I'm rarely surprised by the content of critiques of what I say, because I've already thought of it, heard it elsewhere, etc.

What usually surprises me is the rigidity of other people's opinions and the lack of coherent logic and evidence under the surface.

I feel like Socrates. Prod a little, and everyone's opinion crumbles to dust and they get angry. That's egotistical to say. But many people relate to Socrates, because many people still have his experience, because most people are still like the people he talked to in the famous dialogues. They think they're sure, but mainly they're sure because they're proud of having an opinion, and they really don't like to be challenged on it, despite what they say.

Now, we don't have to *enjoy* critique and the possibility that we've said something out loud that's just plain wrong.

Who actually enjoys that? Or much?

What matters is how we approach this, how we approach both sides of this coin when they arrive in conversation - when we should say something, when we should listen.

No one talks about the fact fairness is a ludic concept - a concept that depends on virtuality - yet I'm convinced of it. Until we apply a ruleset, "fair" is an opinion, just as "good" is an opinion before choosing a purpose. "Virtual" doesn't mean useless. Fairness is virtual.

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If there's a gallon of water & 10 people are thirsty, it seems fair to give each person 1/10 gallon. Under that "ruleset" (breakdown of the scenario), this seems fairest. What if someone is dying of thirst? The calculation needs adjustment! But there's ALWAYS more detail.

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Even if you completely describe the water and thirst situation, there are other considerations. Does the water "belong" to anyone? Is someone being a massive jerk? You can keep zooming in and also keep expanding the horizon. When does it stop? When can we agree on what's "fair"?

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It isn't hopeless. But the fact IS, "fair" is virtual. It depends on how you analyze the situation. We have to agree on what the "game" is, and then we can agree on what's fair. That seems inherent to fairness. Doesn't it? It can only be analyzed from the POV of a ruleset.

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No one talks about this. Either I'm mistaken, or that's potentially a big thing.

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This also relates directly to "deserving" and "earning." Both these concepts refer to an assumption of fairness. What does it mean to earn or deserve, really? Depends on a ruleset.

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That might sound like punting, or moral relativism. But I don't think it's either. Again, "virtual" is no more useless than "hypothetical," "planned," or "mathematical." The latter 3 are all virtual, in fact - yet critical.

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I used to be a writer in the sense that I made great efforts to get words right. And I believed that my words could do something. I wrote about momentous topics, sometimes, and felt this could contribute to change.

I think I've turned from a writer into a teacher. I can spot-check and clarify. People listen carefully to my opinions and reasoning under specific circumstances.

I no longer have much of a sense that any word I write does anything more than clarify a stray thought.

It makes people uncomfortable that their beloved confidence isn't always a good thing.

When they're faced with clear examples - for example, malignant narcissism - they find ways to wiggle out of recognition. They'll say that narcissism isn't confidence at all. They'll even say narcissism is the polar opposite of confidence: it's insecurity and low self-worth, nothing more or less.

That's imprecise at best and at worst may border on delusional.

Confidence isn't always good.

Some people seem to - perhaps even congenitally - have too much of it.

We base a surprising amount of morality on confidence, often without realizing what we're doing. Because confidence is taken to be a universal good, we have trouble seeing, acknowledging, and understanding examples where it isn't what's best.

Sometimes confidence is dangerous or catastrophic.

Sometimes doubt is a wonderful thing.

Many people today are no longer religious, but I think many have allowed worship of confidence to replace worship of blind faith in God.

Trusting in oneself at all costs is no more reasonable than trusting in God at all costs.

I'm here to point it out to anyone who hasn't realized it yet.

I generally believe Jesus existed. Most knowledge was carried in the oral tradition - often for centuries or more. A social movement clearly happened around that time; it left a giant impact on history. While the origin story could have been fabricated entirely, ie, patched together from other legends and myths (lots of evidence of this borrowing), it's more likely that a person of some fame and influence was mythologized, pre-existing patterns magnetizing to him in retellings.

