Something I struggle with is conveying my exact state of knowledge about something. Much of the fault can be attributed to the brain’s design – the data my beliefs are based on is buried under miles of tangled subconscious tape. It only surfaces as an intuition, it’s original source having long been worn away. If I’m lucky, and it’s a topic I know extremely well, it will drag the necessary supporting beliefs along with it, and I’m capable of speaking somewhat intelligently on it. If I’m unlucky, it’ll instead bring strong emotions that further cloud the beliefs origins, and I end up looking the fool.

This is made worse by the fact that a state of ignorance is a state that I loath, regardless of how accurate it may be. “I want to be right” I think, and I proceed to take whatever steps my self-preservation instincts deem necessary. This includes (but is not limited too): overstating my case, deliberately obfuscating my point, favoring terseness over clarity, carefully avoiding counter-arguments, and other behaviors that I’m likely not even aware of. This is in addition to all the built-in biases that humans come pre-installed with to be ensured of their own correctness. This blog is one long struggle (flecked with the occasional victory) against these tendencies.

These habits are somewhat soothed by the sprinkling of caveats I try to include in whatever I write. Lots of “seems to be”, lots of “appears”, lots of “as far as I knows” and “to the best of my knowledges.” But these do an inadequate job of masking the certainty that by all rights shouldn’t be there in the first place.

The most frustrating part is that it’s not hard to do this once you focus on it. Sure, I may not be able to trace the exact path a belief takes through my cortex, but I’m reflective enough to know how much I know about something. But I have to actively consider it, and ignore my desire to be a constant source of pithiness, insight, and wisdom. And in general, I don’t, save for rare moments of lucidity (this one).

Since this isn’t good enough for me, let these few paragraphs signal my commitment to stating clearly and concisely what it is I know – no more and no less.