MIND READERS DICTIONARY : Mind Readers Dictionary

"The conviction persists -- though history shows it to be a hallucination -- that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them; we get over them."

John Dewey in The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy

Tell me, are you a Homoousian or a Homoiousian?

Don't know the terms? In the second century heads rolled over the difference between these two camps. Intellectual culture was all steamed up about whether Jesus was made of the same substance as God or a different one, and the two factions, violent in their conviction went by these two names whose near-indistinguishability reflect the kind of "same difference" indifference most of us have about the question today. Intellectual culture has, as Dewey suggested, gotten over the question of whether Jesus and God are made of the same substance.

Since I'm asking you questions, here's another: How long ago did you stop feeding your pet kangaroo moon rocks?

Intellectual culture gets stuck on questions that contain false assumptions so hidden it takes us a while to even notice that we're making them. We get over these questions when the false assumptions become as glaring as mine that you have both a pet kangaroo and access to a sufficient quantity of moon rocks to feed him.

It can take years, centuries or even millennia to spot the false assumptions. When there's a question we churn over for a very long time without headway, searching for hidden false assumptions is a good bet for how to get over the stalemate.

Intellectual culture has been stuck for millennia on the question of whether we have Free Will or are deterministically constrained to behave the way we do. We go back and forth on it, factions emphatic in their arguments pro and con but gaining no ground. I won't recount the whole debate here. I'll refresh your mind though, with this cute, pro-determinism limerick:

There was a young man who said "damn."

For it certainly seems that I am

A creature that moves

In immutable grooves

I'm not even a bus; I'm a tram.

A new field of scientific research called "emergent dynamics" has exposed our hidden false assumptions about Free Will, which I'll try to distill for you here.

We assume that Free Will is exercised by a little guy, an agent, a homunculus, a soul, an independent, invisible action-figure who operates the physical world's heavy equipment, exerting acts of entirely unconstrained "Will" that move matter, sometimes even mountains.

Our image of this free agent is basically, God's mini-me. God, we intuit is an independent, invisible and indivisible agent who can move mountains, independent of the mountains moving Him. God is not a tram; he's a bus, free to steer where He pleases. The Free Will question is about whether we are like that, exerting independent, un-constrained "Will" on the world. The implicit metaphor for both God or Free Will's source is really a soul, an independent point of origin for "Willed" behavior.

When we think about a point of origin for willed behavior, especially an invisible one like God or a soul, we think of it as a point really, not necessarily tiny, but certainly indivisible and solid with no parts and nothing moving around inside it. The Greek word for such things is "atom." Like the one-dimensional points you learned about in geometry, atoms are useful fictions, but they're decidedly fictions. Physicists gave up on atoms a while ago. Even in the physical sciences, we don't fine anything solid, not comprised of parts in dynamical (meaning moving) relationship with each other. It's not that quarks are the new indivisible atoms. They too

Between optimism and pessimism, optimism has a better reputation. 'Tis better to be optimistic than pessimistic, or so says conventional wisdom.

Conventional wisdom is wrong. Buy into it at your own peril because, if you don't watch out people will manipulate and bully you with the supposed but fake virtue of optimism.

It's not that it's better to be pessimistic but that optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same coin. To be optimistic about one alternative is to be relatively pessimistic about other alternatives. “This plan will work,” means at minimum, “We don’t need another plan” but more likely means “The other plans are less likely to succeed.”

Optimism and pessimism are as inseparable as inhaling and exhaling. They’re “reflexively antagonistic” the way to tighten your bicep you must loosen your triceps, and visa versa. In debate you’re opponent who is optimistic about his plan is, by definition pessimistic about yours. Don’t let him claim the high moral ground by saying that since he likes his plan, he’s an optimist.

Don’t buy the currently popular malarkey about the power of positive thinking. Being positive about one thing is being negative about alternatives by comparison. Positivity isn’t a virtue it’s a focalizer, a way of saying “I’m prefer this; not that.” You can’t prefer everything any more than you can inhale everything. We have finite focus. To focus here means not to focus there. Positivity is a necessity, but then so is inhaling. That doesn’t mean you should or can inhale all day. The question is not whether to be positive but what to be positive about.

