The Weeds in the Wheat

There's this idea of the weeds and the wheat, or the chaff and the grain, or the lambs and the goats. You've got good and bad mixed together. Part of you wants to pull out the bad stuff as early as possible. Watch out though, you can't remove one without risking destroying the other. So what do you do? You let them grow together and sort it out in the end.

I think this is a great picture of what it is to be human. We've got these good and bad bits mixed up inside us, but you can't just yank out the bad parts because you'll destroy essential and good parts of who you are. David Bazan has a lyric that really appeals to me: "God bless the weeds in the wheat." So you're a little fucked up, but you know what? God bless the bad parts, because you wouldn't be who you are without those flaws, and if I somehow removed those flaws I'd kill off a bunch of the good parts too.

Maybe you're manipulative, but without such a great intuition for what people need you'd be less empathetic. Perhaps you drive yourself crazy with your over thinking, but then you wouldn't be such a thoughtful interesting person. What if you're lazy, but if you were motivated your friends wouldn't like how inaccessible you were.

What are your weeds?

What exactly is a crackpot theory?

I'll define a crackpot theory as:

1. An idea which makes you say, "Well that explains it."
2. An idea with a complete lack of testable evidence. Or, in other words, it doesn't really have a leg up on a completely different crackpot theory that explains it just as well.

Both this blog and humanity are all about crackpot theories.

Now go read my band's blog.

The Point of Most Things

The point of most things is to enjoy them. Friendships, family, hobbies, projects, marriage, and so on. That's even a pretty decent take on the meaning of life. I'll admit that sounds a little hedonistic and selfish on first pass, but hear me out.

1. My best friends are the ones who really enjoy my friendship.
2. If you love what you're doing, you're generally a more interesting, positive, fulfilling person to be around.
3. I don't want to trade places with anyone who disagrees with me.

In other words, by being selfish in a healthy kind of way, you become happier and you make those around you happier. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that in order to be ethical, you must strive to enjoy yourself because your happiness directly affects the happiness of those who love you.

Now you can make a convincing case that enjoyment is not the point of your job. You need to make money and it's amazing if you can not want to kill yourself doing it, but frankly who really wants to work.

Dumb Questions

There is absolutely such a thing as a dumb question. I want to smack lecturers who spout nonsense about there not being any dumb questions because they probably only encourage more dumb questions. Some day when I'm in charge, I'm going to call out the dumb questions and compliment the good ones.

Here are the categories of dumb questions as determined by me, most important first. Most bad questions fall into multiple categories.

1. Questions with the objective of pointing out how smart you are.
   Q: As I'm a Ph.D. in marketing, I was wondering how this applied to synthesizing global model market regressions.
   A: This is a real reverse psychology kind of moment, because now I think you're a pompous idiot.
   
2. Questions that aren't questions.
   Q: This applies to local model market progressions.
   A: Thanks for not asking a question.
   
3. Questions that ramble on.
   Q: I sat here thinking to myself, "Myself," I thought to myself, "How do you suppose this topic deals with some similar other topic?" Because, you see, other topics in the blah blah blah...
   A: Hey! Who paid you to give this lecture?
   
4. Boring questions.
   Q: Could you could repeat that middle, boring part of your lecture?
   A: No.
   

Good questions are

1. Short.
2. Interesting.

So what do you do when you find yourself in an audience asking stupid questions? I have several strategies, none of which work. Also, all of them are a bad idea unless you, like me, have the need-attention gene, and don't really mind being controversial. And by controversial, I mean refreshing to people who hate dumb questions, and and asshole to everyone else.

1. Call out the questioner. Around minute two of a question say, "Hey, let Ms. Whatever teach the lecture."
   
2. Plead with the lecturer. "Do you suppose we could move on?" or "Could we do one question and answer period at the end of the lecture?"
3. Talk with the questioner after. This really never works.
   
4. Ask good questions. Actually, this is probably the only one that does any good. It's not because it encourages the people to ask better questions, rather, it just makes less time for dumb questions. It's really hard to come up with good questions though, so good luck there.
   

What's missing?

