I was driving when I said it: “people like you and I.” And I couldn’t believe that I had said it.
Such is life when you hear it the wrong way again and again, and when you read writers telling you there’s nothing wrong with it.
I just kept driving — I didn’t slam on the brakes and pull over — but I immediately corrected myself. That’ll never happen no more, as the song says. I hope.
Thursday, July 11, 2024
You and *I, you and me
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comments: 3
I think you’re being too hard on yourself. As Danny Kahneman would undoubtedly point out, driving uses System 1 thinking, and I/me confusion is a System 1 error. You even might want to argue it’s a necessary error because otherwise you’d have to switch to System 2 thinking to make the subject/direct-object distinction, something you probably don’t want to do while driving.
I was more amazed than self-critical, really — although self-criticism comes naturally to me. I haven't read Kahneman's book about thinking, but that's a persuasive explanation. I was also trying to explain something I’d read in Project 2025, which may have created a double whammy.
“I was also trying to explain something I’d read in Project 2025, which may have created a double whammy.”
Oh, absolutely. Doing that while driving has got to be on a par with talking on a cell phone while driving, and probably worse because using Bluetooth won’t lessen the dangers of the former.
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