When optimistic bullies say, “Well, at least I’m being optimistic.” They add insult to injury. Not only are they optimistic about their preferred plan (in comparison to yours which relatively speaking, they’re pessimistic about), they also discredit your planning skills by calling you “pessimistic.”

Since optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same coin, there are ways to bully through pessimism too. Since on the optimism/pessimism spectrum, optimism has the virtue-monopoly, pessimistic bullies can’t retaliate by calling their opponents “optimistic.” But that doesn’t mean pessimists are without recourse. They can add insult to injury too by evoking the various sins associated with optimism, accusing you of being over-optimistic, unrealistic, engaged in magical thinking, and living in Lala land.”

We treat “optimist” and “pessimist” as though they were descriptive labels applied neutrally, like calling that tall thing with the leaves a “tree.” They’re not descriptive, they’re opinions in disguise, opinions about who’s right and wrong, made unfairly strong by the moral weight the terms “optimist” and “pessimist” carry.

Optimism and pessimism are relative concepts in two senses. One sense is that they’re merely subjective assessments relative to someone else’s. If I think a plan has a better chance of success than you do, I’m an optimist but only relative to you. Someone else might think the plan has vastly better chances of success than I do which would make me a pessimist, relatively speaking.

Optimism and pessimism are relative concepts in another way also. If I think a plan has a great chance of succeeding, I’m implying “relative to other plans.”

So who’s right about the plans, the optimist or the pessimist? Those terms tell you nothing about which plan will actually succeed.

There’s a simple way to neutralize the power of optimistic and pessimistic bullying: Don’t ever accept the use of those terms without them being followed by “…about X.”

The statements “I’m optimistic” or “I’m an optimist” don’t make sense really. They’re open-ended, like saying “I throw…” They sh

All adages are seeds of wisdom, eggs we fertilize by bringing our attention to them, causing them to start subdividing into a range of complementary and conflicting perspectives about matters fundamental. We fertilize them by cracking through the shells that hold them together. Opened, their parts can be played with. We can slot alternative words in, find ways to make them say the opposite. Crack open a saying and reverse the pieces, you usually get something interesting. A save in time stitches nine. Can't see the trees for the forest.

Take psychologist Abraham Maslow's adage "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Why a hammer? Abraham Kaplan's slightly earlier version of Maslow's point goes "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."

A hammer isn't just any tool. It's good for nailing things together and breaking things apart. By millions of years, it is the oldest tool in our tool kit. For a long time all of us only had a hammer. If all you have is a hammer, everything might also look like something to pulverize, to smash into tiny inconsequential pieces.

Hammers tend to be big, over-sized for some jobs. We have other metaphors for overkill, for bringing too big a tool to the task. Making a mountain out of a molehill, for example. A bull in a china shop.

And yet sometimes we bring tools too small for the task too, making a molehill out of a mountain, a china-shop clerk at a bull stampede, or more familiarly bringing a knife to a gunfight. One might make the mistake of bringing a gun to a knife-fight too.

Of course you don't want to overthink this stuff. That would be making a mountain out of molehill. Right wing populists like Donald Trump and transcendental spiritualist like Eckhart Tolle think that people like me over-think things. Sometimes they imply that we over-think for devious reasons. The right-wingers think folks like me make a big deal out of global warming because we want to impose socialist control over society. Tolle would say our greedy manipulative egos make us intellectualize.

But the anti-intellectuals also imply that we intellectualizers are just victims of the law of instrument. If all you've got is this ability to analyze things to death then everything needs to be analyzed to death.

I hang out with academics and I think there's something to Trump and Tolles' perspective. I know some who seem to fit the description, knowing more and more about less and less, overworking some ridiculously inconsequential piece of theory because they can or perhaps because they can only, since intellect is their only tool.

You've got to know how far to think something. There will be disagreement among us about what has been over-thought, but most of us would agree that over-analysis is possible. Analysis paralysis happens--overkill, bringing too much analytical gun-power to something best handled with a simple slice of the knife. Sometimes you've got to stop deciding and simply decide.