In Art

I have a book of short stories by Tom Paine and in one of the stories he describes a film maker working for the state news station in a communist country. The only way this dude can come up with to be subversive is to make a film with happy people and no mention of communism. He doesn't get away with it, and the film never airs, but that got me thinking. You can probably say a lot in your art through what you exclude. How subtle. I've probably seen lots of paintings, films, stories, and so on that conspicuously left something out, and I completely missed it. Hence, I can't really think of many examples. If you come up with something good, put it in the comments. You'll sound extremely smart. I guess it's because you understand the work so well that you know know what's supposed to be there, and therefore what's intentionally missing.

You: I thought it interesting that he didn't mention sex at all. Do you suppose he was trying to make a point?
Me: You're blowing my mind.

In Relationships

If you know somebody really well, you can notice when they conspicuously don't do something. I understand exactly one person at that level. I instantly pick up on when she's upset in how she doesn't smile at a stupid joke, doesn't chat, or doesn't make eye contact. She can do the same for me, even when I try to hide it.

You: Wait, you're not complaining about that ice cream truck. Are you high?
Me: Are you psychic?

Back story: In case you've never been to my fair city, the ice cream trucks blare the same fucking song all summer long. And by summer I mean February to October. Sure if you grew up with it, it could be nostalgic, or if you haven't heard it much it can be quaint. But many immigrants like myself plant a seed of deep seated hatred for the ice cream trucks that slowly grows into a mighty forest of loathing by the spajillionth time we've heard the same jingle.

In Science

I don't really travel in science circles these days as I have to make money. I'll confess, I wrote that to tease any PhD-ers who read my blog. Rest assured that it was out of jealousy. Anyway, when I did, I was always really impressed with the folks who understood the subject so well they could critique papers based on what the author forgot to take into account, or what they didn't discuss, or what related papers they clearly didn't read.

Also sciency but less esoterically, we all have something called a confirmation bias. When we have an idea about how something works, we tend to only look for evidence that supports our idea, and neglect evidence that disproves it.

I have a friend who never learned to ride a bike as a kid, so I took her out for a lesson. We went to a rubber track and worked our way around and around until we eventually got to the point where she could mostly stay up on her own for almost a full lap. There was a soccer game that day, so lots of dads were hanging out. They cracked me up. They had completely random, sometimes conflicting advice. "You HAVE to keep your head up, looking strait ahead! Don't even look down a little bit! That's how I taught my son, and he did great." "Keep your eyes on the road, otherwise you'll fall over." "Hold on to the seat to help her balance, then she'll learn faster." "Don't hold on to the seat, she'll learn slower." Here's the thing. All these dads managed to teach their kids to ride bikes. They got some idea on how they should do it, they tried it out, and it worked! Hence, their way must be the correct way to do it. What's missing? They didn't try anything else, and now I'm blogging about how silly they sounded.

Fixing Broken Friendships

In my humble, objectively correct opinion, there are two solid ways to fix a friendship that went bad. Both are geared towards making whatever the problem was just not really matter that much any more.

1. Time.

What were we fighting about? I'm not entirely sure, I think it had something to do with toaster settings. Who cares, we're friends again.

2. Do fun stuff together.

I really hated Bob there for a bit, but then we got a pitcher at the beer garden Sunday afternoon and chucked a Frisbee around. He's alright.

Distant Honorable Mention: Apologies

Apologies are nice and all, but think to the last time a friend broke your heart, and then apologized. Did the apology make it better? Not really, it still hurt. I suppose apologies are often necessary to move on, or they can shorten the time you need to feel better, but they don't in and of themselves fix anything. You still have to grab a cup of coffee and give it a little time.

So next time we have a falling out, we'll go for a bike ride, get some lunch, play some ping pong, sit around and complain about something, catch up on Flight of the Chonchords, hang out at any number of Irish pubs scattered around this fair borough, see who can take the most punches to the arm, fire up the hookah, play some Dr. Mario, and otherwise enjoy each other's company. Give us a week or two of that kind of fun, and how can we not like each other again.

How Do You Know? Two Strategies

How do you know something is true? I propose that most of the time we use two strategies.

The Scientific Strategory
At its heart, the scientific process is simply, "Check to see if you got it right." Obviously scientists do sciency things all the time, what with their peer reviews, revised hypotheses, and blah blah blah. I suppose most of us use a quick and dirty version whenever we "guess and check." How do you make the best coffee? Do you french press it with 4 packets of sugar, grind it fresh and use a coffee maker, or just admit defeat and pick it up at Starbucks?

Sometimes this is a ridiculous way to think.

