(July 13, 2015 at 4:05 pm)Minimalist Wrote: It reminded me of something that Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, wrote in 1996 in The Dilbert Principle.
Quote:Thousands of people have told me workplace stories (mostly through e-mail) that are even more absurd than the examples above. When I first
started hearing these stories I was puzzled, but after careful analysis I have developed a sophisticated theory to explain the existence of this bizarre
workplace behavior: People are idiots.
Including me. Everyone is an idiot, not just the people with low SAT scores. The only differences among us is that we're idiots about different things at different times. No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot. That's the central premise of this scholarly work.
I proudly include myself in the idiot category. Idiocy in the modern age isn't an all-encompassing, twenty-four-hour situation for most people. It's a condition that everybody slips into many times a day. Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time.
The other day I brought my pager to the repair center because it wouldn't work after I changed the battery. The repairman took the pager out of my hand, flipped open the battery door, turned the battery around, and handed the now functional pager back to me in one well-practiced motion. This took much of the joy out of my righteous indignation over the quality of their product. But the repairman seemed quite amused. And so did every other customer in the lobby. On that day, in that situation, I was a complete idiot. Yet somehow I managed to operate a motor vehicle to the repair shop and back. It is a wondrous human characteristic to be able to slip into and out of idiocy many times a day without noticing the change or accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the process.
Life is complicated. So the moment he speaks of "truth" he loses me. In a time not so long ago we could all agree on "facts" (a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true) even if we could still disagree on what those facts meant. These days "facts" seem to be currency for the ignorant to trumpet whenever it suits them ( witness Randy the Dope and his buddy Habermas).
What is truth? Climate change? ( Not to the oil industry.) Bigfoot? Ancient Aliens?? God??? ( Only to the lunatic fringe.) How about 9-11 Truthers? They have the word 'truth' in their name but facts still seem to elude them.
That article strikes me as word salad by someone with a little too much time on his hands. He should probably check the battery in his pager. It might be in backwards. Oh, right. Pagers are now obsolete. See how quickly that happened.
By truth, he was referring to the reality around us. Space, time, how small we are in the universe, etc.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
-walsh
-walsh
