Real vs. Hidden Merit of Deduction

Earlier I've written about culture discriminating against people who like deduction. On one hand this feels like not a real topic. On the other hand it provides opportunities for noticing cultural biases.

Let's suppose two alchoholics (alcohol is legal) of the type SEE and ILI. SEE has noticed ILI to have lots of alcohol a few days ago and asks to come around, to drink it. Upon hearing it's all gone the SEE starts asking about how is it possible that so much alcohol was consumed in such a short time. The ILI replies by pointing out he can't even drink his own alcohol without making a report about that. The SEE replies by pointing out that her belongings used to be those of him, too.

What is the SEE's motivation for pointing out this?

The motivation is that there's no way to meaningfully carry on a conversation by contradicting that statement. The SEE wants to say something and not be contradicted, so she says that. It is a universal cultural truth that this is an appropriate motive for saying such a thing, so the ILI is culturally required to comply with it in the sense of behaving as if he needed to hear this.

From the viewpoint of deduction that's actually a pretty bad thing to say. The most effective way of reacting to that statement is to cede control of the discussion while having her believe she didn't break the connection. The SEE cannot be persecuted for what she said because these mistakes are too common in casual conversation to warrant persecution.

Since the SEE cannot be persecuted for telling irrelevant things, the ILI must hiddenly revenge being told that, possibly at someone else than the SEE.

Why cannot people be persecuted for pointing out irrelevant observations with this method? Perhaps it's because it would be easy to say something like that despite not meaning it in a deductive sense. Indeed people who don't know deduction may utter statements that sound like deduction, but if these statements happen out to be wrong people are culturally expected to treat them as rhetoric instead of pointing out they're wrong as deduction.

This is frustrating because the SEE probably actually intended her statement as deduction and believes herself it indeed is deduction. So the SEE must believe (and she always believes extremely strongly) in something that is false merely because she happened to say such a thing herself. The falseness of what she said is so obvious there's simply no known way to correct her without hurting her feelings.

So she's ended up strongly believing in the relevance of an irrelevant statement due to the random event that she happened to utter said statement. She also consistently tells the ILI he doesn't need to keep track of statements of this kind. But he does.

The SEE may use this irrelevant statement later to make bad demands. The origin of these demands cannot be determined without minding this random statement. If the random statement is forgotten anyway then the demands will simply keep coming and there's no way to stop them.

In effect, random irrelevant statements uttered at the heat of the moment by SEE are like pollution. She will act accordingly because, in general, she does what she says. But she will forget the reason why she acts like that.

This is a problem because the reason is so bad few other people would've even considered believing in that. So the reason cannot be found later if it's forgotten. It's always important to remember these reasons although the SEE believes it isn't and will tell others it isn't.

Indeed the SEE's future weird demands cannot be understood at all without remembering that she ended up demanding them because she misrelated two things in the past, out of a whim. Nobody else than the ILI who witnessed the whim will be equipped to figure out what is the origin of the weird behaviour ensuing from the whim. The SEE will always adamantly insist that everything she says doesn't need to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny, but she'll just mess her own things up if the ILI believes he doesn't need to do that.

Annoyingly, the SEE will nevertheless not believe the ILI needs to do that. She will state multiple times that there's no need to carefully listen to her every statement. Because the ILI is carefully listening to her anyway he may often need to make an effort to pretend he believes the SEE when she tells him he doesn't need to listen.

So deduction always falls back into rhetoric when someone doesn't understand it. Forcing someone else to obey a deductive argument without understanding it wouldn't make sense, but she cannot be forced to understand, either. So the ILI ends up pretending he isn't carrying a grudge until he can take that out on someone, who hopefully won't notice anything.

When the SEE tells the ILI he doesn't need to scrutinise what she says, the relevant meaning of this statement for the ILI is that he won't be thanked for doing so. But he'd do it anyway and couldn't tell anyone anyway.

At least he can see it coming. When the SEE saw he has lots of alcohol, she happily complimented how long all this alcohol must last. She thought it would last long because there's lots of it and she's so happy upon pointing this out there's no way to tell her she can't know it will last long just because there's lots of it.

Upon hearing the SEE's compliment for obtaining enough alcohol the ILI should remember that her good feeling will pass but something else won't pass. Because the SEE happened to compliment the ILI for obtaining so much alcohol that it could last a long time, she will expect the ILI to have alcohol in the near future. So the ILI must remember that if there's no alcohol after a few days, he owes an explanation to the SEE even if the SEE had nothing else to do with the alcohol than happening to notice it's there and happening to expect it will remain there. In effect, upon associating a positive feeling to the alcohol that isn't her's, the SEE claims ownership of that alcohol in terms of establishing an emotional bond with it.

At least the SEE informs the ILI of her expectations. But she does that in a manner that is merely informative. That is, she usually declares them in a manner that discourages pointing out whether they're foolish expectations. If they are, it may take a long time to get a good chance to point out such a thing even if that's immediately obvious for the ILI. Problems usually get worse until the opportunity arrives.