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, not because I feel any fear, but because it's a way to play in the moment.

"DON'T step on the CRACKS / or you're FALL and break your BACK!"

That's the frame of mind I'm in when I write.

-

You could say I spend most of my life playing with thoughts and words, because somehow I've been privileged enough to be able to scrape by sort of somewhat somehow so far.

Even when I'm "at work" and teaching, that's a way of playing with words, too.

Oh, words and feelings, ideas, lives - maybe I'm a megalomaniac.

I'm kidding, of course. If power drove me, I wouldn't be dead broke and writing away the hours.

This is poring

Detail that I can't ignore when I see it: "pouring over ABC." You aren't a liquid. That sounds gross. It's "poring over." You're absorbing it, let's say (for the sake of a mnemonic) as if through your pores. That's the expression passed down the generations. Spell-checkers won't catch the error of "pouring" where you should be "poring," though, so it's on you.

Now, to excavate this old metropolitan phrase a little further, the origin of "pore" (this verb we're discussing, meaning "to gaze meditatively") could be a mutation of the verb "peer," which sounds reasonable and likely given the evidence. Or the origin could be the ancient Latin stem for the skin kind of pore, "porus," which means "passage, journey, or way."

If we go with the latter for lack of a definitive answer, then "poring over/through" a spy novel calls to mind absorbing clues through your pores (or sitting, meditatively transpiring through your stomata like a plant?) but on a deeper level could mean "journeying through." One of those two pictures is how I would recommend remembering it if you have trouble, as the image is vivid and points to the right spelling.

With a better lens on the microscope, though, my own interpretation is as likely mistaken as the "pouring" one. It seems the earliest known version, from the 13th century, is "pouren" - without "over" or "through" after it - meaning, basically, "to peer." The skin-type "pore," the noun, only appeared in English a century later, and with the modern spelling, fresh off the chariot from the Latin "porus." Is there time for "porus"-pore to mutate into the differently-spelled and rather different-meaning verb "pouren" when "porus"-pore shows up later in the historical record, not earlier? Probably not.

There's a smoking gun, and it's a verb with no obvious connection to Latin "porus," but a strong connection to looking.

So I'm pretty sure my "absorbing through pores" inference is as off historically (though it gets the spelling right) as "pouring all one's attention over and down the pages." It's really more like "peer deeply."

But if you write "pour over" or "pour through," while this is regarded as incorrect, you can take solace in the etymology pointing to "pouren" - so you might be right after all, even though the word has nothing to do with pouring maple syrup in the cup of tea a waiter just poured for you. However, you might have been poring while he was pouring - hell, maybe you were even poring while you were pouring.

The phrase "purple prose" is used to shame people into not trying too hard. But you know what? I'd say Shakespeare is relatively purple. It's natural when you write to want to impress; it's sensible to make an effort to distinguish yourself and your work.

When I write, I'm constantly steering around pretentious options as if they were submarines desperate to sink my battleship. Eventually I pare back so far I wonder if I'm talking down or failing to trust English to mean what it says. And still I'm sure I come across as pretentious. At some point you have to ask yourself: what does it mean to be pretentious, and how much is that a real problem rather than an imagined one?

I know from many tests and lots of feedback from people who know me a little or extremely well that I'm considerably smarter than average. Is that ego speaking? Maybe. Maybe I'm deluded. I feel stupid most of the time, and I try to go on outside evidence, but I suppose if I really am as stupid as I feel, I could easily be deceived, especially by myself. So maybe I'm not very smart; maybe it's only the Dunning-Krueger effect, despite what seems like an objective basis.

But let's suppose I actually am smarter than the average educated person. And let's suppose I'm smarter than some others who are seen as smart and successful. When I sit down to write - or stand up, or walk, or whatever - how much is it my obligation to hide this? If I'm presenting an idea that seems unrecognized or at least underrecognized, how important is it for me to write in a style that looks like everyone else's style? Or that makes everyone feel as if they could have written the same thing, if only they'd thought of it sooner?

