Originality makes you take it seriously or engage with it more whole heartedly but I think the good property isn’t “feeling original” per se.
Part of the problem about such tibits of wisdom that they are about big swath of experience/information and kinf of need that supporting infrastructure. When they are being developed or when they are prepared for transport they might be crystallised into single sentences or such but they need their prerequisities. That tip of the iceberg needs all that other mass to support that final insight.
Some times this is even semi-intentional. It can be beneficial to give someone an encrypted “spoiler” and then have them experience related stuff and then “get it”. Good communication even has useful applications for the sayijng on different levels of understanding. Like “treat others as you would yourself” for a low level understanding can guide to introspect how you would feel in that situation. For more advanced understanding “in their shoes” considerations would come in that you can imagine if you were not you but had different upbringing or was in a particular situation (which is actually different to imagine how you would with your real characteristics act).
In preparing such “learning paths” it might be that some frasing is ultimately true but at low understanding face value suggests a wrong direction. For learning path needs having the impact be closer to zero rather than negative would be an improvement. And something that points in the rigth direction early might be confusing at higher stages. As there are usually many ways to frase insights over long time those that tend to lead to prosperous lives might be selected for. Some selection effects are stronger when transcending the learning period of a single human. If someone takes a insight and has perverse results then somebody else is likely to issue with that position/theorethical framework. Thus something that is “technically true” but requires to take many concepts in a very particular way is very fragile under cognitive diversity. But things that are robust under cognitive diversity are likely to be poor fits to particular cognition styles or stages.
One of the features of platitudes is that they are safe to be misunderstood. A person with only shallow understanding can be a host for the idea for succeful transport. But the idea itself is valuable enough that forgetting it would be punishing. Some other knowledge can rely on epistemic authority. But wisdom nuggets can be verified by the receiver over an unreliable network to be good ideas. Thus they need insight to “unlock”. They are even so true and useful ideas that the method of proof can be left open.
Thus in a place where you would spit out a platitude the effectiveness can be increqased by making it particular or finding what in this particular life would function as the proof of the idea. The particulars will have different kind of evidentiary proof where a generic thought lacks it. “He would have wanted for you to live on” migth be generically or probabilistically true but “He would have wanted for you to keep kajaking” is dependent on hobby profile. And maybe some forms of living are genuneley less or more important for the emotional resosnance or genuinely why the lifes are important. ONe could try to lie about what the deceased would have wanted. But just asking about what the deceased did think probably gives multiple avenues for true particularised opinon how things should go post-humously.
In the book “the giver” a dedicated rememberer is asked whether a plane on a coliision course should be shotdown. When he advices that it should not be shot down and it later turns out they had a medical emergency the advice-seekers ask how did the expert know that would be the case. The answer was that he did not know, but knew how things go wrong if they go wrong and go right if they go right. So in a sense he did not posses information about this particular case and in one sense it was baseless speculation. On the other hand the opinion was informed by mountains of evidence about the patterns of that kind of life.
Off course the other side is that if you have very good data about what particular case you are in then trying to come up with robust and general generalization sis less attractive.
Originality makes you take it seriously or engage with it more whole heartedly but I think the good property isn’t “feeling original” per se.
Part of the problem about such tibits of wisdom that they are about big swath of experience/information and kinf of need that supporting infrastructure. When they are being developed or when they are prepared for transport they might be crystallised into single sentences or such but they need their prerequisities. That tip of the iceberg needs all that other mass to support that final insight.
Some times this is even semi-intentional. It can be beneficial to give someone an encrypted “spoiler” and then have them experience related stuff and then “get it”. Good communication even has useful applications for the sayijng on different levels of understanding. Like “treat others as you would yourself” for a low level understanding can guide to introspect how you would feel in that situation. For more advanced understanding “in their shoes” considerations would come in that you can imagine if you were not you but had different upbringing or was in a particular situation (which is actually different to imagine how you would with your real characteristics act).
In preparing such “learning paths” it might be that some frasing is ultimately true but at low understanding face value suggests a wrong direction. For learning path needs having the impact be closer to zero rather than negative would be an improvement. And something that points in the rigth direction early might be confusing at higher stages. As there are usually many ways to frase insights over long time those that tend to lead to prosperous lives might be selected for. Some selection effects are stronger when transcending the learning period of a single human. If someone takes a insight and has perverse results then somebody else is likely to issue with that position/theorethical framework. Thus something that is “technically true” but requires to take many concepts in a very particular way is very fragile under cognitive diversity. But things that are robust under cognitive diversity are likely to be poor fits to particular cognition styles or stages.
One of the features of platitudes is that they are safe to be misunderstood. A person with only shallow understanding can be a host for the idea for succeful transport. But the idea itself is valuable enough that forgetting it would be punishing. Some other knowledge can rely on epistemic authority. But wisdom nuggets can be verified by the receiver over an unreliable network to be good ideas. Thus they need insight to “unlock”. They are even so true and useful ideas that the method of proof can be left open.
Thus in a place where you would spit out a platitude the effectiveness can be increqased by making it particular or finding what in this particular life would function as the proof of the idea. The particulars will have different kind of evidentiary proof where a generic thought lacks it. “He would have wanted for you to live on” migth be generically or probabilistically true but “He would have wanted for you to keep kajaking” is dependent on hobby profile. And maybe some forms of living are genuneley less or more important for the emotional resosnance or genuinely why the lifes are important. ONe could try to lie about what the deceased would have wanted. But just asking about what the deceased did think probably gives multiple avenues for true particularised opinon how things should go post-humously.
In the book “the giver” a dedicated rememberer is asked whether a plane on a coliision course should be shotdown. When he advices that it should not be shot down and it later turns out they had a medical emergency the advice-seekers ask how did the expert know that would be the case. The answer was that he did not know, but knew how things go wrong if they go wrong and go right if they go right. So in a sense he did not posses information about this particular case and in one sense it was baseless speculation. On the other hand the opinion was informed by mountains of evidence about the patterns of that kind of life.
Off course the other side is that if you have very good data about what particular case you are in then trying to come up with robust and general generalization sis less attractive.