Ramblings of an Idiot

Help the needy, believe a falsehood, attend to the overlooked

Inspired by the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/RhiaCrewe/status/1868532350851969029

This won’t be about abuse, or surviving. Rather, it’s about who and what needs support.

This won’t be particularly easy to read, I apologize. It’s too late for proofreading or ordered words, these thoughts are connected but jumbled.

I’ve never trusted crowds. Organizations, groups. Their effect on people (AKA me) always concerned me. In the crowd of a school assembly, cheering on the team, I felt fear. It unnerved me. It instinctively made me ask myself, “Are we the baddies?” To be a part of a whole in this way, with rare exceptions, feels too intimate. I do not want to be whipped up in a frenzy with all of you, I do not know you, how can I trust you all, there are too many of you.

There is an intuition I have, that I’d like to believe is well-reasoned, but is most likely instinctual. It has to do with who and what to trust, who and what to support. I have always tended towards the individual, wary of the institution.

I noticed at a young age that I was gullible. My bias was to agree with whatever I heard most recently. I have always assumed that everybody else thinks like me.¹ And so I worried this recency bias affected more than just me, but rather the whole world.

I became a truffle-seeker for the unvoiced claim. I was horrified by this bias I felt I had. If I am just a mouthpiece for the status quo, then I needed to instinctively disbelieve anything and everything I was told. There was a rebalancing that I felt needed to occur. I was searching for a neutrality that I have since come to believe is impossible. But I have not been able to convince myself of its undesirability. I still pine over this dream of perfect objectivity, like a naive child.

Are you good at something, so good that it has lost its lustre? I cannot sing to save my life, but a singer with the voice of an angel can make me believe in anything. But I imagine that you become less impressed with an incredible voice if you’re aware of the work needed to maintain it.

Maybe less impressed is the wrong framing. A virtuoso almost certainly becomes aware of details that a tone-deaf ignoramus like me could scarcely imagine. Impressed is the wrong word. Less Entranced? Enraptured? Intimidated? Spellbound?

I think it’s similar for math, I imagine. You notice, being good at math, how others believe you walk on water. There is no limit to their imagination of your intellect.

But imagine a math professor. When they see a paper that proves a theorem they’ve failed to make progress on, they don’t proclaim their colleague to have supernatural powers. They aren’t in awe, they understand that the author isn’t unimaginably smarter, but rather thought longer, or slightly differently, abou the problem. Being more familiar with the general techniques, they are less starstruck by others’ successes.

If I want to be smug, and most likely incorrect, I feel like this has happened to me with reasoning itself. I’m not impressed by reasons, I’m not as swayed by them. Or perhaps, I’m swayed by them left and right so easily that I’ve grown somewhat immune to their charms. Where others may see an unassailable argument, with no choice but to believe the conclusion, I see the techniques behind the opinion. I notice the feeling of truth enveloping me, I just don’t let it have the final say. Arguments, feelings, reasons, truth, why should they dictate what I believe? In the same way that a beautiful voice can belong to an ugly soul, so too can a beautiful argument reveal itself to be supporting a repugnant conclusion.

As I write these words, I remain unconvinced of my argument. In various places, I notice holes, slight untruths, unspoken assumptions. But I need this out of my system, and besides, I haven’t even gotten to the point yet.

It’s a tough road to walk, the contrarian’s trail. It seems that the devil has gotten less popular over the years, nobody’s willing to be his advocate. But taking on the mantle is hardly a conscious choice for me. It’s certainly not a burden. I’ve always found it, if not necessary, useful. They say to assume is to make an ass out of u and me. But the people who say that always assume so much.

It’s not really a road, but rather the complement. If the status quo is a road, the devil’s advocate has an open expanse. If the status quo is a city, the contrarian has the entire countryside. If the status quo is the world, the denier has the rest of the universe.

But there are reasons we have no civilization on Mars, let alone inside a black hole. For all my talk of anti-status quo, the reactive denier has two hills to climb. Luckily, the problem provides its own solution.

It turns out that the status quo is honestly, pretty good in a lot of ways. I like pizza just as much as the next guy, I don’t have any informed complaints about the jury system. If you’re going to always be against the status quo, you’re going to be “wrong”, whatever that means to you, extremely frequently. Certainly more than half the time.

Secondly, you’re not just going to be wrong. You’re going to be wrong where others are right. There will be countless sheep surrounding you, thinking that just because they’re right, they’re right. Being wrong where others are right can be a dangerous role to play, but in most cases it’s just disqualifying. You will be regarded as moronic at best, and subversive at worst.

Now we get to the point. The original graphic up top, why would abusers need support in order for their lives to change? Precisely because they had no support in the first place. The benefits of supporting a claim (or person) are proportional to the level of support they have within the populace.

By benefits, I do not mean the benefits you accrue. Rather the benefits towards the claim or person. The less someone or something is believed, the more your support is appreciated.

1. Since I think everyone thinks like me, I naturally assume that everybody else also thinks that everyone thinks like them.