Still, not every bit of analysis that bores or frustrates us is over-analysis. Most of us prefer simplicity. If your only tool is a gut-desire to simplify, everything looks really simple. If all you have is dismissive rhetoric, every topic is an issue to dismiss rhetorically. If you're only tool is hand-waving, every issue will be dismissed with the wave of a hand.

Sometimes over-simplification is deviously motivated, but a lot of the time it's just evidence of too little available intellectual fire-power. Limited capacity for debate, deliberation and reconsideration means a limited range of issues one can consider difficult to address. If all you have is a fly-swatter every issue looks like a fly, a nuisance to be swatted away.

We should keep th

A pinhead is a person so small-minded his shoulders taper up to either a pin's head or even narrower, a pinpoint. We apply the epithet like an X marking the spot, pinpointing anyone we think is an idiot.

I'm on a never-ending quest for objective definitions of wisdom and conversely, stupidity. By objective, I mean something beyond thinking a butthead is just anyone I butt heads with. This quest has practical implications in that much of the misery humans impose on each other stems from over-confident, under-analyzed name-calling, for example calling anyone I butt heads with a butthead. And then bombing them.

Here I want to explore an alternative definition of pinhead, not as having a head like a pin but heading for a pin. When you head toward a goal, aim for a target, or pursue some end, are you pinpointing or narrowing in on it?

“Same difference,” you might say, but no, there’s actually a pretty big difference rich in implications about everything from love, religion and politics to the natural history of goal-seeking behavior.

Let’s say you’re goal is to find your iPhone, misplaced in the house somewhere. You had it yesterday. You can just picture it, your iPhone crying, “Find me please!” You’re looking for a single pinpointed thing.

But what if you’re looking for a decent cup of coffee? You don’t want tea or milk and you reject that cup of coffee you forgot and left in the microwave yesterday. Other than that, within a narrowed range any cup of coffee will do.

Pinpointing implies that you have a positive ideal in mind. Narrowing implies rejection of everything that falls outside of a narrow range. Some goals feel like pinpoints, those supposedly one-dimensional things we learned about in elementary school geometry class. Other goals contain whole ranges of acceptable options, known mostly by rejecting unacceptable options.

Searching for your one true iPhone, your bull’s eye goal is that single pinpoint in the center of the target. Searching for a decent cup of coffee your bull’s eye is anything that doesn’t fall outside the biggish circle in the middle the target.

Suppose your goal is to find a home in a new town. You stick a pushpin into your map to mark the spot. But what is the spot? Is it the big red top of the pushpin, or is it the impossibly infinitesimal point?

Say your goal is to find Mr. or Ms. Right, the partner of your dreams. Is this partner a pinpoint or a narrowed range? Do you have a perfect vision of your partner in your mind’s eye, a soul mate who, like your iPhone cries, “Find me please”? Do you go around checking people against this perfect vision until you find the one exact match?

Or is your Mr. or Ms. Right anyone from a narrowed range of possibilities, who, like a decent cup of coffee is found by rejecting all of the Mr. or Ms. Wrongs until you’re left with Mr. or Ms. Right-enough?

The evolutionary psychologist Randy Nesse notes that it won’t do to declare to your partner, “Baby, you’re like a total seven out of ten and probably the best I can get. So I’m right here with you until, like maybe an eight comes along.” Because relationship is so high-stakes, intense, intimate, competitive, and risky, we need to be more reassuring than that, saying and even believing a very pinpointed interpretation, at the extreme something like “Baby, you are my one and only soul mate. Before we met I dreamed about you, the only person who could ever satisfy me. In my dreams I saw you crying “Find me please.” I knew someday I would find you and until I did, I keep looking, accepting no substitute.”

You’ll find such pinpoint exclusivity in the pursuit not just of monogamy but monotheism. In both, high stakes and intense competition escalates us toward the pinpoint interpretation of goal seeking. A religious leader isn’t goin

I both envy and loathe the self-certain. I envy them their peace of mind. I loathe their bullying.

