SOMETHING SO WRONG

I like to hear something incorrect when it makes me immediately want to correct it. People with good IQ scores are smarter and therefore more valuable to society.

What’s impossibly hard is to hear something so wrong that I forget what is right. The very wrong thing blocks access to what is right, and, feeling that this is unfamiliar territory, my position in conversation is to accept (“provisionally”) what is grossly wrong until I find why it is wrong. Otherwise I disagree without being able to explain why.

Something that's wrong often resembles something right: it feels familiar, it applies anesthesia to the area.

Don’t throw your knife away! A life for a life. It will blow your pants off. India was better off after colonization than it was before. The first rhymes with something true; the second uses a mathematical/logical structure to justify the (very unequal) death penalty with equality; the third is wrong, but can you remember the correct expression? The fourth example suggests a very complicated discussion about world history and local changes over several centuries can be reduced to a before and after comparison, but then, lacking another ethical approach, isn’t this an insightful and true comment?

Something so wrong can do more than false information or illogical construction do. It can weaken the listener so that something that could have been said before is no longer accessible. Is it ok to throw away a knife? Is the death penalty fair? What is an expression for great shock involving the word blow? Was colonization a good thing for India? These questions, unlike the wrong statements given above, are much easier to respond to.

A statement can be phrased to deny dialogue with another person’s (often well-trained) instincts. This is a powerful thing about saying something so wrong. Let it strike others as wrong, but watch as they fumble for an answer.