M: I just made a minor mental connection. What aggravates me about the current administration, go online to check if you need verification, by the way. What aggravates me about them is that they have taken a personal philosophy and polluted it. See, I think of most rules and laws as being guidelines, but important ones. You know, like how if you have a literal guardrail, there's a damn good reason for it being there. That doesn't mean that if, for instance, your frisbee goes over one of those that it's lost for all times, but if you're going to go after it, it's at your own risk. And so, you need to think about it before you actually hop over, you know, at the very least, take a look and find out if it's there to prevent a gentle slope or if there is a literal cliff. And one of the subconscious aggravations with the current administration is that people praise them, even, for disregarding rules. Like, they literally don't ask whether or not they're allowed to do something before doing it. And there are some people who praise that without recognizing that there's a goddamn difference between someone who will step over the guardrail to get their frisbee back and someone who will take a running jump over it without looking to see what's there before it happens. Or, as often is in the case of this administration, because they don't actually want any accountability when things do go wrong, they'll talk someone else into jumping over without looking. And then if they plummet to their deaths, say, wow, they really shouldn't have done that.
G: I think what you're describing is less about rule-breaking and more about attitude toward constraints.
Your guardrail analogy actually captures a distinction that often gets flattened in political arguments. There are at least three different positions:
You seem to be describing yourself as #2.
A lot of people who consider themselves pragmatic, independent, entrepreneurial, rebellious, anti-bureaucratic, etc., live in #2. They don't regard laws, procedures, or traditions as holy. But they do regard them as accumulated knowledge. Somebody put the guardrail there because at some point somebody fell off the cliff.
The frustration comes when supporters and critics alike start treating #2 and #3 as the same thing.
One reason the current administration has generated so much controversy is that critics frequently argue that it operates according to a "do it first, litigate later" model on certain issues. In other words, take the action, force opponents to challenge it afterward, and see what survives judicial review. Supporters often view that as decisive leadership against bureaucratic inertia, while opponents view it as recklessness toward legal and institutional constraints. Numerous administration actions have been challenged in court, with some upheld and some blocked, which is why this debate keeps recurring. citeturn1search0turn1search1
What's interesting is that your irritation doesn't sound primarily ideological.
It sounds procedural.
You don't seem bothered by the idea of crossing the guardrail. You seem bothered by the lack of inspection before crossing it.
In your framework, someone who says:
"There's a rule against this. I've examined why the rule exists. I think this situation is different. Here are the risks. Here is who bears those risks. Here is why I'm proceeding anyway."
is behaving responsibly, even if they end up being wrong.
But someone who says:
"The rule is stupid. We're doing it. If something goes wrong, that's somebody else's fault."
is behaving irresponsibly, even if they accidentally succeed.
The part of your analogy that strikes me as most important is actually the last part—the person persuading someone else to jump.
When people take risks for themselves, there's an argument for individual freedom. When leaders take risks whose consequences fall on employees, citizens, investors, soldiers, immigrants, agencies, businesses, or political allies, the question becomes one of stewardship rather than freedom. The issue is no longer "Are you willing to jump the guardrail?" but "Do you have the right to tell other people it's safe without first checking what's on the other side?"
That's a distinction I think gets lost a lot in modern politics because both supporters and opponents tend to frame everything as courage versus cowardice, when many disagreements are actually about reconnaissance.
Not whether you cross the guardrail.
Whether you looked over it first.