Increasingly, I see debate as doubting matches, opponents casting doubt on each other's opinions. The self-certain are master doubt-casters impervious to doubts cast their way. A mighty fortress is their opinion even when their opinion is dumb or ultimately deadly.

I don’t just loathe their bullying. I loathe the peril they put us in, luring the weak-minded to their side in throngs, dominating by self-serving force, not reason, and marching us in an unwavering line, unresponsive to new evidence or changing circumstances and therefore inevitably in a direction where stupidity lies.

My loathing wins out.  I will not master their lick. I will fight them, which means learning how to dominate the indomitable.  They’re hard to dominate even when you’re self-certain.  I aim to dominate with one hand tied up behind my back.  It’s back there holding my anxiety, something the self-certain jettisoned long ago.

Anxiety is a sense that something’s amiss. It’s an alarm sounding to say, “pay attention here, you might be headed in the wrong direction.”  Anxiety is the emotional flavor of doubt. Losing it is the most immediate, palpable and self-satisfying benefit of self-certainty.  No doubt? No anxiety.

When you wonder whether you’re going in the wrong direction, you generally lose a little steam.  You waver. You await further guidance with a receptive ear and a discerning mind.  You don’t know that you’re headed in the wrong direction.  Maybe you’re headed in the right direction.  But anyway you open up a little, softening enough to visit the possibility that it’s time to redirect.

The self-certain don’t just sense your anxiety as an opening, a vulnerability they can exploit, and they don’t just take it as a sign that they will inevitably win the debate.  They take it as a vindication of their position, a reality check that proves they’re right about the world.  If you’re anxious, then their foregone conclusion that they possess absolute truth is verified.

As if it were ever in doubt.

I sure could use that other hand tied up behind my back.  But I can’t jettison the anxiety.  I need it. It has re-steered me right more than a few times.

So how can you dominate the indomitable when you’ve resigned yourself to carry receptivity’s baggage, a parcel they’re not carrying. How does a self-doubting David beat a self-certain Goliath? How do win when they’re stoked on self-certainty’s steroids?

My latest guess is that, with practice you can become familiar enough with self-doubt and anxiety that you hold them nimbly and un-distractedly.  I’ve long thought that it pays to study doubt, to understand how it works and to gain “pattern-fluency” in the generic forms it takes  (See Wonderings of the World below).

A benefit is that, when your doubt is exposed in debate it’s no surprise to you.  You don’t flinch with a sudden surge of anxiety about your anxiety. You can stick with the topic under debate, persisting in what you’re insisting on.

If they call attention to your doubt, you simply say or imply something like, “Of course I have doubts about my position, as any respectable thinker would.  They fit the standard mold and for you I’ll list them (do this briskly but calmly).  Now that said, I still place my full weight behind my position. The fact that you don’t doubt your position is not evidence that you’re right, just that you’re not much of a thinker.  Thinkers doubt. They’re brave enough to withstand the anxiety that doubt engenders.  I suspect you gave that up long ago.  Don’t have much of a stomach for anxiety, do you?”

You’re still unlikely to win them over. In fact you’re unlikely to get the airspace to give them

Qaddafi is a sociopath, a man impervious to any sense of self-doubt. His kind are all too common in positions of power. Sociopathocracy--government by sociopath is so common, the argument that the war in Iraq was a priority because it got rid of one such sociopath makes little sense. Yes the world is better off without Saddam, but for every deposed tyrant there are dozens more. Supposedly three percent of males and one percent of females are sociopaths. Among leaders the percentage is much higher. It makes you wonder what puts them in power.

Information theory, the science that provides us such useful concepts as signal to noise ratio, gigabytes and bandwidth also provides insights into the prevalence of sociopathocracy. The key insight is in what's called "redundancy."

You're at a large party with people talking all around you. You're in conversation with one person but the signal to noise ratio is low, meaning his voice, the signal, is quiet relative to the ambient conversational noise. Someone loud laughs in the background drowning out your conversational partner so you ask him to repeat what he said. You have to do that a lot actually.

