Bound_up

It took me the longest time to see through the illusion that was "rational" discussion. The setting: A friend and I exchange inquiries about each other's beliefs about X. The result: the friend would give a number of answers that allowed me to piece together their view of X. An astounding percentage of the time, even a majority, perhaps, one of their answers would contradict another. So, I point this out. My friend, after hearing an explanation, agrees it is a contradiction. We move on, me convinced that I had contributed to their work (the work I assumed that others, not just myself, engaged in: namely, piecing together as accurate a model of reality as possible), only to find, weeks or months later, that on discussing X again, they still gave the same contradictory answers as before, with apparently no memory of our past discussion. Or discussions. This pattern has repeated up to 4 times (that I've bothered to keep track), my interlocutor agreeing with my corrections, and then showing no sign of having even heard of them down the road. My whole above description of "the result" is faulty in a subtle way, one that undermines the entirety of it. Here's what was really happening, expressed from my friend's perspective. The (real) result: A friend and I were discussing X. They showed respect for me by asking me to express myself on it several times. At some point, they dared to point out, rather like a pedantic schoolboy, that there was a sort of inconsistency between my expressions and the forms we studied in textbooks on logic. They were not rude, though, so I graciously acknowledged the rather dry, uninteresting observation, after which we happily continued our conversation. I had thought for a moment that they wished to challenge me, but all seemed to be rather well-resolved, so I forgot the particulars of the incident, only taking with me the general, updated state of our relationship, including, for example, the points that my expressions were generally res