“You are the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships.” != “Why do all my relationships fail?”
Both you and others have relationships, both “failed” and “not-failed” (for some value of failed). The statement “You are the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships” is clearly false, even if comparing to others who have successful ones in search of differentiating factors. The “only” is the problem even then.
The intended formulation, I should think, is “You are the only denominator guaranteed to be common to all of your failed relationships” (which is to say that it might be a contingent fact about your particular set of failed relationships that it has some more common denominators, but for any set of all of any particular person’s failed relationships, that person will always, by definition, be common to them all).
Even this might be false when taken literally… so perhaps we need to qualify it just a bit more:
“You are the only interesting denominator guaranteed to be common to all of your failed relationships.” (i.e. if we consider only those factors along which relationships-in-general differ from each other, i.e. those dimensions in relationship space which we can’t just ignore).
That, I think, is a reasonable, charitable reading of the original quote.
It’s not nitpicking on my side, there are plenty of people who tend to blame themselves for anything going wrong, even when it was outside their control. Maybe they lived in a neighborhood incompatible to themselves, especially pre-social media. Think of ‘nerds’ stranded in classes without peers. Sure, their behavior was involved in the success or failure of their relationships (how could it not have been?). However, a mindset and pseudo-wise aphorisms such as “you are the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships” would be fueling an already destructive fire of gnawing self-doubt with more gasoline.
Maybe they lived in a neighborhood incompatible to themselves, especially pre-social media. Think of ‘nerds’ stranded in classes without peers.
can be viewed as a case of “wrong level of abstraction” as I alluded to here.
I think what we have here is two possible sources of error, diametrically opposed to each other. Some people refuse to take responsibility for their failures, and it is at them that “you are the only common denominator …” is aimed. Other people blame themselves even when they shouldn’t, as you say. Let us not let one sort of error blind us to the existence of the other.
When it comes to constructing or selecting rationality quotes, we should keep in mind that what we’re often doing is attempting to point out and correct some bias, which means that the relevance of the quote is obviously constrained by whether we have that bias at all, or perhaps have the opposite bias instead.
“You are the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships.” != “Why do all my relationships fail?”
Both you and others have relationships, both “failed” and “not-failed” (for some value of failed). The statement “You are the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships” is clearly false, even if comparing to others who have successful ones in search of differentiating factors. The “only” is the problem even then.
The intended formulation, I should think, is “You are the only denominator guaranteed to be common to all of your failed relationships” (which is to say that it might be a contingent fact about your particular set of failed relationships that it has some more common denominators, but for any set of all of any particular person’s failed relationships, that person will always, by definition, be common to them all).
Even this might be false when taken literally… so perhaps we need to qualify it just a bit more:
“You are the only interesting denominator guaranteed to be common to all of your failed relationships.” (i.e. if we consider only those factors along which relationships-in-general differ from each other, i.e. those dimensions in relationship space which we can’t just ignore).
That, I think, is a reasonable, charitable reading of the original quote.
It’s not nitpicking on my side, there are plenty of people who tend to blame themselves for anything going wrong, even when it was outside their control. Maybe they lived in a neighborhood incompatible to themselves, especially pre-social media. Think of ‘nerds’ stranded in classes without peers. Sure, their behavior was involved in the success or failure of their relationships (how could it not have been?). However, a mindset and pseudo-wise aphorisms such as “you are the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships” would be fueling an already destructive fire of gnawing self-doubt with more gasoline.
I agree. This sort of thing...
can be viewed as a case of “wrong level of abstraction” as I alluded to here.
I think what we have here is two possible sources of error, diametrically opposed to each other. Some people refuse to take responsibility for their failures, and it is at them that “you are the only common denominator …” is aimed. Other people blame themselves even when they shouldn’t, as you say. Let us not let one sort of error blind us to the existence of the other.
When it comes to constructing or selecting rationality quotes, we should keep in mind that what we’re often doing is attempting to point out and correct some bias, which means that the relevance of the quote is obviously constrained by whether we have that bias at all, or perhaps have the opposite bias instead.