Claude Shannon the genius mathematician and engineer for Bell labs who founded information theory showed how redundancy-repeating the message-- compensates for noise. He imagined a channel in which information is sent at a steady rate. Noise in the channel, for example static on a phone line, means that bits of information get drowned out. But if you send the same information again, chances are different bits will be drowned out and you'll be able to piece together the information. Shannon noted however that the more message redundancy is required the less new information can be sent. Conversation at that party is less informative because you waste so much time repeating yourselves.

Shannon was thinking about communication in which the listener is eager to hear correctly what the speaker is eager to convey correctly, but of course not all conversation is like that. Sometimes the listener would like to hear something else. At a party you might be done listening to a boring, repetitive guy but can't get away because he's filling your ears with stuff he's eager to say but you are not eager to hear.

Or imagine that you're at a group strategy meeting and one guy is dominating, insisting over and over that he has the answers. Dissenting opinions aren't heard because the dominant opinion fills the information channel. The more redundancy; the less information, but also the less variety of information.

Hitler's PR man Joseph Goebbels said "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly -- it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." Repeating himself he said "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

A lack of self-doubt is, by definition a lack of variety. It's like drowning out dissenting opinions in one's own head with a redundant belief. Conviction, faith and confidence are contagious for all sorts of psychological reasons. We envy, are attracted to, and find charismatic the passionately insistent. Conversely, we surrender to them sometimes, as anyone with demanding children knows. You start to seek reasons why it's OK to give in to them just to get a little peace.

Shouting matches and other conflicts are really doubting-matches. We argue by casting doubt on each other's opinions. Redundancy is how we dominate in doubting matches, and sociopaths can out-redundant non-sociopaths, hands down. The insistent fill our ears until we can't hear ourselves or anyone else think a dissenting thought. Sociopaths repeat reasons why their opponents should doubt themselves and so, in doubting matches, self-doubters always lose.

I

Let me tell you how spiritual paths should work from beginning to end. I know it's bold of me to claim to know, but I'm taking my cue from the many spiritual teachers out there who speak with just this kind of audacious authority.

You ask the average Joe or Jo on the street, "Is it best to be invested in things, to really care, to really commit--or is it best to be divested, to let go, to be really detached?” and they’ll say, “Well, of course, it depends.” The average Joe and Jo know that there’s no universal answer to this question.

What’s funny though is that you can hornswoggle Joe and Jo with rhetoric that implies that it doesn’t depend, that you should always commit or conversely always let go. Accuse them of being “attached” or “clingy,” “addicted” or any other pejorative that denotes investment, and you’ll get them all tangled in shame, foolishly wondering why they can’t comply with the universal law that you should always be divested.

Conversely, accuse them of being “uncaring,” “insensitive” “cutting and running” or any other pejorative that denotes divestment and you can get them all tangled up in shame, foolishly wondering why they can’t comply with the universal law that you should always be invested.

It’s sad.

People who feel really ashamed for failing to live by either one of these ridiculous, opposite, supposedly universal laws can go find a spiritual teacher who will teach them how to live by it.

One Joe tells a Jo that she was too uncaring. Ashamed for not caring she finds a teacher who claims to be able to teach her the power of faith, commitment, and investment.

Another Jo tells a Joe that he was way too attached. Ashamed for not being flexible, he goes off to a teacher who claims to be able to teach him the power of non-attachment, acceptance and divestment. These seekers want the peace of mind that comes from finally complying with the recipe, the universal law that one should always be invested. Or conversely always divested.

But there’s a problem. The teachings themselves, these supposedly pure truths are each self-contradictory. The recipe for investment says, “Surrender into faith. Let go into holding on,” and the recipe for divestment says “Commit yourself to flexibility. Hold on to letting go.”

So Joe and Jo go back to their respective teachers and say, “There seems to be a mistake. The teaching contradicts itself.” And the teacher, with a twinkle in his or her eye says “No mistake. You just haven’t solved the deep, ancient, esoteric mystery yet. There’s nothing wrong with the teaching. Stick with it and someday you’ll Transcend and Discover The Secret.”

“But how can you hold on and let go at the same time?”