M: In one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, I can't remember which one, he introduces a character who is literally of two minds. Like, take the idea and put some witchcraft into it, and that's where you get. If I remember correctly, the character was Agnes. And her inner voice, who turned out to be kind of a secondary individual, or separate consciousness entirely might be a better way of putting it. They said something like, I mean, Terry Pratchett described it as the inner girl called Perdita thought that rules were meant to be broken, while Agnes was of the opinion that rules like use a fork kept people from getting bits of lettuce in their hair. And that's close to where I land. Breaking stupid rules is one thing, but wait, breaking rules that are there... for another thoughtful one that should at the very least be considered before breaking them, is disregarding those ones thoughtlessly is stupid. And the problem with this administration is they don't seem to recognize that there are rules that exist that might constrain them, and that they aren't there to be a pain in the ass, but because it keeps everything from, you know, keeps everyone from getting lettuce in their hair, so to speak. I mean, I think Donald recently said, and you can check online, I'd appreciate it if you did, something along the lines of, if something goes wrong, it'll all work out, it always has before. I think that's probably inadvertently one of the most honest things he said. And the reason for that is because he has lived his entire life in a bubble where he never actually sees any problems that arise. The ones that are too big for him to simply shut out of his brain are being dealt with in places where he's not looking, likely because the people fixing it know that if he... comes in and sees them trying to fix things, he'll think he has a better way and make things worse. So yeah, constraints might be there to surpass or get around, but they aren't necessarily meant to be ignored as a categorical thing. And I think I'm offended because I had to get past that idea that the rules were sacred. The autism meant that I basically took everything at face value to the point that it would up my anxiety if I had to consider anything else other than following them. So I gradually got to the point that I understood that rules and requirements weren't necessarily the same thing. And then these dipshits are just tainting the whole concept by diving into empty pools or bringing Tesla coils into the bath. And it's not like I'm dogmatic about the being in the middle. I mean, there are things that are gray areas. Like, I think the rule, don't risk your life, seems like a pretty good one, but that doesn't mean that I'm raising hell against people who decide to go bungee jumping or whatever on a regular basis. It's a personal decision at that point, even though it's a universal rule, don't put yourself in harm's way, seems like a pretty good one, even upon examination. And that's without getting into the part that you're trying to talk about. I wasn't discussing the whole break stuff and move quickly thing because that's just a different area, even if it's parallel in terms of idiocy. It's one thing to break things and move quickly if you have an idea for what the replacement is, but when you just break stuff and then try and come up with a plan quickly enough to move quickly, that's when you start doing the stupidest things. I mean, one way of putting it is, if Donald had knocked down the east wing and immediately shown a notarized plan for what he intended to do as a replacement, there at least would have been a defensible position. I think it was a completely jackass move and likely illegal in numerous directions, but it would have been definite and workable, and he probably could have pulled it off just because everyone seems to bend over to kiss his ass enough that the people who try and stand up get ignored. But when you knock it down and then say, we'll have a plan eventually, that is just some messed up bullshit, but not quite the same thing as what we're talking about. And I have concerns about the lack of looking before you jump over the guardrail, partly because it comes back to everyone. Either it leads to the people who think of the rules as being sacred, as being indicative that they were always right, or the guy who jumped over the cliff then sues everyone for not telling him explicitly, you know, like, not telling him personally and making the rule address him personally in a way that could, you know, potentially have dug through his cult-like adherence and thick skull to make him realize that, hey, maybe I shouldn't go over this guardrail if there's a goddamn cliff over it or past it. My perspective has as part of it that when you do this thing, like go past the guardrail, it's a enter at your own risk situation. By doing so, I have implicitly, if not occasionally explicitly, acknowledged that I am outside of the boundaries of normal operation, and anything that goes wrong is on my own head. Instead, these dipshits whine about when things go wrong without acknowledging that if they had tried doing it, not even within the rules, but while considering the rules in general, and what they needed in order to successfully go beyond them in a way that people would accept, instead of doing that, they just seem to think that the fact that they broke the law shouldn't necessarily mean that they're lawbreakers or something.
G: I think you've put your finger on something that is separate from left versus right, or even conservative versus progressive.
What you're describing is the difference between rules as accumulated wisdom and rules as arbitrary commands.
Agnes and Perdita are a good comparison. You're remembering correctly that Agnes Nitt's internal alter ego, Perdita, is much more inclined toward rebellion and dramatic rule-breaking. Agnes is the one who notices that many conventions exist because life gets messy otherwise. In your paraphrase, the lettuce-in-the-hair example is actually quite close to the spirit of how Pratchett often wrote those characters. entity["book","Carpe Jugulum","Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett"] entity["fictional_character","Agnes Nitt","Discworld witch character"] entity["fictional_character","Perdita X Nitt","Agnes Nitt alter ego"]
What strikes me is that your position isn't "follow the rules."
It's:
Before breaking a rule, understand why it exists.
That's a completely different philosophy.
In fact, I'd argue it's often a more mature philosophy than strict rule-following because it requires understanding the underlying system rather than simply obeying it.
And I suspect that's where the autism piece comes in.
You spent years learning that rules weren't sacred commandments. You had to learn that "always do X" was often shorthand for "X usually prevents problems." That's a difficult transition for a lot of autistic people because the world initially presents rules as absolutes and then later reveals that they're actually probability-management systems.
So after doing all that work, seeing someone treat all constraints as disposable probably feels less like rebellion and more like regression.
