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The first phase involved a literal reconstruction of my mistakes. I wanted to have an accounting, in my head, of how I fabricated those Dylan quotes. I wanted t
by PakG1 14y ago
The first phase involved a literal reconstruction of my mistakes. I wanted to have an accounting, in my head, of how I fabricated those Dylan quotes. I wanted to understand the mechanics of every lapse, to relive all those errors that led to my disgrace. I wanted to understand so that I could explain it to people, so that I could explain it in a talk like this.
This is basically doing a post-mortem. When I think about things I've done wrong, I go through this process. Then when I try to explain to people, I go through this process. However, when I do this, I fear that other people think I'm just trying to justify my mistakes.
As such, I don't often try to explain myself to others. I apologize, but I don't go into detail; and usually, people are willing to accept simply the apology and the high-level explanation. When I say go into detail, I mean a truly blow by blow account of every premise, piece of context, and minor decision that led to the big one. I think part of it is that a lot of people simply don't have the patience for such details.
To clarify what I'm talking about in terms of level of detail, I give the example of a time a girl asked me, "So do you prefer Vancouver food or Hong Kong food?". And I responded with a 5 minute dissection of the question to better understand what the question was asking, because the answer could vary depending on the question's true meaning and intent. Then she got exasperated and said, "Wow, I just asked you whether you prefer this food or that food!!! What's the big deal???")
So maybe I have two fears when I want to give the blow by blow account. The stupid fear is that people will think I'm crazy for going into such detail. The more scary fear is that people will think I'm trying to justify myself when I'm in fact not trying to do that at all. And this fear keeps me from sharing my thoughts with others.
I have no idea whether this guy is sincere or not, and so it's funny that the fear I have regarding other people being suspicious of my sincerity, I am casting similar suspicions (though not aggressively, as it's not a significant event to me whether or not this guy is sincere).
- VLM 14y ago"Then she got exasperated" Expand your failure analysis... I suspect the root cause is she was trying to ask you out on a date, unless there were reasons to the contrary. A similar scenario happened to me in high school, after I finally figured it out, my pattern matching improved.
- roc 14y ago> "I responded with a 5 minute dissection of the question" I used to do this shit all the time. Turns out I was missing the obvious part: people ask imprecise questions, not because they're being intellectually sloppy, but because they're looking for a conversation, not an answer. And you can safely infer this, because the imprecise questions are almost always about things that simply do not matter. No-one really cares if you like Vancouver food vs Hong Kong food. (If your opinion on the matter was of objective interest, the question would have been far more precise.) As phrased, it's pretty close to a nonsense question. So when you find yourself thinking "what on earth could they mean by that?" just stop and have the conversation with them, not at them. That is: stop at your first (appropriate) impression, phrase it as open or closed based on your desire to actually continue the conversation, and toss the ball back. And always keep in mind that the answers are irrelevant; what matters is how you pass the ball.
- Domenic_S 14y ago> I wanted to understand the mechanics of every lapse... It's a futile exercise, and counterproductive. Therapy falls apart when you get stuck in the loop of asking "why did I do this?" The important part is not to do that, but that's not what we want, because that would involve real, actual change. And as we know, feeling bad about yourself > the pain of changing. > a girl asked me, "So do you prefer Vancouver food or Hong Kong food?". And I responded with a 5 minute dissection of the question to better understand what the question was asking, because the answer could vary depending on the question's true meaning and intent. Your answer should have been, "howcome?", or "X is my favorite, howcome?"