It’s pretty remarkable to detect yourself in that kind of mistake; most people are very good at finding confirming evidence for whatever judgments they’ve made about people, and ignoring any contrary indications.
Yes, this is a good point—we generally don’t realise that we are (self-)deceived, so we can’t even begin to think about where we went wrong.
Of course, Elinor Dashwood is something of an authorial stand-in, so it’s not really surprising that she’s incredibly wise and perspicacious like that.
Yes. This can happen, but what you describe is more common. Once a coworker was sure that I was an ultra-right-wing militiaman, based on one indirect, misleading bit of evidence, ignoring all else.
Merely declaring my general political alignment and support and opposition to various candidates was totally inadequate. I had to explicitly enumerate several political positions to get him to adjust, and even then he seized on the nuances to try to interpret it as my secretly being a right-wing nut.
It’s pretty remarkable to detect yourself in that kind of mistake; most people are very good at finding confirming evidence for whatever judgments they’ve made about people, and ignoring any contrary indications.
Yes, this is a good point—we generally don’t realise that we are (self-)deceived, so we can’t even begin to think about where we went wrong.
Of course, Elinor Dashwood is something of an authorial stand-in, so it’s not really surprising that she’s incredibly wise and perspicacious like that.
Yes. This can happen, but what you describe is more common. Once a coworker was sure that I was an ultra-right-wing militiaman, based on one indirect, misleading bit of evidence, ignoring all else.
Merely declaring my general political alignment and support and opposition to various candidates was totally inadequate. I had to explicitly enumerate several political positions to get him to adjust, and even then he seized on the nuances to try to interpret it as my secretly being a right-wing nut.