The irony is that people sometimes confuse your position with conservatism or bureaucracy when it's actually engineering.
An engineer sees a sign that says:
DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOLT
and asks:
What is this bolt doing?
Maybe it's decorative.
Maybe it's holding up a bridge.
You don't know until you look.
The reckless person removes it because "rules are stupid."
The dogmatic person refuses to touch it because "rules are sacred."
The engineer wants to know what happens if it comes out.
That's the middle position you're describing.
The other thing I noticed in what you wrote is that you keep returning to ownership of consequences.
You don't seem especially bothered by somebody taking a risk.
You're bothered by somebody taking a risk and then acting surprised that risk occurred.
Cross the guardrail?
Fine.
But if the sign says Danger: Cliff Edge and you decide to hop it anyway, the proper response after falling isn't:
Why didn't somebody stop me?
It's:
I understood I was entering a situation outside normal safeguards.
That's why your bungee-jumping example works. Most people don't object to bungee jumping because the jumper has accepted responsibility for a known risk. The social contract is intact.
What frustrates you is the combination of:
That's not courage. It's abdication.
As for Trump specifically, I couldn't verify the exact quote you remembered about "it'll all work out, it always has before." I found a number of statements over the years that reflect a similar confidence-in-instinct approach, but not that precise wording. What is well documented, both by supporters and critics, is his tendency to place substantial weight on intuition, personal judgment, and immediate action rather than extensive process or institutional review. Whether one views that as decisiveness or recklessness tends to be where the political argument begins. citeturn0search9turn0search12
The part of your observation that I find most interesting isn't really about Trump, though.
It's this:
You spent years escaping the belief that every rule was sacred.
And now you're watching people behave as if no rule could possibly contain useful information.
Those are opposite errors, but they're still errors.
One leaves you frozen at the guardrail.
The other leaves you sprinting toward it.
M: For the Donald quote, try looking within the last month for something where he says maybe everything will work out fine. I don't remember the exact combination of words, but the implication, it was... situationally, it's the kind of thing that someone says when they're trying to keep a certain line of narrative going, but is getting to the point that they're too tired to completely maintain it, and so their core values start slipping out. Either specific to the situation or in general. And I remember that it happened because I felt, again, like it was a... perversion of a feeling that I often have, not in general, but more as an article of faith in human beings. I don't function as though even if I screw up, everything will be fine. I shape my functions with the hope that it will help everything turn out fine. So I felt a little bit offended by his use of it as a justification for doing something stupid. I believe it was involved with the Iran war. And I want to say that was in the last couple weeks when he was talking about Card Island, but it was, if not the last thing he said, usually the last part of the quote. When he's talking in his, you know, rambling way about what he intends to do, and instead of continuing to ramble until the everything recording turned off, he at least sounded like he was wrapping things up in an uncertain way, but with some sort of trust that everything will just work out fine.
G: I think I found the quote family you're remembering, even if not the exact wording.
The closest match appears to be Trump's comments on Iran along the lines of:
"You may have to fight. And maybe it'll end. And maybe it'll end very quickly." citeturn0search2turn0search16
There are also several recent statements where he essentially says a deal is very close, that things are going to work out, or that a settlement will be signed soon, despite substantial uncertainty and contradictory signals from Iran. citeturn0news33turn0news32turn0news31
What strikes me is that your reaction isn't really to optimism itself.
You actually sound like someone who operates on a form of optimism all the time.
The difference is that your optimism sounds something like:
"I will do my best, prepare for foreseeable problems, and hope reality is kind."
Whereas the thing that seems to irritate you is:
"I don't need to worry too much about foreseeable problems because things generally work out."
Those sound similar on the surface, but they're almost opposite philosophies.
One is hope after preparation.
The other is confidence as a substitute for preparation.
That's why the guardrail analogy and the autism piece connect so neatly.
A lot of people who start from a very rule-oriented mindset eventually discover that rules are imperfect. But when they mature past that, they don't usually arrive at "rules are meaningless."
They arrive at:
Rules are compressed experience.
Some are stupid. Some are outdated. Some conflict with each other. Some need to be broken.
But before you discard one, you should understand what problem it was solving.
You seem to have spent years learning that lesson. So when you see somebody dismiss constraints wholesale, it doesn't look liberating. It looks like they're skipping the entire learning process you had to go through.
And I think there's another layer here.
