When one’s own mental characteristics are as treated as universal.  Everyone can occasionally commit this error.  When I once did this error and got it pointed out to me, I accepted my error it immediately.  But if you do it habitually there must be something wrong with you.  At least if you have had all chances to learn to know your fellow beings.

To avoid this erroneous thinking is essential for convincing others.  This is particularly true for one’s opponents.  If they had been as similar as presupposed, they would not have been opponents.  So how do you then explain them expressing a different opinion?  By assuming them to be evil?  That “explanation” comes from someone who never had the chance to learn to know his or her fellow beings.

So why assume everyone else to:

1. Have the same hostility to certain groups in society?

2. Divide things in physical reality in exactly the same way as oneself?

3. Make the same spontaneous associations between different concepts?

4. React emotionally in the same way when confronting the same ideas?

5. Be immediately convinced by someone expressing one’s own ideas?

I am not saying anyone is lying.  Instead, I really wonder why some argue as if they could presuppose such things.  There could be individual answers out of which some are more common than others.  Or I could have misunderstood the person.  I have a tendency to misjudge what is not said outright.  This means I can misunderstand standpoints which are not as common as some seem to believe.

Uploaded on the 14th of September 2023.