Me: Son, don't play in the street, you'll get run over.
Son: Thanks dad, I'm going to run a series of experiments to verify your hypothesis.

This is extra funny to me because my son is 3 months old. Here's how it really went down.
Me: Aoooooooga!
Son: (looks confused, then really happy, then concerned, then at the ceiling, then happy again, and then starts crying)

The I-Told-You-So Strategy
Something is true if an important person said it, and it sounds right. This approach is often a fine way to think. You don't jump into the hippo pit at the zoo because the internet said they can bite alligators in half. Sometimes, however, this too is a ridiculous way to think. Why? Important people are first class bullshitters. I suggest that this is in the top three things you should learn during your post high school education. The other two are probably, "Correlation is not causation," and... uh... "Waft, don't just stick your nose in the beaker." Every time I clean out my fridge I forget this rule.

Back to the point at hand, seriously, it is REALLY easy to be wrong, and important people are wrong. all. the. time. Somebody should run some sort of experiment because, and I'm going to make these numbers up, regular people are wrong 70% of the time, while important people are wrong 80% of the time.

So when exactly should you use I-Told-You-So-Reasoning? Ah, I don't know. It probably has something to do with whether you're a child, how easy the advice is to follow, how dire the consequences are, how motivated the important person is to bullshit, and how obvious the advice is. I just made that all up, frankly I'm not giving you a very thorough answer. Rather, let me answer this question:

What are three ways Americans incorrectly use I-Told-You-So thinking?

I'm glad I asked! First,

National Policy
Take this abstinence only debacle we find ourselves in. Abstinence only education was a fine guess at the time, but it turns out to be completely useless. Rather than just coming up with an idea and sticking with it because our president said so, come up with a bunch of ideas including, oh I don't know, fact based sex ed. Try them all out, see what works the best, and go with that.

Next,

Seeking Grand Cosmic Truths Through Religion
Now this is important, so pay attention. I am NOT arguing against religion in general (what an ambitious topic, but don't worry, I'll probably tackle that later). No, as far as this post is concerned, I have no problem with religion. I am going to make this much easier argument: religion is a bad way to figure out what's true. Religion is all about I-Told-You-So thinking. It kind of has to be these days, because people using scientific thinking keep chasing religious thinkers away from topics that you can check, the shape of the solar system being a prime example. Now as my friend Becky, one of my millions of readers, will point out, lots of people don't really think their religion has anything to do with discovering ultimate truths about the universe. Good, I think they're on the right track. For those who disagree with Becky, consider these arguments.

Disagree and Don't Check

1. There are a lot of old dudes in a lot of different religions standing in front of lots of people quoting very ancient books and saying very important sounding things.
2. They completely disagree.
3. There's no way to check who's right.
4. Ergo, chances are bad that anybody has any idea what they're talking about.

Motivation

1. The more arcane knowledge a religious person has about uncheckable things, the more impressive and important they become.
2. Therefore, important relgious people have a conflict of interest to just make stuff up.
3. Therefore, uh, they are more likely to make stuff up.

Finally,

Health
To be fair, I've met a lot of honest, humble doctors who listen. However, who hasn't met their fair share of doctors who know what's best for you because they said so. I imagine this was particularly obnoxious when medicine wasn't really into science yet. Sure bloodletting is a good idea! All the doctors say so! Oh wait, it killed Robin Hood. (No joke, I cried for days)

Also, let's all start a fad diet endorsed by Oprah.

In Summary
A lot of you vehemently disagree with me on this post. Lay into me in the comments.

Also, don't play in traffic. Because I said so.

Tragic Needs

I'm a little full of myself, so here's a term I've coined. Never you mind that it sounds like a romantic comedy staring Hugh Grant and Meg Ryan.

Tragic needs are more difficult to obtain the more you need them. So the very fact that you need something makes it almost impossible for you to have it. If all you have is tragic needs, then you live a tragic life, because you can never have what you most need. That's the second most tragic sounding predicament I can think of. The first is being unable to obtain what you most want only because the very person you are precludes it. For example, you're really good at rallying the Scottish troops, so even though all you want is to have a farm and raise a family, you cast yourself in the leading role of an enjoyable though wildly historically inaccurate movie and get disemboweled.

Right, back to the point at hand. Here are some examples.