One thing I love about Jimi Hendrix is that he wasn't by most objective standards an exceptional singer. He compared his singing voice, next to the juggernaut of his guitar presence, to a mouse standing next to an elephant. As it happens, I love the mouse almost as much as I love the elephant.

But when he "wrote" - played or recorded guitar work - did he avoid showing off his talents? Did he make sure you would feel you could do the same thing he was doing? Was he preoccupied with not alienating you? I don't know. But it seems to me he owned it, and his guitar swagger was part of his charm. He "wrote purple prose," and oddly enough, that's a lot of what was good about him.

Writers often start out like guitarists, trying to play the pen like a virtuoso. Then they run into technical problems, usually with their grammar and emotional and aesthetic skill. They might fool one or two people - might fool themselves - but sooner or later, they realize they aren't fooling the people who matter to them; to those people, they sound dopey, pretentious, arrogant, incompetent. They sound like they're trying too hard.

When they become aware of this, it embarrasses them so much that in humility they course-correct into an ethic that says virtuosity or any effort in that direction is arrogant and wrong, unless you are one of the chosen few gifted by the gods.

When I hear Shakespeare or Hendrix, I hear enormous skill cultivated over countless hours of purple. They didn't sheepishly quit and hide from ambition as if it were a sin. They ambited.

 

Powerful metaphors do two things: one, shine a light on something non-obvious about the target object or being (the "referent"), and two, hook this insight into what's already familiar, so you remember better.

When a calculus teacher compares derivatives to jumping out of an airplane and integrals to trying to jump back into the same airplane in the sky, this reveals that there's something massively unsymmetrical about the two opposite processes, something far from obvious at first sight. And since everyone's got images of jumping out of airplanes ready from watching television, yet few if any of the reverse (a somewhat shocking image), that's a very solid memory hook. It's the kind of metaphor someone can say once and people in the audience will have no trouble remembering for the rest of their lives. (It happened to me: my differential equations professor shared this metaphor one morning in 2006 and I'll never forget it.)

Something non-obvious about metaphors is that a good way to practice them comes from realizing that basically any two things can be metaphors for each other. There isn't any unattainable pixie dust that renders some things "metaphorable" with other things. You can take any two nouns or activities, compare them, and find links to mine for a metaphor. The dormant aromatherapy diffuser over there and a winking grizzly bear could be compared - it just takes some setup to highlight a thread of commonality (for example they both hibernate, and have steamy breath). The endless parade of answers to "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" is not really a function of a special connection between the two, but of the possibility of connecting any two things.

That knowledge - initiation into the metaphorical mystery cult through a brief demystification - helps you find the powerful ones. It's a curious case of lowering the bar to raise the bar. That's often true of creativity, but to say it's always true of creativity would be a dangerous oversimplification!

Most of the time when someone writes a final, one-sentence "Period" or "Full stop" (with or without drama and a weighty silence) they should take it out. "Period" is not much of a statement. I don't mean logically, only, but interpersonally. "Period" means you're gloating over your rightness. It calls to mind what the villain does at the end of the movie: they would have won, but they have to stop and gloat. So they lose. Period.

(It works better in speech, but only about half the time.)

This isn't some sort of grammar rule - nothing like it. But you rarely prove much by ending on a note that says "I'm self-satisfied and closed-minded." It probably will (and probably should) sound complacent rather than thorough and convincing. The irony is that speakers usually say "Period" about where they usually say "ecksetera" - when they've run out of ready examples and want to sound as if they're just getting started. If you give your reasoning in two highly debatable or unsubstantiated claims followed by "Period," that's par for the course, or sadly even better than average.

It also sounds unintentionally comical. You... um, didn't know you aren't supposed to read that part out loud? Oh! You're done talking. Oh. Ok. That's very interesting that you're done talking. Stunning announcement, really. Oh, wait... you mean it proves you were right? Good Lord, I must be in the wrong building. What's that? This is a mental hospital, you say, not the middle horse stables? Oh yes, quite, quite. Beg pardon. Will be on my way now. No trouble. I'll get the door myself.

It's a style thing. I'm just pointing out why I think it's poor style.