“There’s a way. You just haven’t found it yet.”

So Joe and Jo go away and try to get it right. They practice Luther’s surrender to faith, or the Tao’s “doing not doing.” And they kick themselves for getting it wrong.

Some never get it. They spend their whole lives trying to meet the standard, to achieve this perfect non-contradictory state where they are both completely committed and completely detached simultaneously always.

And others never get it. They strive but do not achieve that perfect balance where they’re never out of bounds, over- or under-invested, never invested where divestment is called for, and never divested where investment is called for.

And still others never get it. They decide that The Transcendent state is where there are no standards. Cling; let go, invest; divest, who cares? It’s all good. It doesn’t matter. In the cosmic scheme, the enlightened just laugh a wise spiritual laugh at the folly of trying to live by standards.

But some Joes and Jos struggle on, looking at investment and divestment from every possible ang

I've been concerned about climate crisis for decades, doubly concerned because I've been unable to find any action likely to make a big difference. Every little bit we can do, seems to add up to not nearly enough, because most of what we can do runs against political and economic currents and I haven't been able to find an art-of-the-possible way to align political and economic currents with what the climate requires.

Recently I think I've found something that could align all currents. It is by no means a shoe-in but at least possible. It originates in the work of Peter Barnes. He called it the Sky Trust and then Capitalism 3.0. I'm re-framing it here as The Green Tea Party. Here's its mini-manifesto. I invite you to join my fledgling Green Tea Party Facebook group.

JOIN THE GREEN TEA PARTY AND PUT MONEY IN YOUR POCKET

The Tea Party is right about government. It no longer represents our best interests.

The greens are right about business, which doesn’t represent our best interests either. Corporations fund, lobby, and control our politicians, leaving us citizens with a raw deal.

If the family farm was killed by agribiz, our national family is being killed by Goverbiz, the unholy alliance of government and corporations. It’s naïve to believe either government or corporations will save us.

Some of us hope that people will come to their senses and take back government, but realistically, the scale is tipped against ordinary citizens because corporations own the government.

But there is a way to rebalance the scale.

Collectively, we citizens own our nation’s public assets, for example our airwaves, rivers, and the sky above us. Naively, we trusted government to manage these assets for us, but instead they give them away free to corporations without compensating us.

The Green TEA Party demands compensation to you and me for the private use of our shared assets. We call for the establishment of not-for-profit trusts to manage our shared assets, governed by trustees accountable to us and shielded from political and corporate influence. The Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays Alaska’s citizens an annual dividend from the sale of publicly owned oil, is an example.

The Green TEA Party proposes to make polluting corporations pay for using our air, water and soil, and to share the proceeds equally among all of us. This will not only reduce pollution; it will provide economic security to American families, without expanding the size of government.

Imagine, for example, a National Sky Trust established to manage our atmosphere in our long-term best interest. Every year it auctions to oil, coal and gas companies the right to dump polluting gases into the sky. Then it turns around and electronically transfers equal shares of the revenue into our bank accounts and debit cards. The results: cleaner air and extra income for all.

In a real free market, corporations pay for what they use and therefore make responsible choices. If they have to pay to pollute, they’ll pollute less. And if we share the revenue, we’ll all benefit. This is a solution that works for everyone: liberals and libertarians, conservatives and conservationists, supporters of democracy and of capitalism.

Spread the word: Make corporations pay to pollute and put money in your own pocket. Money that’s rightfully yours because you co-own our public assets.

Join the Green TEA Party today.

They’re Everyone’s Assets

"Like" the Green Tea Party Facebook group.

Download a free copy of Peter Barnes' book, Capitalism 3.0.

Download a free copy of Capitalism 3.0 audiobook.

What does confidence in our opinions indicate about the likelihood that our opinions are correct?

Think of confidence as a delectable treat, a cookie rewarded when you have worked hard, or stolen from the cookie jar when you haven't.

If you only reward yourself with the satisfying treat for doing careful investigation and interpretation, then the more confident you are, the more likely that you're correct. By this "confident-means-true" interpretation, when we say "I really believe that the meeting is on Thursday" the "I really believe" means "It must be true," as in "I did the necessary work to investigate it and thereby earned my confidence."

