The Order of Tile

I had a healthy discussion with a friend earlier. The question was: "If you have to convince yourself that what you believe in is true, doesn't that mean you're probably wrong?"

It started innocently enough. I stated that all human actions boil down to a longing for power. He countered that if you stretch your logic enough all human actions can be made to boil down to anything. He added that he could make anything boil down to the floor tiles in the 7/11 we were in. I said that it was impossible and challenged him to make DotA boil down to the tiles in 7/11. (This was a planned argument that allowed me to add that we play DotA because of the feeling of power we have when we achieve a "m-m-m-monster kill!")

He said that if you zoom in on a DotA 3D model close enough, the pixels will eventually resemble the tiles in 7/11.

I know. That's ridiculous!

But, aha! It was also a planned argument on his part, allowing him to continue with: "If I convince myself that DotA boils down to floor tiles, I'll believe it and I could probably convince some other people. Your thinking that everything boils down to power is no different."

Of course, I countered that the ways in which we can relate human actions to power are fairly obvious, while it would take a good amount of convincing before I became a follower of the order of tile. It doesn't matter, he said. "Once you convince yourself, the difference ceases to exist."

I saw the point, realizing that much of history and even today's society is based on self-persuasion. *ahem* I then argued that if you have to convince yourself to believe in something, then it's probably wrong. The simplest explanation is more likely to be true and not need any self-persuasion at all. We then proceeded to argue about our favorite topic: religion.

From there we went on the usual spiral of arguments where nobody really gains any ground or introduces any new arguments. We just went on and on and on and on. Then we went home.

Why did we do this? To see who had more power, of course. There were no tiles rewarded to the winner.


BLOGGING FOR WHAT'S RIGHT!
June 28, 2007. 11:40 pm