Why do you say that? Many times, you say something publicly, it then becomes part of your identity, and after that there is a subconscious force that tries to make sure that your future actions and words are in line with what you said earlier.
This is also what I take from the quote—before I state a belief out loud I have a much easier time adjusting and retracting it—once it’s out there, I’ve got pride and status tied up with it being right. Once I realized this a few years ago I starting making a conscious effort to not say things out loud until I was extremely confident that I was right. I still make this mistake more often than I would like, but less frequently.
I would have said merely wrong. ie. When reversed it would still be stupidity. There seem to be both advantages and disadvantages to public expression with respect to it influencing you. Something along the lines of identity commitments on one side and the potential for denial, hypocrisy and lack of feedback on the other.
One of the things that I dislike about aphorisms is that they sometimes compress insight so much that it’s not easy to see what they were actually saying. I intuitively think that this is sometimes done because sounding deeply wise is often high status.
-Arabian proverb
...this seems exactly, diametrically wrong.
Why do you say that? Many times, you say something publicly, it then becomes part of your identity, and after that there is a subconscious force that tries to make sure that your future actions and words are in line with what you said earlier.
This is also what I take from the quote—before I state a belief out loud I have a much easier time adjusting and retracting it—once it’s out there, I’ve got pride and status tied up with it being right. Once I realized this a few years ago I starting making a conscious effort to not say things out loud until I was extremely confident that I was right. I still make this mistake more often than I would like, but less frequently.
I would have said merely wrong. ie. When reversed it would still be stupidity. There seem to be both advantages and disadvantages to public expression with respect to it influencing you. Something along the lines of identity commitments on one side and the potential for denial, hypocrisy and lack of feedback on the other.
One of the things that I dislike about aphorisms is that they sometimes compress insight so much that it’s not easy to see what they were actually saying. I intuitively think that this is sometimes done because sounding deeply wise is often high status.
I thought over verbal overshadowing when I read it.
A not-entirely-different quote has been posted in the past
–A.L. Kitselman
I’m not sure what that means.