• Sleep to many an insomniac. It's 5am, and you just REALLY REALLY need to get some sleep, so of course you can't because you're too worried about it.
• A good deal. The number one way to get a good deal is to not need whatever you're dealing for in the first place.
• Affection. This one's a little trickier, but the variety I experience most often. You need somebody to like you, or you need physical affection from somebody. The more you need it, the more neurotic and weird you are, and the less lovable you become. How miserable.

So what do you do about tragic needs? Well, I think the first step is naming the beast. Then you can start to figure out what comes next. I imagine it will, ironically and tragically, involve getting yourself to a place where you just don't need it in the first place.

It's 5am and you can't get to sleep. You say, "Fuck it," get up, move to the couch, read a book, and admit you may or may not get any sleep. You fall asleep.

The cute girl is all you ever wanted in the world. You ignore the cute girl and start a band. You find three even cuter girls that like you. You hang out with your girl, but you tease her, flirt with her, and play hard to get. You get around to asking her out and you're irresistible.

Now this idea is almost certainly out to lunch, or at most, a very incomplete piece of what it is to desire something. Still, when something you need is driving you insane, consider whether it's a tragic need, and let me know how it works out.

Having Your Feelings Hurt Gracefully

The other day I had a bit of a falling out with a friend. Here, in essence, was the conversation:

Friend: You can't come to the party.
Me: I really really want to come.
(repeat ad nauseam)
Friend: I feel like I'm talking with a six year old.
Me: I feel like I'm talking with a nazi.

Just kidding, I had no such presence of mind towards the end there. It went more like this.

Friend: I feel like I'm talking with a six year old.
Me: ...
Friend: Are you going to cry?
Me: Probably.

So my feelings were quite hurt, though to my friend's defense, the dynamics of our relationship did not make that clear. Perhaps you could describe my friend is a teaser, and me as... the guy who gets teased in a long suffering, gracious, humorous way. Normally this is a fine, fun arrangement. I've been a little unstable lately though. In this case I went home bummed out, thought it through, and called back with this gem of a conversation (in essence):

Me: You really hurt my feelings. Fuck you, I'm coming anyway.
Friend: Fine, do what you want, but you do not get to talk to me that way.

And you know what? My friend was absolutely right because there is a big difference between teasing someone / giving them a hard time, and intentionally trying to hurt them. I was an asshole, and that sucked for my friend. Moreover, it sucked for me, because as Bobby Bare, Jr. points out, the blame is better to give than it is to get.

Take a moment to let the jam packed wisdom of that last paragraph sink in.

We've both since apologized, said some nice things, and otherwise got the ship more or less on an even keel. It was painful and weird though, and it always bums me out to realize I was the asshole, so it's something I hope to avoid in the future. As is my wont, I over-thought it for a couple of days solid and here's what I came up with: a strategy for having your feelings hurt gracefully.

When a friend hurts your feelings, take a moment to piece together what exactly it is that's rubbing you the wrong way. Then, say something along these lines:

You're really hurting my feelings. (Clearly and concisely explain why)

For example, "That comment makes me look stupid. It really hurt my feelings," or "You are really hurting my feelings. That's a dumb reason to exclude me from a party I am so excited about."

Then, I suppose the conversation could go one of two ways. Your friend may grasp how important the situation is to you, and like the decent friend they are, apologize and make it right. If so, wonderful, you go about the business of enjoying each others company.

Or, your friend may turn out to be human, and not have the presence of mind to change direction, or may have other reasons, or whatever, and stick to their guns. In this case, my guess is that you need to take off and regroup. Then as soon as you can do so calmly and without malice
1. Ask for their side of the story
2. Explain yourself more thoroughly
3. Describe what they need to do to make it up to you.
Like I said earlier, don't do or say anything you're going to need to apologize for later. That's for everyone's benefit, but mostly yours. Let's all just admit that Bobby Bare, Jr. is absolutely right.

If that still doesn't work, I suppose you have to sit it out, or try to have fun with them to smooth it over (more on that later). But hopefully they're a good friend and they'll apologize and make it up to you (more on that too).

Now it's got to be pretty difficult to have the presence of mind to follow through on that plan when you're in the thick of having your heart broken. I'm going to guess that like anything difficult in life, you really need to practice if you want to get it right. Good luck with that.

Anyway, now I really want to try this out, which puts me in the strange position of wanting somebody to hurt my feelings.