What matters is that this urge seems to be hardware, and it probably has nothing to do with actual truth or your strategic concerns.

You're wrong dammit! Er... :P

In all seriousness though, it's absolutely software. I have really toned down my drive to correct people and have taken big chunks out of it for others as well.

It comes from trying to enforce "shoulds". People shouldn't be so "irrational"! Gah! Can't they see how costly it is!? I can't even imagine why they'd be so stuuuupid! When you're so focused on how "not-okay" it all is, you tend to knee jerk into fighting it. No time for planning - it must stop NOW!

When you put that aside and acknowledge it as something that is, then you can get into it and figure out why it is and why it grinds your gears. Okay, so they are irrational. I really wish they weren't, who wouldn't? And yet they're irrational. Why is that? Okay, so they're irrational because of X. Why X? Okay, so of course X, and so of course they're irrational. What's so infuriating now? Uh, nothing, I guess. I just have to go change X or get on with my life.

When you put the judgement aside and really dig into why it is the way it is (and associating into it), you come out of it with a new clarity of understanding, no "urges" to resist, and much more effective ways of improving peoples rationality with your new found empathy.

It's really really cool stuff.

Nyan, how about we have a conversation on Skype sometime and you can write part 2 of this afterwards ;)