All I'm saying is: remove it and try that. If it needs something, try something else. Try not to punt by spelling out a common punctuation mark. That's like yelling when someone challenges your view with a fact: more volume isn't relevant unless we're having audio trouble, and it probably seems foolish or offensive. I know what a period is and how to spell the word. Also, I heard what you were saying before that. If you really want to call attention to a logical argument that is now, you believe, complete, and bracket it verbally, "QED" is a little more on point. Or if you want to be more colloquial: "I rest my case."

But "Period" tends to appear where "QED" or "I rest my case" wouldn't be appropriate, because the argument is not as resounding or airtight as the speaker would like you to believe. "I rest my case" projects the confidence of readiness for any objection that might come up. "Period" gives the impression of trying to silence any objection without having earned that respect.

The key problem with bothsidesism ain't that the truth ain't always in the middle, even though the truth ain't always (or even usually) in the middle. The key problem is that most questions don't fall along a single spectrum, let alone a single binary dimension. What I mean is that enigmatic, everyday, life-is-complicated-isn't-it thorns are usually far more complicated than "A or B" or even "somewhere on the trail connecting A and B." Just for a handy example, let's say A = "the world is spherical" and B = "the world is flat." The universe strongly resembles A rather than B, but when many people strongly believe B, there's usually something compelling about B other than, simply, "it's so wonderful to be wrong, isn't it?"

In this case, when you step outside and go for a walk, the ground is mostly flat. You could walk your whole life and keep the impression that, overall, the ground is flat, with some bumps and dips. People believed the world was flat because it was a compelling - and partly true - description. It was workable. People believed the sun went around the earth for much the same reason. Neither description is stupid or entirely inaccurate. They are good descriptions within a certain frame of reference.

Now, curiously, whether "the earth is flat" is a good, workable description doesn't have too much bearing on whether "the earth is spherical" is a good, workable description. Both have descriptive power up to some level of realism. "The earth is rock," likewise, has descriptive power up to some level of realism. That last has, of course, even less to do with whether "the earth is spherical" or "the earth is flat" mirrors reality, but we know from daily experience and education that all three can be decent approximations in practice. Earth is a "rocky planet" when compared to Jupiter (yet we ourselves are not rock, and neither are the oceans or the ozone layer). We park the car on level ground when the parking brake doesn't work. We look at a globe for sharper insight about the sizes of regions. Yet the earth is not entirely spherical, so that description is also false if we need to get binary at high resolution.

When A is "truer" than B, a scenario we regularly face, and still there is disagreement, it really helps tremendously to understand what's GOOD about B, and, additionally but perhaps quite differently, what's appealing about it to its proponents. I have no trouble seeing why people believed the sun orbited the earth. Whatsoever... None! It's the most understandable - and relatable - broadly erroneous belief in the world. And if all we can do is fault the belief and spite the believers, we are poor communicators indeed, and maybe sometimes not very good people.

I'm pretty leery of people's beliefs. Your beliefs tell me something about you, I guess - though maybe just where you come from. I'm not convinced they tell me anything at all about the world. The same for opinions. You hear someone's opinions, you get to know something about them - the person, I mean. Maybe. Does it tell you anything besides? I'm not sure opinions are worth a damn thing.

When people call me opinionated, that's funny. I hate opinions. That is, of course, an opinion. How ridiculous I can be! It's a feeling! But I like feelings when we admit they're feelings. Opinions are feelings in denial about what they are.

We think we're being truthful when we share our opinions point-blank. In a way, though, we're being dishonest. We're saying how we feel, and we're claiming that's the wider reality. An opinion, as I said, is a feeling in denial about what it is. And so an honest opinion - taken to only a slight extreme - is a bit of an oxymoron.

When people say they have very strong opinions on an issue, I tend to infer they have very weak opinions. A very firmly held opinion is an impediment to understanding.

Do you have very strong opinions that the capital of Spain is Madrid? Or do you simply know it to be true? Once you've verified that the capital of Spain is Madrid, would the strength of your opinion on the matter have any bearing on the situation? And if you firmly believed the capital of Spain was Barcelona, would that in any way be useful? The valiance of your belief in the face of conclusive contrary evidence would be like a bullet in the knee. It would bring no benefit. It would only hamper you.

