Here’s the lede. I’m an idiot. This is not an idiot story. It’s the reason I often call myself an idiot; it’s because I want to make clear to people, and especially myself, that I recognize my mental glitches. I find it annoying when people make a mistake and instead of being embarrassed about it, try and justify why it isn’t a mistake. This drove me crazy with George W. Bush and now Trump has taken it to a new level. But it’s not the idiosyncrasies of the famous that bother me the most, but of those I interact with directly. Facebook is fertile ground for this.
Anyone who posts often is going to say things that are wrong. They will remember things wrong, they will miss attribute, they will quote unreliable sources, they will spread urban myths. I try hard to not do these things but I sometimes fail. When I do and somebody catches me I feel bad and do a mea culpa. Too many people will either double down on the mistake or switch to “What about … “ accusing someone else of the same thing. Every time someone claims something happened and are shown that the evidence isn’t there respond by saying, “but we don’t know it didn’t happen,” or “but it’s exactly the kind of thing that X would do,” part of my mind is tortured. I want to make it clear that I am not doing that. That I have enough self-awareness to know I was wrong. Sometimes it’s just a matter of me forgetting something or not noticing. I want to make it clear, especially to myself, that I expect better of me.
I know that I come off as appearing more confident in what I say than I am. I appear to be authoritative even when I deliberately hedge. I don’t know what causes that but enough people have said things to the effect of “Don’t’ argue with Gordon, he knows what he’s talking about,” in situations where I’m guessing, that I know it’s true.
Damn, I just realized that I’m saying that I’m confident that I sound confident when I’m not confident. Now I’ve lost confidence in this entire line of thought. That’s as it should be. A point I often make is you should grasp how little you grasp on technical topics. Beware of Dunning Kruger. I’m aware enough that I checked my spelling and discovered that it isn’t Krueger. When you think all the experts are idiots that never thought of something that you did, it’s more likely that you are the idiot. I’m always amazed how many people think that others are unaware of the costs and dangers of something when in fact they are totally cognizant and did a cost-benefit analysis instead of just ignoring either the cost or the benefit. While people with an agenda will often do that people that are trying to understand, and are trained, rarely do that.
When I say that I’m an idiot what I’m really saying is that I’m smart enough to expect better. I know that no matter how hard I try that there will be times that I’ll be an idiot. There are times that you are an idiot too. I’m not running myself or you down. On the contrary, I’m saying that we are not our worst moments, as song as we accept that they are our worst moments.
Wise Madness 