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Flexibility & Relations

siiky

2022/06/07

2022/07/28

I recently wrote about how flexibility may be beneficial in your course of life.

Flexibility & Life

I've thought some times in the past how after I present myself in some way, I can no longer present myself some other (conflicting) way in the future to the same person(s). At least not with some friction.

In this post I'd like to write about that, yet another aspect of life where flexibility can be useful (and possibly a hindrance!): human relations.

I first came across a similar idea (maybe when I first thought about this, in fact) reading one of Descartes' books -- either "Discourse on the Method" or "Selections from the Principles of Philosophy", I can't remember. In that book he wrote that there were works he didn't want to publish during his lifetime.¹ "Wut? why?" He explains that his works were often controversial due to the nature of their content -- religion and God were particularly controversial² -- and by not publishing them he could continue with his life and work without any impediments (read: being imprisoned and/or killed).

If you tell a friend one day that you like a nice and hot churro (or fartura, the inferior alternative), you can't then tell them the next day that you don't like it, right? It doesn't make sense! It can look like you lied or are lying now.

Think of knowledge as a (consistent i.e. non-contradictory) set of propositions. From this point of view, acquiring knowledge is performing the set-union of the current propositions with the new. If a person knows that you like churros (P), and learns later that you /don't/ like churros (¬P), their knowledge becomes inconsistent: { P, ¬P } is inconsistent, because (P ∧ ¬P) is a contradiction!

Of course, people can change their opinions, tastes, and whatnot but it's a slow process, slow enough not to be flexible, the point of this post and the previous one.

"So what's it mean?" If you're of an opinion now that (you think) you're likely to change in the future, then... maybe you're better off not sharing it with others right now?

Because, if you change opinion in the future, it'll take time for people to adjust their knowledge set to your newly changed opinion; people will judge you hard if said opinion is controversial or doesn't go down their throats well; and, if you change opinion in the future, whatever negative side-effects came of your sharing it were most likely a net loss -- waste of time and energy, at best.

There's a caveat, though. I'm here advocating that it may be a good idea to refrain from sharing details about yourself with other people, and I don't make any distinctions between close or not. But if you do it too much, especially with a close relation, the other person won't know that much about you, which may mean the relation isn't that great, and it may end because of it.

And a possible alternative to the all-or-nothing: very clearly stating that this opinion of yours is something prone to change, something you are thinking of/working on right now, but are not quite sure about just yet.

I think this might be kinda hard to pull off. People may think you're saying that just as an escape route in case shit hits the fan, for example. But I couldn't possibly guess all the weird ways people might think, the same way I couldn't possibly guess all the ways shit might hit the fan.

Just another tool in the toolbox... Maybe. Or not. ¯\__(ツ)_/¯

¹ There are cons to this, such as not discussing with as many people, but he was a pretty good thinker -- he had a strict method for reasoning, which was the subject of one of the two books (probably "Discourse on the Method" judging by the title). On top of that (IIRC) he had a few close relations with whom to discuss the more controversial topics.

² Not that they somehow went against the state of affairs of the time. He believed in God, (one of them is supposed to be a proof it exists) and was religious (even supported the church IIRC).