There were many rebellious young men at the time claiming to be God fighting the Jewish and Roman establishments in Israel. We know a man called Jesus was crucified, but the others who claimed they were God would also have been crucified, as that was the standard penalty. It was a known crime with a known punishment.

It's quite possible the Jesus story is some sort of averaging of these people (and executions) spanning several decades, with other mythology attached. But it's more likely, in my opinion, that one of these figures stood out as particularly wise.

Someone had to weave those words. That *even he* (if this explanation holds) was crucified in brutal prejudice would have been striking, tragic, and strikingly tragic to his followers.

I see no reason to ignore the historical setting - the fact quite a few young men matched Jesus's broad description as heretic, prophet, and leader claiming to be God or hear from God directly - and insist NO such person existed. And, again, I see little reason to believe that the words of a particularly wise and memorable individual of this kind could not have been remembered for a few decades before they were written down. Oral tradition was the norm, not the exception.

By the time the words were written, it seems there was already a movement and religion. It isn't as if the words were written, sat in a book for some time, and slowly built a following with people who appreciated the book. It's more as if a religious leader created a movement and eventually followers recorded a mixture of fact and legend.

Still, he may be a sort of Everyman character representing a couple generations of rebels and heretics, the voice of the pure Jewish spirit under Roman domination before much (not most but a lot) of the population at the capital was slaughtered (a definitely real event, not long after, that would have been symbolized well by crucifixion, an iconically Roman punishment).

Whether it's true or not, I like the idea that some actual words of one of the rebels were remembered. And I don't find that at all implausible.

All this basically is what Reza Aslan says in his book Zealot, but I find it persuasive.

One thing that can happen when you grow up in an abusive environment is that you develop a sort of allergy to hostility. Even amounts that would be considered normal can set you off, spiking feelings of disgust. You may well end up being kind of a pushover, as you're good at adapting and you have an inner need to stay away from meanness.

You actually see this as a strength, but others will typically see it as a weakness, unless they happen to see the wisdom (or a benefit to them) in that instance. Now, their reception doesn't mean you are a total pushover. In some situations, you may be exactly the opposite. The abusive environment likely taught you survival and defense skills, yet you can navigate others' "drama" - inconveniences, ignorances, or hostilities - with a kind of aikido that makes it look like you aren't doing much, because you aren't doing the things people usually do that make situations worse (often these are attempts to fix things in ways that simply won't work). You may be very capable of holding your own in a fight. It's just that you are considerably less willing to go there even than most normal people raised well. You associate hostility with the badness of your upbringing. You don't want to be the bad guy. You want to be the opposite of the bad guy.

This temperament is, like so many things, a strength and a weakness. People around you often benefit from the strength without realizing it; or they may realize and compliment you on your balance, gentleness, etc. But they may not like it when the other shoe drops and you show some understanding toward someone they feel is their enemy (or in some important way opposing them), or when your matter-of-factness (you are so practiced at not trying to be hurtful that you know you are not trying that, but they may not know that even after knowing you for years) ends up hurting their feelings.

One of the best things you can do to maximize the strength and minimize the weakness is to read about assertiveness and work on that. You already have many of the elements of skillful assertiveness, but you probably aren't putting them quite in the right order. 

I could be mistaken, but I tend to think of "burden of proof" in a statistical sense, like Occam's Razor. Example... your friend says "Look out! There's a car coming!" Now, you could 1) Put the burden of proof on your friend and wait for more information, 2) Put the burden of proof on yourself and turn your head to look, or 3) Fucking jump.

All have their place.

I'm just saying that if you rely too heavily on burden of proof, sometimes you will get hit by a car that demonstrably doesn't exist because the person who claims so hasn't bothered to prove it to your satisfaction yet, while you waited upon their efforts as if they were a slave feeding you grapes in ancient Egypt.

Ya know? ;)