But we can grant ourselves confidence, that delectable treat really any time we want it, subject only to our appetites and limited only by indigestion we might or might not experience when over-indulging in treats we didn't work to earn.

So the "confident-means-false" interpretation suggests that the more confident you are, the more you have substituted confidence for thoughtfulness, and more closed-minded, bigoted, wrong-headed, stubborn, pigheaded, blind and ignorant you are.

Confidence, which implies both "likely to be right" and "likely to be wrong," is therefore a "contranym," a word that means two opposite things, a word like "clip" which means both "fasten" and "detach."

And how do we use this contranym in a sentence? Quite often as a double standard, sentencing others as closed-minded for their confidence while treating ours as a sign that we know what is true. Or to put it in a limerick:

Why, is your sureness a sign

that you're certainly right, and yet mine

is a sign I'm closed-minded

biased, and blinded

Shouldn't the standards align?

"Ok, from now on I won't be angry at you about that."

"I swear from here on out, I'll be more appreciative."

"Trust me, starting now I'll stop being irritated all the time."

In my experience, an increase in such pledges to feel a certain way "from now on" is a sure sign that a partnership is on the rocks. Such pledges are attempts to manually override intuition, and there's only so much hope for overriding intuition.

The problem with manual overrides is that they require chronic, 24/7 will power, and will power isn't up to the task. Let me explain with an obvious example first: If my gut intuition is to eat Oreos and I have a pack lying around, I might be able to override my gut early and maybe even often. And still, those Oreos will be gone in no time.

The Oreos beckon relentlessly: "Eat me C’mon eat me Oh do eat me Please You know you want to Come on!" Will power responds intermittently: "No...Absolutely not...Definitely no...OK one, but no more...Well, actually just one more, but then that's it for sure...Except OK, one more..." and the Oreos win.

Compared to my gut, my will power is a weakling. By extension, in relationship if something is irritating me, then pledging to conscript will power to override my irritation is just not that promising. You can override all the gut impulses some of the time, but not all of the gut impulses all of the time.

You may wonder if the gut impulse to eat Oreos has anything to do with intuition. Some of us define intuition as our higher self, the almighty gut that knows the right thing to do all the time. By this definition, if I eat too many Oreo's it's because I'm ignoring my intuition, which knows better. I have friends who claim that the only time they make mistakes is when they ignore their intuition.

I don't think that's a realistic or practical definition of intuition. Sure, with selective recollection you can attribute all successes to listening to your gut and all failures to ignoring it, but really our guts, sixths senses or intuitions are a bit more unruly than that. Intuition is best defined as the source of our natural or spontaneous responses. They're not God or God given sources of genius and perfection. Still I don't mean to disparage them either. They're actually admirably keen in their modest wisdom, honed by trial and error in the school of hard knocks--eons of biological evolution, centuries of cultural evolution, and decades of personal learning from direct and vicarious experience. Still, as any student of human folly knows, there's room for improvement.

Malcolm Gladwell is one such student of human folly, though you wouldn't necessarily know it judging his big book by its cover: Blink: The power of thinking by not thinking is an exploration of intuition. I suspect that a lot of people bought it because it promised to affirm their sense that their intuitions were God-smart. Their intuition told them that the word "power" in the subtitle was synonymous with genius, and Gladwell does indeed start the book with stories in which gut-sense proved right. By book's end though, it's clear that intuition's test scores are mixed. Power in the title refers to tenacity. Intuition rules.

I respect intuition’s modest wisdom and its formidable tenacity. I think there are only two basic ways to reliably control a bad intuition. One is to steer clear of whatever triggers it. I don't bring Oreos into the house, and to some extent I steer clear of things that persistently irritate or anger me.

The other is a slower process, not manually overriding intuition but retraining it with convincing evidence. The part of instinct I can retrain we sometimes call second nature. In other words, we can teach intuition-that old dog of ours--new tricks.

Retraining intuition is what clinical psychology has been mostly about all along, from addiction management to me