One that comes to mind for me: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is not always true. Maybe even only half the time! Are there any phrases you tend to hear and shake your head at?
“History repeats itself” or “history doesn’t repeat itself, but rhymes”. If that were the case then it would be pretty easy to predict the future.
The reality is humans have evolved to try to find patterns in a given system. It’s what made us really good hunters and excellent tool builders.
“Cheer up, it may never happen”
I’m sorry but if I’m not in a good mood or I’m sad it’s because something has happened to make me feel like it.
“It’s human nature” used to describe something horrific like war or rape.
It’s not. Human nature is as when we were children, playing with friends and loving each other.
Militaries have to condition humans to do violence to each other and to follow orders from “superiors”. Half of school is quashing kids’ creativity and making them follow arbitrary rules because “the adults” say so.
“Well it can’t get any worse” And “Well, you gotta do something”
The first is almost always dead wrong. Trust me, you can make anything worse.
As for the second, it’s shockingly coming that in a given scenario, the best action is to not do anything different at all. It may seem like things are bad and something has to change, but changing your strategy at this point can still definitely make things worse. Sometimes inaction is the correct action.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” It’s like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear it. There is a very limited context where it may be applicable, but mostly it’s used to give up trying or mock someone for failing a task. Have you never gotten better at something over time? Learned an instrument? Played a hard video game? Learned to ride a bike? It stops problem solving dead and kills motivation making it less than useless. Oh and its misattributed to Einstein like every other shitty quote
"No pain, no gain. "
As someone who’s been running for over 30 years and working ou for 20, if there is pain, there is injury. When there is injury, you take a break and regress. People may say that muscle pain or stiff muscles are a sign of a good workout, not an injury. However, even with those your risk of injury is much higher, and you’ll eventually hurt yourself. “No pain” should be one of the outcomes of smart exercise, not an admonishment for not working hard enough.
“He/she just tells it like it is” No, they are just saying things that resonate with you, but have no actual alignment with data, facts or morality. Simply saying things with no filter doesn’t equal “like it is”. I find it is usually attributed to, at best, oversimplified or completely ignorant statements, at worst, misleading and/or hateful statements.
I think it depends on the context. If we have an expert on a topic who tries to use some form of simplified Modell and direct speach to make his knowledge more understandable for everyone it is true. Even tho it may be simplified it still contains the most important parts.
But that isn’t the context that phrase is normally used in. That phrase is more like a euphemism for “I’m an asshole, but want it to sound like I’m not”
“they say racist things and i like that because people don’t like it when i say it. this way i can be racist but outsource the messaging”
good for other kinds of bigotry and douchebaggery
They’re just saying that it feels good to their confirmation bias.
You just reminded me of this
Those who champion “brutal honesty” are more interested in the brutality than the honest
“Practice makes perfect.”
Let me tell you about my 7th grade all county band audition, where I showed up and skillfully played 40 measures of not what the sheet music said because I misread it and practiced what I misread.
“Practice” needs some kind of mechanism for feedback and correction, such as a coach or instructor.
“everything has pros and cons”
I usually give the CGP Grey’s legendary answer: “…but it’s hardly ever the case that all the pros and all the cons all PERFECTLY balance each other out, right?”
Any phrase that begins with “no offense but”. Just say it, don’t add that phrase, it makes any statement look more offensive.
“to be honest”
So, you’ve been dishonest until this point?
That’s why I prefer “to be frank” or “to be blunt.” Same implication but without that possibility.
Stand-up meeting: “to be frank, Frank is starting his holiday in Frankfurt next week so…”
“to be frank” or “to be blunt”
Oh so you’re such a dishonest person you’ll change your name to Frank or Blunt midway? Unbelievable.
“To be honest” is mostly used in two situations:
- to warn the listener that they might not like what they’re going to hear; e.g. “to be honest your lasagna is a bit too salty”
- to highlight an apparent contradiction; e.g. “I like lasagna, but to be honest I’d rather eat pierogi today.”
It should almost never be interpreted literally.
In my experience, people sometimes use the phrase “to be honest” to preface a lie.
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Who wants two birds in their bush? I don’t even want one bird in my bush; they might peck at my worm!
“You miss every shot you don’t take!” or similar. It’s useless, makes no sense, and is disrespectful to yourself and others.
Which is why I love saying it to pricks at work.
When people try to give bad news to someone and say, “there’s nowhere to go but up” as if they know that person has reached rock bottom… That has never been true in my life. So many times have I seen things get shittier and shittier for people. Fuck that stupid cheer up bs.
“lets agree to disagree”
how about fuck you, one of us is wrong and I want to know which one of us that is!
but there is just no right or wrong answer to every question… sometimes it’s just about opinion.
sometimes these questions are trivial (which color of tie should I wear with this shirt) and sometimes they are literally life and death questions (should death penalty be legal)… and there will always be people with opposing opinions on them. “agreeing to disagree” is literally the best possible thing they can do to live in the same society.
I find it really useful to shut down discussions where no one is budging and are just overall a big waste of time. As an example, if I’ve been trying to convince someone that the earth is round for 10 minutes and they clearly don’t have any interest in changing their view, I’ll just spare me the trouble and say it. If they still refuse to let it go, I start blindly agreeing with them, that usually does the trick.
Hmmm, while I see your point on the phrase, my friend group and I only ever use it on subjective things. Like orange juice or chocolate milk being better, for example. If we’re both arguing (in a fun way) and have no good points to change the other’s mind, then we agree to disagree. Haha
Most people don’t care about what’s true, something that took me forever to realize. Encountering humanity under the assumption that everyone cares about the truth (or any aspect of empirical and normative reality) is bound to be suuuper confusing until you figure things out. People are literally animals (we forget that), and animals are just trying to survive. Some of them are cute or loving. Not all of them are particularly “good,” and even fewer are willing to sacrifice creature comforts in pursuit of some abstract virtues. That’s why Trump gets any votes.
This is also an autistic thing of being more logical in reasoning.
I only got diagnosed at age 30, and had some bad relationships due to me wanting truth and them feeling personally attacked by my questions.
Could be why it took you some time to realise, as most neurotypical people think in past experience for reasoning. https://psychcentral.com/autism/why-people-with-autism-are-more-logical#autism-and-logical-thinking
