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Some Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door yesterday, which is a hazard (?) of being a foreigner in Tokyo.
Them: Hi, we'd like to tell you about the good future waiting for us.
Me: Oh?
Them: If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
Me: I can't really answer that. I am sure that regardless of what I choose, the world will be worse off for my having done so.
Then I had to explain that, because English was not their native language. But it pretty much set the tone for the rest of the conversation, which was remarkably civil despite my essentially pointing out more depressing alternative explanations for anything they said.
It also reminded me that constant pessimism is an engineering occupational hazard.
And that I really dislike it when people take a single verse out of the middle of somewhere and use it as evidence for something where that something is not present in the plain reading of the text.
Them: Hi, we'd like to tell you about the good future waiting for us.
Me: Oh?
Them: If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
Me: I can't really answer that. I am sure that regardless of what I choose, the world will be worse off for my having done so.
Then I had to explain that, because English was not their native language. But it pretty much set the tone for the rest of the conversation, which was remarkably civil despite my essentially pointing out more depressing alternative explanations for anything they said.
It also reminded me that constant pessimism is an engineering occupational hazard.
And that I really dislike it when people take a single verse out of the middle of somewhere and use it as evidence for something where that something is not present in the plain reading of the text.