A clarion call for grace towards brain farts
Or, jack of few trades, master of one.
“You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offence, isn’t it?”—Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov
There’s a bizarre, surprisingly common, notion that to quote someone and rely on its veracity, you must agree with everything else they say to avoid the retort: “Look what else they said.” This discrediting, often nonsensical, sleight of hand is a surefire way to degrade the breadth and depth of debates.
People can be masters of their field, true trailblazers, yet they may say something ignorant outside of their field, or even something unhinged, perhaps due to a rush of blood to the head. (Human error applies to all humans. Even LLMs are known to hallucinate. Some degree of error, sometimes, seems inevitable.)1
Beyond the narrow scope of the outlying trailblazers, there are many with insightful, novel takes in—and sometimes outside—their areas of expertise, who may have a brain fart or two.
The quantity and severity of brain farts should be taken into account. If they occur frequently or are particularly egregious, it may point to an underlying issue; in that case, a mental note may be prudent. Even if someone is ‘marked,’ it shouldn’t be indelible; leave the door open for ‘erasure.’
Experts—true experts, not ‘The Experts’—are often measured and fair, openly highlighting areas where evidence is equivocal. Their quiet confidence is based on actual competence, and a paradox of learning: “The more you know, the more you don’t know”—illustrated by
’s self-assessment in his article, The Dunning–Kruger Effect:“I have been studying the self and personality for 35 years and know much less now than I did in grad school. I still don’t know the unknown unknowns, but now I know they are out there.”
Do you get all of your information from one person or source? I hope not, for your sake and those you converse with.
Do you have a trusted ‘group of advisors’ you rely on for information on specific topics? Depending on the topic, it may be prudent to take the advisor’s thoughts with a pinch—or truck full—of salt.
Making an ignorant statement on a topic one knows little about does not inherently invalidate insights on topics they are well-versed in.
This isn’t to say only experts or ‘The Experts’ can have an opinion, it’s to give grace to those bold enough to opine outside their expertise in good faith—particularly when riffing live where the chances of brain farts are higher than a carefully constructed article.
A Substack note by
said she’s “thirty times more articulate in writing than talking,” which highlights, at least for some—perhaps many or most—that riffing live or simply talking rather than writing is a more perilous environment when trying to avoid brain farts.Many are yearning for a return to more common sense, nuance, and tolerance—actual tolerance—not the ‘new way’ it’s used, and often weaponised, by the self-ascribed paragons of virtue and ‘tolerance.’
If there is less tolerance for those who play with the Overton window in good faith—who “publicly wayfind,” as Jordan Peterson puts it in We Who Wrestle With God—we don’t solve ‘intolerance.’ It simply goes underground—where it can metastasise without the sword of truth to pierce any specks of degeneracy. A belief that starts out being fairly reasonable, or a bit edgy, can become something demented within an echo chamber, and one day this may get unleashed onto an unsuspecting public.
Fewer edgy opinions may not be a positive leading indicator for society. If those who are fairly moderate—as most are if you get offline, where the loudest minority creates a false impression—are not allowed to chat openly and are treated like children, they may be more likely to develop demented beliefs, as they are drawn towards areas that welcome them and may overlook what they are enveloping themselves in.2
If there is no grace for brain farts, then in this age of digital permanence, fierce debate—in the spirit of good faith—where the best ideas emerge triumphant will continue to dwindle; people will just be shadowboxing with the projection of others, with no one saying what they actually think. Billions of masks in a state of perpetual confusion and intellectual deprivation—desperate for the nourishment of a real conversation or debate, even if that brings the possibility of their feelings getting hurt. Under such conditions, it becomes tricky to ascertain whether you are part of the silent majority, as many adopt silence or the accepted party line.3
Censorship accelerates a “regression to the mean”—a fake egalitarianism. A less censorious, more meritocratic approach will produce more outliers.4 A preference for the latter seems to unite many Substackers. “Original, unpredictable voices filling my inbox every day,” is how
describes the Substack experience, in The New Status Anxiety.Lean on your trusted board of advisors—or seek them out if you lack them. Don’t be scared to quote something valuable and thought-provoking just because that individual also had a brain fart outside their area of expertise. If someone tries to discredit the chosen insightful quote because of a brain fart made outside their expertise, they may not be acting in good faith.5
Encouraging people to play with ideas in good faith, all other things being equal, is the most productive and supportive environment for breakthroughs.
Also, top-down expertism limits the possibility of novel perspectives from outside the field that aren’t weighed down by all the explicit and implicit assumptions, which may be able to penetrate with a common-sense, outsider viewpoint.
If any topic is truly “100% settled”—the antithesis of the scientific method—it should welcome challenges, as the edifice (purportedly) has no cracks. If so, even a determined army of megabrains shouldn’t be able to make a dent in ‘The Science.’ This rigid, anti-science stance marches towards the “deep slumber of a decided opinion”—a wonderful phrase from John Stuart Mill.
A return to the true meaning of tolerance, removing the ridiculous expectations that demand no human error, and approaching conversations with more grace—and ideally some play and curiosity—may help course-correct and accelerate a slightly lighter, more jovial world.
suggests in What Do Men Want? that adopting the latter suggestion—engaging in “serious play”—could help remedy the “battle of the sexes,” and, therefore, society in general.Perhaps we should strive towards adopting a Brand New Tolerance (a nice phrase to rally behind, even if it’s just returning towards the original meaning).
Humans acting in good faith also tend to be better at prefacing their confidence level in an upcoming assertion than LLMs. Setting an acceptable level of mistakes to zero is unattainable, and doing so discourages innovation and leads to atrophy.
This seems even more concerning with the advent of AI bots engaging in ‘stochastic terrorism,’ as Chris Martenson aptly describes it here.
A recent report by More In Common highlights that the prevailing narrative in the UK is minority-led; Progressive Activists are merely 8–10% of the population, yet there’s an impression that it’s the dominant viewpoint, due to their extraordinarily outweighed influence.
This doesn’t mean people want to see more deranged content; it simply means they understand this is the trade-off. “There are no solutions, only trade-offs,” the oft-quoted Thomas Sowell aphorism.
There are some scenarios where what is said is so deranged that this line of reasoning may be appropriate.