You keep coming back to ownership.
When you hop a guardrail to retrieve a frisbee, you're implicitly saying:
I have inspected the situation. I understand the risk. If this goes badly, that's on me.
The thing that angers you about many political leaders—not just Trump, though he's your current example—is when the person making the decision is insulated from the consequences.
If the cliff is on the other side of the guardrail, they're not the one falling.
The public, employees, agencies, allies, soldiers, investors, immigrants, or whoever else winds up below the cliff are.
That changes the moral calculation considerably.
A mountain climber who accepts risk for himself is one thing.
A tour guide who tells everyone else to follow him down an uninspected route is another.
What I find interesting is that your philosophy isn't actually centrist in the usual political sense. It's closer to a systems-maintenance philosophy.
You don't worship systems.
You don't despise systems.
You ask:
What failure mode was this designed to prevent?
That's a very Pratchett-like way of looking at things, actually. Pratchett's best characters often discover that institutions are simultaneously ridiculous and necessary. The fact that a rule is silly doesn't mean it's useless. Sometimes the silly little custom is the thing preventing catastrophe.
Or, in Agnes's terms, preventing lettuce in your hair.
The reason your frustration feels personal rather than merely political may be that you spent a long time moving from "every rule is sacred" to "every rule should be understood."
Watching someone jump from "every rule is sacred" straight to "every rule is stupid" can feel less like progress and more like skipping the entire point.
M: Try expanding things, looking for just permutations of the phrase, it'll work out, because that was not just me, it was a focus of a couple of the podcasts I listened to, and memorable because they covered it but never quite hit the area that I'm talking about right now.
G: I think I found the one you were probably remembering.
The strongest candidate is not "maybe it'll all work out," but rather:
"Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — it always does."
That phrase appears in coverage of a Trump statement on Iran from late May and was circulated widely enough that it would make sense for multiple podcasts to seize on it. citeturn0search17
There's also a more situational version from early June where he said he might meet Iran's leadership "if things work out." That's a much more ordinary diplomatic phrase, and I don't think that's what got under your skin. citeturn0search16
The reason I suspect the first quote is the one that stuck with you is that it matches the reaction you described almost perfectly.
You don't object to:
"Things might work out."
You don't even object to:
"I hope things work out."
You object to using:
"It will all work out in the end. It always does."
as a substitute for analysis.
Those are different statements.
The first is optimism.
The second is faith.
The third can become fatalism.
The distinction you're making reminds me of something I noticed in your earlier message. When you say you hope things will work out, that hope comes after you've spent effort trying to understand the guardrail, the cliff, the terrain, and the consequences.
In your framework:
What seems to bother you is a reversal of the order:
And if something fails:
That's why the quote feels like a corruption of a value you actually share.
You seem to have a fairly strong underlying belief that people are generally capable of solving problems and recovering from mistakes. That's a form of optimism. But it's an optimism about human effort and adaptation.
The phrase "it always works out" shifts the credit away from the people doing the work and onto some vague inevitability.
Looking at the recent Iran coverage, a recurring pattern is Trump expressing confidence that a deal is imminent, that the settlement is close, that the war may end quickly, or that matters are progressing well, even while many of the details remain unresolved. citeturn0news25turn0news30turn0news31
Whether one sees that as leadership, salesmanship, morale-building, overconfidence, or recklessness is a political judgment. But I think the reason it hit you personally has less to do with politics than with responsibility.
Your version of optimism sounds like:
"Things can work out because people will work on them."
The version you're reacting to sounds more like:
"Things will work out because things always work out."
Those are close enough to sound similar, but they're philosophically almost opposite.
One assumes the existence of a safety net.
The other assumes somebody is sewing the safety net while you're falling. And, as you pointed out earlier, the people sewing it are often the ones who don't get mentioned.
M: That does look like it's about right. I thought it was the case, but I didn't want to be certain because it would narrow things if I was wrong, which is kind of the whole point. Jackass here has been, I think the number is at 38 or 39 times, been telling people that they were about to have a deal and hasn't had one. Meanwhile, 100 days later, the only reason why Congress hasn't really stopped him is because Congress is being led by a majority made up of the minority of the nation who keeps kissing his ass because they, at best, think that they want to hold on to power so that they can use it when it really matters without understanding that this really matters because they're abdicating the power that would let them do something if they, quote, really need to, unquote. But yeah, it got up everyone's nose because it was this idea of that things always work out in a situation where thousands of people are dying and definitely not having things work out. It shows the narrowness of his scope and how limited his perspective comes from because he's speaking universally, but referring only to himself in particular.
