> it's interesting how often the tendency to 'well-actually' minor, irrelevant factoids and the tendency to reduce conversations to axiomatic systems appear tog

> it's interesting how often the tendency to 'well-actually' minor, irrelevant factoids and the tendency to reduce conversations to axiomatic systems appear together. Simplicity is seductive, especially when you're convinced that the minor factoid you're harping on is something you're absolutely sure is correct. If you take a situation and reduce it down to the abstract axiom that you know is true, you can assure yourself that your interpretation of the situation is correct regardless of any nuances in the reality. Because "facts". This is the definition of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is named from the effort to get the fundamentals right. In doing so, they completely isolated and cut themselves off from reality.