 What have you changed your mind about recently?
boredguy8: My biggest mental shift recently is an appreciation for ambiguity in language. Three months ago, if someone would have asked me, "Can you gain important topical insights from the ambiguous use of language?" I'd have said, "No, of course not: if you aren't precise in what you discuss, that creates a barrier to communication and makes things more confusing rather than clarifying. Intelligence is, in a large part, the ability to make fine distinctions and precise language helps make those distinctions."I still see the value in precise language, but I now see it far more as one more tool in my toolbox rather than "THE WAY THINGS MUST BE!" And I've also come to see that my near-totalitarian enforcement of precision was prohibiting me from using other tools.By analogy: suppose you want to know more about butterflies. Certainly catching them and pinning them to a spreading board is one way to study them: you can measure them exactly, you can count their spots and identify their coloration precisely. But you don't capture all that it is to observe a butterfly that way--you don't comprehend its flight, its movement, its way of being in motion.Now, clearly I understand that, in a sense, I've only become 'more precise' in my language, willing to 'evoke ambiguity' when precisely necessary. But I can only protest that this fails to understand what I've gained from a willingness to recognize the value of ambiguity.