On being pedantic
Got accused of being "too damn pedantic" again today. This time in real life, by my supervisor, half-jokingly. Well, I guess I am. But how does being pedantic mentally co-exist with such a laissez-faire approach in the physical world much of the time?
I remember getting 10/10 for “organisation” on the tickle.com brainteaser. There were no questions on organisation - they just assessed how well you proofread, the level of attentiveness overall etc. I have no problems with those tasks - my mind is naturally systematic. My highest scores on brainteaser-type tests are almost always on logic - usually 100%. I categorise, determine relationship, relevance, hierarchical dependency, priority with ease. It was almost a revelation for me to see that some far from stupid people struggle with such tasks. I remember helping out a grad student last year - the questions he asked would have never occurred to me. It was as if he had a loose pile of ideas in front of him, but could not put them together in any sort of coherent manner. He did not see the obvious relationships which had no need to be worked out - they were right there already. The poor guy must have thought I was a genius. But guess what? He possesses a true gift for communicating with people and making friends. You can’t have everything. To relate well to people your mind must have much “looser” wiring, because people are not systems and don’t make much sense a lot of the time.
Yes, about concentrating… I guess one problem with being truly meticulous in the real world is that you have trouble staying in the real worlds for any appreciable length of time. I mean, I can be incredibly organised, mostly when I get a surge of physical energy - or completely disorganised, late and forgetting everything while leaving totally in my own world. Leaving inside requires much less energy expenditure than staying focused on external reality. This is how you get to be incredibly organised and responsible some of the times, and the original snowflake at others. People don’t always get it because they don’t see it as consistent. An organised, meticulous person is expected to be organised and meticulous everywhere at all times. That obviously includes being neat and tidy (think of your typical One here). The likes of me don’t make sense. We are a mass of contradictions. We can be messy, because we don’t really notice the world about us as much. But you better not make logical or systematic errors when we are around - these things set off internal sensors, whether we want them or not. A lot of it can be seen as ‘splitting hairs’, but the fact is, when there is a piece which so evidently doesn’t fit, it is almost physically irritating.
Not to give the wrong impression - being pedantic is not related to having painfully meticulous thought processes. A lot of my logic is actually holistic and intuitive, without any need for internal linearity. I often know almost instantly whether something is or isn’t right - it is for the purposes of explaining to others that the sequential steps have to be worked out. Trying to describe the kind of systems that exist in my head has in the past proven to be rather difficult. They are neither rigid nor clearly delineated. Instead, they are fuzzy, flexible and approximate. But there still has to be an overarching system - otherwise I have no use for the individual pieces. They literally fall out if they have nowhere to fit - that’s why rote memory has never been my strongest point. Things have to connect, they have to make sense. I store concepts, not details. This is where personality theories fit in, accidentally, - as systems for human nature.
On the left brain-right brain tests I tend to score in the middle, or on either side on re-taking, rather amusingly. This reminds me of brain imaging studies I read about associating Thinking with the left brain and iNtuition with the right (I think, have to go back and check).
I remember getting 10/10 for “organisation” on the tickle.com brainteaser. There were no questions on organisation - they just assessed how well you proofread, the level of attentiveness overall etc. I have no problems with those tasks - my mind is naturally systematic. My highest scores on brainteaser-type tests are almost always on logic - usually 100%. I categorise, determine relationship, relevance, hierarchical dependency, priority with ease. It was almost a revelation for me to see that some far from stupid people struggle with such tasks. I remember helping out a grad student last year - the questions he asked would have never occurred to me. It was as if he had a loose pile of ideas in front of him, but could not put them together in any sort of coherent manner. He did not see the obvious relationships which had no need to be worked out - they were right there already. The poor guy must have thought I was a genius. But guess what? He possesses a true gift for communicating with people and making friends. You can’t have everything. To relate well to people your mind must have much “looser” wiring, because people are not systems and don’t make much sense a lot of the time.
Yes, about concentrating… I guess one problem with being truly meticulous in the real world is that you have trouble staying in the real worlds for any appreciable length of time. I mean, I can be incredibly organised, mostly when I get a surge of physical energy - or completely disorganised, late and forgetting everything while leaving totally in my own world. Leaving inside requires much less energy expenditure than staying focused on external reality. This is how you get to be incredibly organised and responsible some of the times, and the original snowflake at others. People don’t always get it because they don’t see it as consistent. An organised, meticulous person is expected to be organised and meticulous everywhere at all times. That obviously includes being neat and tidy (think of your typical One here). The likes of me don’t make sense. We are a mass of contradictions. We can be messy, because we don’t really notice the world about us as much. But you better not make logical or systematic errors when we are around - these things set off internal sensors, whether we want them or not. A lot of it can be seen as ‘splitting hairs’, but the fact is, when there is a piece which so evidently doesn’t fit, it is almost physically irritating.
Not to give the wrong impression - being pedantic is not related to having painfully meticulous thought processes. A lot of my logic is actually holistic and intuitive, without any need for internal linearity. I often know almost instantly whether something is or isn’t right - it is for the purposes of explaining to others that the sequential steps have to be worked out. Trying to describe the kind of systems that exist in my head has in the past proven to be rather difficult. They are neither rigid nor clearly delineated. Instead, they are fuzzy, flexible and approximate. But there still has to be an overarching system - otherwise I have no use for the individual pieces. They literally fall out if they have nowhere to fit - that’s why rote memory has never been my strongest point. Things have to connect, they have to make sense. I store concepts, not details. This is where personality theories fit in, accidentally, - as systems for human nature.
On the left brain-right brain tests I tend to score in the middle, or on either side on re-taking, rather amusingly. This reminds me of brain imaging studies I read about associating Thinking with the left brain and iNtuition with the right (I think, have to go back and check).