“You’re very smart. Smarter than I am, I hope. Though of course I have such incredible vanity that I can’t really believe that anyone is actually smarter than I am. Which means that I’m all the more in need of good advice, since I can’t actually conceive of needing any.”
New Peter / Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind
That’s a modest thing to say for a vain person. It even sounds a bit like Moore’s paradox—I need advice, but I don’t believe I do.
(Not that I’m surprised. I’ve met ambivalent people like that and could probably count myself among them. Being aware that you habitually make a mistake is one thing, not making it any more is another. Or, if you have the discipline and motivation, one step and the next.)
New Peter / Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind
That’s a modest thing to say for a vain person. It even sounds a bit like Moore’s paradox—I need advice, but I don’t believe I do.
(Not that I’m surprised. I’ve met ambivalent people like that and could probably count myself among them. Being aware that you habitually make a mistake is one thing, not making it any more is another. Or, if you have the discipline and motivation, one step and the next.)
I love New Peter. He’s so interesting and twisted and bizarre.