#Things I Said to My AI

There’s this saying that “the fastest way to disappointment in life is to expect everyone to have the same values and character as you”. Which I agree wholeheartedly. I guess that’s really the missing piece when it comes to how I think about advocacy and campaigning. The belief in the non-futileness in advocacy essentially lies in the faith that there are some universally common human traits that would make others wanting to take action once we pinpoint or give visibility to the deficiency in the current affairs. But if that’s a false foundation to based upon - not everyone shares the same values, and unfortunately based on my own experience, bigotry is more common than rare, how should I go about thinking about this? I suppose that means going into each pitch with the awareness that it might never land if my audience isn’t aligned. Perhaps pitching is less about persuasion and changing people’s mind (though I have the basic obligation to make proper argument to respect my listener’s time), but more about discovering alignment and always ready to move on when there’s none. It’s actually more of a number game - pitching to as many organizations as possible, than a persuasion activity

You know, when I was fresh out of university I realized the greatest gap in my English mastery is that I struggle with articulating abstract ideas. The first book that actually got me thinking like, “damn, there’s some phrases here I could use” is Joan Didion’s Why I Write. Her writing style, perhaps typical of American writers of her era, is very incisive, it’s as if at her times the measure of literary achievement is not in the “flowery”, but by who can reproduce human experience in words in the most specific and concise manner. Specific, as in the writing is sharp and calls out a single shade of nuance amongst the overlapping mix of human experiences. This specific shade of grief, not this, nor that. Concise, as in each word is there for a purpose. The writing is tight, the choice of word has been deliberated over and over extensively so that there’s only content and no room for fat. Now fast forward to 3 or 4 years later, I believe I still have a long way to go in this area

postscript: I like this one because articulating subjective preferences has always been challenging for me

I have an epistemology question that have plagued me for years. Whenever I hear teachers/lecturers teach how to structure one’s argument, it is always taught that citing secondary sources help strengthen it. However, that didn’t sound particularly convincing to me because secondary evidence could be wrong, and there doesn’t seem a realistic way for me as the author to verify the accuracy of every single source I cite. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the use of secondary source be irresponsible? As a reader, knowing that the author cannot possibly guarantee the truthfulness of all the sources they cite, how can I let myself become more likely to be persuaded by arguments supported by secondary evidence?

postscript: Claude’s reply to this sent me down the rabbit hole of what’s known in the field of Philosophy as the Problem of Testimonial Knowledge. I was amazed. I’d half-expected to never truly get a satisfying answer