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.