When I seem opinionated, or anyone else, maybe ask yourself whether the relevant part of it is my feeling - or else the evidence I fall back on, and the quantity of doubt I've poured like acid all over the opinion, trying to burn it to oblivion. You might want to ask yourself whether that's an opinion someone maintains, or an opinion that isn't burned away, thanks to underlying reality maintaining it.

I'm human and obviously not perfect and we have all evolved to operate on belief, confidence, opinion, feeling. But I always recognize these are provisional. They're things I try - at least try - never to forget have been penciled in.

If the pencil marks keep showing that the capital of Spain is Madrid, in spite of all the erasing you've been doing, perhaps that's because the capital of Spain is Madrid. Is that the same as what most people call an opinion? Isn't it close to the opposite of a strongly held belief?

So yeah, you could call me opinionated. I'd call myself written in pencil and frequently erased, and all the more trustworthy for it, at least in certain ways.

The capital of Spain is Madrid entirely regardless of my level of passion. That doesn't mean I'm never passionate. Nor does that mean we can't change things - like the present capital of Spain.

But my feelings know what they are. Imagination knows what it is. Purpose knows it's nascent.

When a person has something to say, we often begin by casting around for why they feel they have to say that thing. At face value, this might be a good response: understanding is helpful. Too often, though, pinning someone to a motive for what they say is merely a convenient way to excuse ourselves from thinking about the content of the speech. After all, if we can detect someone's conflict of interest, then why bother contaminating ourselves with their bias by listening further?

Unfortunately, that calculation is poorly considered and widely lowers the quality of thought, both in individuals and in group discussions. It's so easy to conveniently excuse ourselves this way; pointing to someone else's bias, or even possible or plausible bias, becomes a tactic for overlooking our own, or remaining ignorant, or not parsing evidence and logic.

Even when you firmly believe that you see someone's bias, you really ought to put that belief to one side and consider what they say as if your best friend were saying it. And if we happen to be talking about your best friend already and you just aren't seeing eye to eye, pretend this best friend is, say, a student, and you're looking to compliment something - anything - they're getting right, to encourage them to keep trying.

You will notice this is shockingly unlike how almost everyone goes about it.

Sensitivity largely means treating others as fully human even when they're upset by something that doesn't or wouldn't upset you.

Key rule: you don't need to empathize with everyone all the time. Empathy is yours, and theirs. It isn't someone's to command.

There's a little twist, though. "I don't have any sympathy for..." is an apparently mean stance common among people who are not usually mean. It seems to translate to an irrationality: "Because I am not going to invest in feeling for you, I don't give a shit about you." (It really isn't either/or like that.) Personally, I recommend removing the phrase from your social field guide and finding other ways to talk and think in those situations.

You'll find it clarifying. You aren't required to feel sympathetic or empathetic, but you might want to ask yourself what "I don't have any sympathy for..." actually means, or establishes, in your world. Listen to your own tone. When I hear those words, they always seem to serve as a conduit of willful ignorance, an insistence on a mental block. It often seems to be an expression of contempt and a dismissal of an entire person; not "I'm not feeling empathy, here" but "this person deserves for no one to understand them." The phrase strikes me as a somewhat lazy rationalization for just plain misunderstanding.

Let's consider a parallel... Listen, swear words don't make you a bad person. Not at all. But if you find yourself swearing every other word and calling all manner of items "shit" ("Where did you move my shit?") or "stuff" or "things," you might want to put the kibosh on that temporarily and use the rest of your vocabulary. If you couldn't say "shit," "stuff," or "things," what would you say?

Likewise, if you couldn't proclaim that you have no sympathy (not so subtly implying no one should), what would you say? Ask yourself whether the question of sympathy or no sympathy might be a distraction from a more important question. Does a person need your sympathy or empathy before you will see them as a human being who makes sense to themselves? Are you relieved of the requirements of decency when you decide you don't feel sympathetic? Can you learn something useful from this scenario regardless of how you feel about a particular person or their role in it?

