Memory Function and Verbal Fencing
I admire those rational people, who are quick-witted and come up with just the perfect repartee in discussions with believers of any kind. The way, how my memory functions, impedes me from achieving this. I have no chance in verbal fencing (entry 39) nor in hostile debates with contradictors (entry 281).
I am a thinker but not a debater. I can be convincing in constructive communication, but only with those, who are receptive to rationality. This is a consequence of how my memory is working. I remember conclusions and forget the premises, once I consider them as obsolete.
A simple example: When I need several items to repair something, after buying them separately, I add the prices to remember, how much I invested in the entire repair. If someone later asks me the price of any specific one of the items, I cannot remember, having forgotten it after having calculated the total.
But there are more relevant examples:
I admire those rational people, who are quick-witted and come up with just the perfect repartee in discussions with believers of any kind. The way, how my memory functions, impedes me from achieving this. I have no chance in verbal fencing (entry 39) nor in hostile debates with contradictors (entry 281).
I am a thinker but not a debater. I can be convincing in constructive communication, but only with those, who are receptive to rationality. This is a consequence of how my memory is working. I remember conclusions and forget the premises, once I consider them as obsolete.
A simple example: When I need several items to repair something, after buying them separately, I add the prices to remember, how much I invested in the entire repair. If someone later asks me the price of any specific one of the items, I cannot remember, having forgotten it after having calculated the total.
But there are more relevant examples:
In entry 177 I summarized my evaluation of NLP. To come to the conclusion of the invalidity of NLP, I carefully I read some original sources, I read studies claiming to validate it checking them in comparison with serious scientific methods, and I compared my own conclusions with skeptical sources. As a result, I discarded NLP as pseudoscience not worth to ever again waste time upon. I was done with it, therefore I cleared my brain from all the further no more needed details about NLP.
The situation is similar concerning astrology, except that it is even more obviously nonsense and needs less knowledge and intelligence to get aware of this, so I had already been done with astrology ages ago.
If somebody now mentions NLP or astrology, I have no fast repartee up my sleeve. I am just annoyed to be bothered with it. If someone is interesting to learn my reasons, I can do some thinking, check my notes and sources, restore my previous reasoning and explain it. But the person has to expect from me sound reasoning and to be willing to listen and to take my explanations for serious.
The situation is similar concerning astrology, except that it is even more obviously nonsense and needs less knowledge and intelligence to get aware of this, so I had already been done with astrology ages ago.
If somebody now mentions NLP or astrology, I have no fast repartee up my sleeve. I am just annoyed to be bothered with it. If someone is interesting to learn my reasons, I can do some thinking, check my notes and sources, restore my previous reasoning and explain it. But the person has to expect from me sound reasoning and to be willing to listen and to take my explanations for serious.
When I am interacting with any kind of a believer, who wants to continue to believe and considers me as wrong due to my not believing, the situation is very different. The situation is either annoying or scary, depending on my liberty to avoid further contact with the believer.
If his belief or delusion is immune to rational reasoning only because it fulfills an emotional need, then a good repartee or none makes no difference.
But while a believer can never be convinced by a rational repartee, except if he already is prepared by intrinisic doubts, the lack of any repartee can be misinterpreted as an implicit admittance or acknowledgment of the validity of the belief, and this reinforces the believer's feelings of superiority and his disrespect. His willingness to ever listen to reasoning dwindles even more, if that is still possible.
This is the case, when a belief serves for someone as a source of feeling superior due to the delusion of having been chosen to receive wisdom or divine enlightenment. It is also the case, when someone feels superior and justifies this by having a specific belief. Contradicting to every disagreement with this belief serves the only purpose of having a reason to claim being right and thus feel superior.
Both the believe in astrology and in NLP are reinforcing attitudes towards and treatment of another person as guided by the belief, while not taking any cognizance of the target's feedback.
The fallacy of the believer in astrology is mistaking the zodiac as the most reliable information, believing it without a reality check. They judge and treat a person as if the ascribed personality and traits were true. The resulting misinterpretations, misunderstandings, misjudgements have the more severe consequences of distrust, accusations and expectations, that are completely false concerning the true personality.
The fallacy of the believer in NLP is the belief, that if he wants something, using a NLP recipe is a legit, ethically correct and justified method to get it. Any resistance justifies the application of more drastic NLP tricks. Failure is attributed to flaws and defects of the target.
Such fallacies are often as bad as causing the believer to convert a relationship into a power struggle and to belief also in the justification to dominate.
Believers scare me, and it makes not difference, what they believe in.
Believers scare me, and it makes not difference, what they believe in.