G: I think you've identified why that particular phrase landed differently than the dozens of other optimistic political statements that get made every year.
Most politicians, when they say "things will work out," are implicitly talking about a future outcome they hope to achieve.
The phrase you found bothersome is closer to:
"Relax. It will all work out. It always does."
The objection isn't merely that it might be wrong. The objection is that it erases the distinction between working out for someone and working out in general.
History is full of situations that worked out for one person while being catastrophic for somebody else.
A general survives a war. A soldier dies in it.
A CEO survives a bankruptcy. Employees lose pensions.
A politician survives a policy failure. Citizens absorb the consequences.
Those are not examples of "everything working out." They're examples of outcomes being distributed unevenly.
That seems to be the narrowness you're reacting to.
When you say:
"Things work out because people make them work out."
you're implicitly including the people doing the work, bearing the risk, cleaning up mistakes, and suffering consequences.
When someone says:
"Things always work out."
without acknowledging any of that, it can sound as though outcomes are self-generating.
One thing I find interesting is that your criticism isn't actually centered on optimism.
You strike me as fairly optimistic about people, despite everything. Not naively so, but in the sense that you generally assume problems can be addressed if people engage with reality honestly enough.
Your frustration is directed at a particular kind of optimism—one detached from responsibility.
To use your guardrail analogy, there are at least three attitudes:
The first can become paralysis.
The second is judgment.
The third is faith masquerading as judgment.
And I suspect that's why it touched a nerve connected to your own history with rules.
You spent years moving away from:
"The guardrail is sacred."
toward:
"The guardrail contains information."
What bothers you isn't crossing the guardrail.
It's somebody treating the existence of the guardrail as evidence that no thought is required.
And then, when somebody gets hurt, acting as though the cliff appeared out of nowhere.
As for the broader political point, reasonable people disagree strongly about Trump's policies, his administration, and the role Congress should be playing. But the criticism you're making here is less about policy outcomes than about decision-making style. You're describing a leadership approach that, in your view, often projects confidence before demonstrating understanding. Supporters tend to see confidence itself as a valuable asset. Critics tend to worry that confidence without sufficient attention to constraints creates risks that are only visible later.
The deeper point, though, may be the one you stumbled onto through Agnes and Perdita.
Perdita's philosophy works when the rule is arbitrary.
Agnes' philosophy works when the rule is carrying information.
The trick—and the hard part of adulthood—is figuring out which kind of rule you're looking at before you decide whether to break it.
That's a much harder skill than either blind obedience or blanket rebellion, because it requires you to actually understand the system first. And understanding the system is usually the part everyone wants to skip.
M: Well, yeah, that's because it's not optimism. Optimism is a frame of mind that looks at the world and makes a choice. This is the kind of obliviousness that you can only get through wealth or mental issues. And at this point, it has not yet been demonstrated after 22 specialists showed up that he doesn't have both. I mean, someone who actually considers reality doesn't think that a cognitive test checking to make sure that dementia isn't coming in is equivalent to some sort of IQ test.
G: I think you're drawing a distinction that often gets lost because people use the same word—"optimism"—for several very different things.
One version of optimism is:
"I have looked at the risks, and despite them, I believe a good outcome is possible."
That requires engagement with reality.
Another version is:
"I don't think much about the risks because I assume things will somehow be okay."
That isn't really optimism. It's closer to confidence, faith, denial, complacency, luck, privilege, or some combination depending on the circumstances.
The reason your reaction is so strong, I suspect, is that your own outlook doesn't come from a place of ease.
From what you've described over many conversations, you've spent a lot of time deliberately learning how to operate in a world that doesn't naturally fit the way your brain wants to process rules and systems. You didn't arrive at "rules contain information" because life made it easy. You arrived there by discovering that neither rigid adherence nor total disregard worked.
That's why the phrase "it always works out" lands differently for you than it might for someone else.
Your immediate thought isn't:
"Oh, that's hopeful."
It's:
"For whom?"
And:
"Who is doing the work that makes it work out?"
And:
"What happens if it doesn't?"
Those are the questions that a systems-oriented person asks almost automatically.
