Trust. Logic. Methodology.
My girlfriend and I got into an argument about this person she have known for a while. She told me that this person could help her with her problems. She told me that this person is a spiritual healer, who knows a lot of about eastern medicines, and knows a lot about herbs that can heal the body and soul. This person recommended she not go to a psychologist/psychiatrist? (who’d most likely prescribe zoloft or some other pill) and instead that she’d help her look for herbs that would work better for her. I was very skeptical online, and I guess that really made her pissed off. One of the things my girlfriend told me was that this person said St. John’s wort is better taken for stress rather than depression.
The real answer to me, from having tried it, and reading all about it, was that it’s not really good for anything. I mean it was interesting when I took it, but I felt like I was bi-polar from all the surges of energy and period of utter doldrums.
After my grandmother died from going to an “expert” in eastern medicine, (she ate herbs or pills that did not do anything but add chemicals to her body that slowly deterioated her), I feel that eastern medicine is at best, an equal to western medicine. i’m sure other people I know have the same experiences. You can always hear stories about people being sick because of eating “eastern” herbs. My own mother had her share of mis-experiences in her life with eastern medicine. I believe her apendix exploded (or something to that extent), after they tried treating her illness with accupuncture (which helped with the pain).
I’m known as a skeptic, and my girlfriend said something that was hurtful to me. She said I don’t believe anything that I personally don’t do research on or read about or heard about and that is one of the things she hates about me. That’s not quite true. I question the person’s methology. If I hear another “my friend told me that so and so happened”, I question, who is your friend. Where did he hear this? How did he come to this conclusion?
She also said I don’t have faith in anyone except myself. That’s true. I don’t trust anyone right out of the bat. They need to earn my trust. And different people can earn my trust in different ways. Some friends are really good people to turn to if I need to talk. But they are shitty in terms of being on time. Some friends have a good heart and I can depend on them to do something for me, but they are bad at not thinking without their hormones. Some people lie all the time even when they have good intentions. So my trust isn’t 100%. That is true. There is nobody that isn’t flawed in some way, including me. The person I trust the most is probably my mother. And why not? She is the direct counter-part to my father, different in every way. She’s probably the reason why I treat girls nicer than boys.
But she criticizes in the most harshest way, she lowers my self-esteem sometimes, and she’s prone to being really manipulative. So I learned my lession from her. It helps that people find her extremely attractive, charismatic, educated, and trustworthy. To be sure, she is intelligent, probably at least as intelligent as I am, but more driven and more ambitious than I was back then. So I was trained from an early age about motive, incentive, trust, lies, and esteem– all things that drive people and drive their actions. My mother is very intelligent. Whenever my father was sick, I could plainly see he wasn’t, just in a bad mood, but it seemed to happen whenever my mother nagged at him to look for a job. My mom would nod knowingly and explain that it was to draw attention away from something else.
I grew up with that kind of environment, that kind of training. My father the slob, my mother the driven perfectionist. I could easily learn how people interacted from watching them.
Nowadays, when I see almost every girl and boy being manipulative, and I think about how it’s so transparent. But it’s not transparent to everyone– which frustrates me a lot when people don’t see it. I can see something…. am I just tripping?
But I don’t believe one is automatically wrong. I don’t believe that someone has to feel the same way I do. But I like to question, and sometimes when I question, people get angry. Why don’t you believe me? Don’t you trust my instincts? I question, that’s my strong point.
With my sister, when I question, she anticipates my questions because she has already thought it through. She’ll be the first to say, aha, well I knew you were going to say that, so here are some links to some websites. Most of my friends have gotten used to it I think, so now when I say, “But Paul, are you sure?? It seems bullshit to me” he says now, “It’s very _likely_ it’s going to happen, but it’s really dependant on my mother.”
That kind of answer I can respect and I can accept. He made a truthful statement. What I hate are lies. “Sure man, no problem, don’t worry, look trust me, I know I can do this. If it doesn’t, i’ll just run out of the house.”
Another example is when my roommates paid 100 dollars for extended warranty on a 500 dollar tv. I did not understand that, and I questioned. At the time I was proven wrong, because everyone there agreed that tv’s are prone to breaking apart, specifically because someone’s friend’s tv broke apart after a month, and someone mentioned that their computer monitor broke apart after two years (or less), and since those are the same categories as display monitors, wouldn’t it be prudent to just get the warranty? I could see the reasoning behind it, but to me that was a fallacy of logic because I did not feel monitors and tvs were the same thing.
At the time I was more annoyed than I let on, but I let it pass so I could do some research on my own. My argument, which I did not think of, at the time, was that computer monitors typically are on for longer period of times, switched on and off frequently, have higher resolution which requires more precise calibration, and are a newer technology compared to the TV.
In any case, my roommate Dan took the initiative of asking his friend who worked at circuit city about the warranty, and his friend said they almost never received a bad tv that’s a normal 32 inch tv (as opposed to a high-definition tv, flat screen tv, or a projection tv– which makes sense, as those are newer technologies).
I browsed the JVC manual, and I found out that the manufacturers warranty lasted for 2 years (the extended warranty lasted for 3 years), and all we needed to do what bring it to a service shop. Oh no i thought, isn’t JVC a canadian company? Well we went onto their website and found that there was a service center available about 5 miles away. So Dan returned the warranty, and we saved a bill.
In short, the simple answer is: I trust you. I trust that you have a good heart. I trust my friends will do something for everyone’s best interest. But only sometimes, bad or good, will i believe something you say without questioning you. Everyone fails from time to time too. Everyone. This is how urban legends start. Everyone has some kind of interesting story they heard from someone. The problem is people think I’m a prick when I try to tell them it’s an urban legend or lie. “No way man, my friend/mother/nun told me and I trust him/her”.
So I question you. I question everyone. I’m not trying to be an asshole. But it’s better to be prepared with answers that I can see as reasonable. “Well she could be wrong about that particular thing, but she really has a way with her clients. She really is good to talk to. i’ll ask her more about her knowledge about herbs and let you know… I do believe she can help me, because she has helped others and she has a license in physical therapy, which means she can help me with stress. That’s my reasoning behind it.”
So when I question one thing, I’m not saying their entire personality or their attitribute as friend or foe is wrong or flawed. Everyone is flawed in some way, in my belief. I’m not questioning your intelligence, as very intelligent people can make mistakes. I’m not questioning your education or your ability to judge people. I just want to know how you got to a certain conclusion.
A list of logical fallacies. You can also do a search on google for logic and fallacies and many offer a list of examples. I’ve taken 2 logic classes and thoroughly enjoyed both.
