When someone asks me why I did or said something I usually lie because the truthful answer is “I don’t know”. I literally don’t know why I make >99% of my decisions. I think through none of these decisions rationally. It’s usually some mixture of gut instinct, intuition, cultural norms, common sense and my emotional state at the time.
I know some folks on LW are very scrupulous, or worry about if they are sufficiently scrupulous. While I’m not saying there is no value in having an accurate view of reality (in fact I think it is quite useful!), this is also why when I try to imagine myself being very scrupulous it feels a bit silly because it all just seems like something I made up and any correspondence with reality is the result of things far outside my control, including by not limited to how well I remember things, how well I create ideas in other people’s minds using words, and how my brain perceives the accuracy of what I’m saying. That doesn’t mean I totally give up on trying to say something true, but I also realize I know so little that my notion of true is very small.
I know some folks on LW are very scrupulous, or worry about if they are sufficiently scrupulous. While I’m not saying there is no value in having an accurate view of reality (in fact I think it is quite useful!), this is also why when I try to imagine myself being very scrupulous it feels a bit silly because it all just seems like something I made up and any correspondence with reality is the result of things far outside my control, including by not limited to how well I remember things, how well I create ideas in other people’s minds using words, and how my brain perceives the accuracy of what I’m saying. That doesn’t mean I totally give up on trying to say something true, but I also realize I know so little that my notion of true is very small.