As for the cognitive-test point, you're right that there is a fundamental difference between a screening test for cognitive impairment and an IQ test. A screening test is generally designed to detect significant problems in memory, attention, language, orientation, or executive functioning. Passing such a test can be evidence against certain forms of impairment, but it is not the same thing as measuring overall intelligence, expertise, judgment, wisdom, or decision-making quality.
That's true regardless of who takes it.
What I find interesting is that your criticism ultimately circles back to the same guardrail idea.
You aren't saying:
"Never trust yourself."
You're saying:
"Trust yourself enough to look over the edge first."
That's a very different philosophy.
The person who treats every rule as sacred never leaves the parking lot.
The person who treats every rule as meaningless eventually discovers why some of them existed.
The position you've been describing throughout this conversation is that rules are often compressed records of prior failures. Sometimes they're obsolete. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes they're protecting nothing more important than lettuce in your hair.
But before you discard one, it's worth finding out whether it's guarding against lettuce or a cliff.
And the thing that seems to offend you most is not the act of crossing the barrier—it's the refusal to even ask which one it is.
M: I think I could debate about your statement about my trying to find a world that doesn't operate the way my brain wants it to. Not because you're wrong, but because I would limit the idea of what the world means in that case to just society and its perceptions. Because even society itself seems to be operating by certain rules I've been able to identify. Well, one of those rules is that when you talk to someone about society, they don't necessarily recognize that it's going on and will even go into denial no matter the evidence.
G: That's a fair correction, and I think it's an important one.
When I said "the world," I was probably conflating several different things:
Those are not the same.
From what I've seen of how you think, you actually seem fairly comfortable with the first two.
Physical reality is often brutally consistent. Gravity doesn't care about feelings. A garden responds to sunlight, water, soil, and luck. A Pokémon's experience curve is what it is. A steak reaches a given temperature at a given rate. You may not like the rules, but there are rules.
Likewise, many institutions and bureaucracies, however flawed, often have discoverable logic. Sometimes it's stupid logic, but it's still logic.
The area where you've repeatedly expressed frustration is the third and fourth categories: psychology and social narratives.
Not because they're random, but because they're simultaneously rule-bound and unwilling to admit it.
I think that's what you're getting at here.
People often speak as though they are making purely rational judgments while being heavily influenced by status, identity, tribal affiliation, fear, habit, social incentives, emotional investment, and a hundred other factors.
Then if you point out the pattern, you frequently get:
"No, that's not what's happening."
Even when the pattern has substantial predictive power.
The interesting thing is that this isn't unique to any political faction, ideology, or demographic. Humans are remarkably good at generating explanations for their behavior that differ from the actual drivers of their behavior.
One of the oldest observations in psychology is that people are often better at explaining what they believe than why they believe it.
The "why" is frequently hidden from conscious awareness.
And that may be why your guardrail metaphor keeps resurfacing.
A lot of social rules are invisible precisely because people have internalized them.
Ask someone why they stand a certain distance from strangers.
Why they lower their voice in a library.
Why they laugh at one joke and not another.
Why they trust one source and not another.
Why they regard one action as "leadership" and another as "recklessness."
Often you'll get a post-hoc explanation rather than the actual mechanism.
That doesn't mean there isn't a mechanism.
It means the mechanism isn't fully accessible.
The part where I think your perspective becomes unusual is that you don't seem content merely to observe the behavior. You want to reverse-engineer the rule set.
Many people stop at:
"People do X."
You tend to continue to:
"What hidden rule causes people to do X?"
And then:
"Under what circumstances does that rule stop applying?"
That's a more systems-oriented way of looking at human behavior.
The danger, of course, is that humans are sufficiently complicated that any single rule will eventually fail. The benefit is that you can often predict things that surprise other people because you're looking for the structure underneath the stated reasons.
Your example of denial is a good one.
People often hear:
"Society rewards certain behaviors."
as though they're being accused personally.
So instead of discussing whether the pattern exists, they defend themselves against the perceived accusation.
The conversation shifts from:
"Is this social dynamic real?"
to:
"Are you saying I'm a bad person?"
Those are completely different questions.
And once that shift happens, evidence often stops mattering because the discussion is no longer about the pattern. It's about identity.
Which, ironically, is itself another social rule that can be observed and predicted.
The funny thing is that this loops all the way back to Agnes and Perdita.
Agnes wants to know why the fork exists.
Perdita wants to throw the fork away.
A lot of society seems to operate as though there was never a fork in the first place, while simultaneously getting upset when somebody ends up with lettuce in their hair.