I Know Something You Don’t Know

When I see a recurring lapse in critical thinking, it seems obvious to me that maybe it’s something we should all talk about and see if we can’t tune-up our collective critical thinking skills. The problem I will address is one that first hit me hard years ago, that I addressed twice yesterday with two different groups of people, and that has bothered me the years between.

The experience that hit me hard was one in which a woman, who had followed for years but said little in an internet group, posted a long, in-depth character assessment of about twenty of the group’s most active members. She claimed she had observed and written this as a class project. For the most part, I agreed with her assessments of others, so I was relieved and flattered by her complimentary words about me.

One member decided, since the words about me were more positive than the assessments of others, the only explanation was that I had pretended to be the student writing the paper. Anyone the least bit familiar with me knows that I speak my mind and would have no desire to hide my opinions behind a fake name. How could that have been lost on her? Not only did she decide and state that, she spent days insisting – INSISTING REPEATEDLY IN EVERY WAY SHE COULD FIND TO SCREAM IT – that she knew, positively, that it was me.

My last words to her on this or any topic were: You have made a fool of yourself and you must now live with the tormented doubt that I know something you don’t know. I absolutely know that I did not write this, and you can’t possibly know if I did or didn’t.

At least half of the group sided with her. Years later, the woman who posted it admitted that she had posed as two members in the group, a male and a female. The male character she played was her husband, who had no idea. ‘He’ and been a close friend of mine, who private messaged me constantly to talk about topics from the group, about his problems in his marriage, about our kids (who also were friends on the internet), and about the other women in the group who flirted with him despite knowing he had a wife. A couple of those women also talked privately with me about their crushes on him. The real wife, of course, knew all of these conversations because she was posing as him. She also called me on the phone often, but I didn’t know she was posing as him at the time.

The ‘damage’ was only to me and I honestly don’t consider it damage. Losing friends who didn’t believe in me in the first place wasn’t much of a loss. Finding out Kyle never really existed and was his wife’s pretend character on an internet site was funny to me. I had no reason to be ashamed because I had advised Kyle wisely on how to deal with his marital problems instead of trying to lure him away from his wife.

But, when this same lapse in critical thinking enters political discussions the damage can lead to conclusions that are life and death for people, or that result in babies locked in cages to die, or activists wearing targets on their backs for militias that have been incited to 2A them. It matters. There should be no game playing, misinforming, refusal to think things through, denial of truths in political discussions.

I stated a fact about a candidate yesterday. A woman mocked me. I said she was making a fool of herself and if that hadn’t been her goal, she might want to rethink and start over. She doubled down.

Someone else confirmed that she, too, had seen exactly what I said I had seen. The woman was unkind to her, too. This went back and forth a few times so I googled, and delivered the words from the candidate’s Wikipedia page, with the comment STILL THERE.

The woman who had supported me told the one who had mocked me that she should probably apologize. I honestly wanted her to say, “Oh my gosh, I really didn’t know this, thanks for telling me.” Something like that. Instead, she blocked me.

Within an hour, I was on another page where someone was insisting that the same candidate had not done what someone claimed she had. A couple of people said they had seen it. Like the mocking woman, he doubled down. Someone suggested he google it because it was out there to find if he wanted. His response was, “I work with her. I know more about her than you do.”

My response this time was to remind him that, no matter how close you are to someone, you don’t necessarily know everything about that person. He could just ask anyone whose mate had cheated to realize how true this is. But ‘I know something you don’t know’ is apparently something he believes he can hide from if he wants.

On a positive note, another person just said to me, “Oh Yikes. I definitely need to research her. Thanks for the information.” And restored my faith that there are people who will seek truth – she neither grabbed my words and ran with them nor denied them. She said the word research and made my day.

Please defend truth and critical thinking so they don’t disappear.