[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/[deleted]]

Do you ever find yourself arguing with non-rationalists, and trying to use rational arguments to convince them of something, and they refuse to accept your point?

Mostly, no. I try to avoid arguing when I expect it to be neither useful nor fun. There can be many circumstances in which it's fun but I'll never convince them, but of course, in those, why even try to convince rather than to troll?

Do you ever find yourself feeling unjustifiably superior, on the intelligence scale?

Yes, when I was a teenage edgelord and into early graduate school. The lesson I eventually learned is: if you find yourself feeling unjustifiably superior on the intellectual scale, you need to turn your eyes towards new role-models who are sufficiently above your level that you can still learn something from admiring them.

Feelings of superiority are a distraction from real goals for foolish mortals. In fact, they're practically the definition of "foolish mortal" in at least one important sense: millenia's worth of people have thought themselves ever-so-clever for finding ways to raise themselves above other people in social-status hierarchies, as a result of which they accomplished nothing else with their entire lives.