(June 23, 2018 at 1:49 pm)Khemikal Wrote:Quote: "Does she like me?" To answer his query, the young man might conduct all sorts of analyses, but James suggests that the best way to obtain an answer is to begin with faith that she does. Assume she likes you, James advises, and it is more likely that she will. Wallow in skepticism whether she likes you or not--and chances are she won't.I don;t find this compelling at all. It;s an attempt to leverage reciprocity, not to answer the question or generate knowledge..but to produce an intended outcome.
That it may work (questionable) is indicative of human psychology and some future state, not the state of affairs at hand or the question on the table.
Perhaps James has never heard of just asking the lady, lol. Social awkwardness and an inability to clearly communicate driving a plan to endear oneself to another in future can hardly be called a path to knowledge when such an easy and direct approach is available. It;s a path to pussy, that he;s talking about.
It looks to me like that may be more of an issue of confidence when it's put into action. I don't speak for everyone but personally I'd say confidence is more attractive than the lack of it... so the difference... in real life actions... between the wallower (eg worrying and vacillating) and the one who assumes she likes him... is confidence and maybe even arrogance. For instance if a man proposes marriage he could either do it in private or do it in public... say in a restaurant with figurative bells and whistles. The latter shows the man has balls... willing to risk public rejection for his beloved, shows he cares more about her (or him
) than his own fears etc. The former... shows the opposite... that he's afraid of losing face more than her happiness... he's got a wall around him basically. So if it were me I'd definitely find the confident approach more endearing and more meaningful... it would show he had my back. So yeah, I think that's more a comment on psychology than anything else in the romantic connotation.But where knowledge is concerned, I think there is a place for faith... but perhaps not in the way meant by the OP... or maybe it is; I'm thinking as I'm writing
When I was learning to drive I got hung up on the details (as you know I tend to do )... which is maybe the equivalent of the wallowing part... and had very little confidence that I would ever learn it. (I haven't passed my test btw and am no longer learning but I did learn what I'm talking about here so this example is not a complete bust ). Anyway I got hung up on things like what was the perfect position for the biting point of the clutch etc... little things that I obsessed about... but eventually the 'knowledge' came through actually doing (ie practice and familiarisation... and maybe 'muscle memory')... so I learnt to have faith in those sorts of situations that even if the knowledge wasn't apparent to me now it could be in the future... and sometimes that sort of knowledge simply cannot be gained by direct reasoning. Same thing with a new song for instance or exploring a new place... you start off unfamiliar and it takes time for you to become familiar enough to feel like you know the thing (or place) rather than thrashing around in the dark. Once you know it you have expectations about it and how it fits together but before that, you only have the superficial aspects of it and very little idea of how it fits together or even if those superficial aspects can fit together. So anyway I'm just saying that, whether this is strictly what the OP is talking about or not, but if not maybe it's a stepping stone to it, where knowledge acquisition is concerned, there's room for a certain type of faith... a faith in the other and less immediate processes of the mind (such as familiarisation or muscle memory)... and sometimes that sort of faith is actually necessary to move forward because some things learned that way are not really suited to logical analysis.