Sensitivity earns its keep when we don't understand, don't feel sympathetic, don't believe we'd say or do the same.

It's strange that people use hot chocolate as a sleep aid, given that chocolate contains multiple stimulants: caffeine, theobromine (powerful enough to kill dogs and cats at low doses), and PEA (amphetamine's closest relative naturally in our brains). For that matter, in college the single most effective remedy I knew for making myself focus and work when absolutely necessary was a packet of dark chocolate M&Ms. (I have ADHD, but I didn't have a prescription for that and am proud that I never once "borrowed" pills from friends, when many did who needed to far less.) The little glazed chocolate lentils would keep me up all night studying. It worked better than any amount of coffee. So it's a little peculiar that people use this as a bedtime soporific...

Well, maybe it isn't, actually.

Too bad my dark chocolate M&Ms trick would only work once. Afterwards, that emergency fallback wasn't a fallback for a while. (This was, not too surprisingly, a gigantic problem. ADHD is called a disorder for a reason.) If I tried in the next few days, I'd be crunching new bags all night, and I'd never get as focused, and wouldn't get half as much done with 6x as much M&M in me. To be candid, I probably wouldn't get a quarter as much done, even if I was panicking about my grade and fascinated by the subject.

Tolerance happens quickly. Brains are all about adapting. So is life. But you don't see people downing espresso as a nightcap (not often, anyway), let alone a pot of drip coffee. So... why hot chocolate?

See, there's something called a paradoxical effect. I'm sure you've experienced it. Maybe you drink a cup of coffee expecting it to sharpen you up, but instead, you start falling asleep, regretting the coffee. Did it just not work? Are you imagining that it made things much worse? This is most likely to happen when you have less than your usual amount - meaning whatever your system has adapted to over the last few days. I find adaptation can happen shockingly quickly, as in the chocolate example. If I drink a decaf coffee, that normally wakes me up. (Seem odd? First, I'm naturally very sensitive to caffeine; second, I rarely use it because it doesn't wait until my birthday to gift me lovely migraines; and third, decaf has caffeine; so yes, under those conditions it works exactly like normal coffee.) But if today I drink a normal coffee and tomorrow I retreat to decaf, it'll probably make me sleepier than no coffee. That's called the paradoxical effect. It happens with a variety of stimulants, and other medications as well: whatever your system is expecting the chemical to do, your system partly counteracts that; but if the dose is relatively low, your system's counteraction will be stronger than the effect of the chemical. Voila: coffee made you sleepy. Paradoxically. But very logically.

So - when you aren't used to caffeine, or chocolate, chocolate can be very powerful, actually. A large bar of dark chocolate has, depending on the size of course, more caffeine than any coffee drink. And don't forget its other active components. But milk chocolate - and especially chocolate milk, which usually doesn't have much chocolate - can easily fall into the range that's less than what you're used to. If you're used to sodas and coffees, a bit of chocolate milk might actually make you sleepy.

One of the things you learn from finishing creative stuff is that even though it isn't perfect, it's meaningful, and you can be happy with it. Even embarrassing or bad works, though you may or may not want to show them, have their own being and meaning. You can sense this distinctly and be happy in some little way with all your children, yet this isn't complacency. It's fuel. Do what you can at the time, finish a bad piece: initial discouragements aside, you'll want to make more, you'll have more ideas to try, and you'll have levelled up in finishing what you start.

Most people are not very good at handling evidence when things get complicated.

When you use methods that work better than theirs, it may rub them the wrong way. To them, it'll seem somehow gratuitous. Given that they don't notice the difference between their level of realism and reality, they don't see the need for going any further.

More troublingly still, to the biased, objectivity and neutrality may seem biased.

If you think you are not biased because you are on the right side of things morally, then you are biased for that very reason.

Taking an honorable position will not replace evidence and logic. The tricky bit is that people think it will, probably without quite realizing that this is what their attitude implies.

Trying to be more objective and balanced than others is not a recipe for popularity, though people who know you well will appreciate it, because they will frequently benefit from it.