EPTPeople love feeling smart, regardless of their actual intelligence, and even more so when it's relative to other people. This is why so many people have polar beliefs, they latch on to the arguments of one side and dismiss the other side, often as ridiculous. Like it's unbelievable for an argument that says they're wrong to exist at all. Their first reaction to opposing arguments is to laugh them off. People who disagree with them are lower on the food chain, destined to be eaten by the superior, higher intelligence beings. Smarter people go further in the world. They get all the money, sex, drugs, rock, and roll that everyone else misses out on. Nobody wants to be stupid.
People need to realize that being wrong and being stupid are not synonymous. A lot of people who are wrong make smarter arguments than those who are right, due to the difficulty of trying to prove an incorrect point. Often, smarter, more clever arguments are interpreted as being right because they make people feel smarter for believing them. Like holocaust denial. A ton of clever reasoning looks far smarter than accepted historical fact.
I feel like though I try to make up my own mind about a lot of things and form my own set of beliefs based on what I feel is right, external influences are still working on me, trying to change my mind. I've come to realize that it's impossible to escape the iron grip of what I'll call propaganda for simplicity's sake. For example, maybe an hour ago I saw a Facebook post about how the Patriots, my "home team" won a game. I don't follow football at all, yet I felt happy. It's something that has been drilled in to the foundation of who I am. Somehow, somewhere deep in my soul, I am a Patriots fan. I even wear clothing with their logo on it sometimes. I tell myself it's a coincidence, it's nothing personal. I guess I'm in denial.
I played my first game of chess against a random person in real life the other day. They were doing a sort of simul to recruit for the chess club. He was playing two other people, and it was evident in his play. The first few moves were 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nd4 4.d3 Nf6 5.Nxd4 exd4; I was playing white. He threw away a few of his pieces later in the game and I checkmated him after getting some serious f file pressure going. I signed up for the chess club, expecting the level of play to be similar to his. The first person I played was a student, who put up much more of a fight than the other guy, but still lost. The game was uninteresting. I missed getting a free knight early on and his opening was passive. The professor who oversees the club played me next. Didn't win a single game. I held on until the endgames without dropping anything more than pawns, then lost. Playing him in the opening was like playing against a computer, I stood no chance. I managed to win a piece in one game, but that still wasn't enough. I ended up screwing up later in the endgame. I found out later that he gets coaching from an international master that I've heard of before and I think he runs a legit chess club somewhere. I don't feel bad about losing those games. In fact, I feel accomplished for winning a piece in one of them. I feel like I won that game for some reason. Like the fact that I won a piece from a player so much better than me overshadows the fact that I lost anyways.
I've become less and less interested in Starcraft and more interested in sim-racing as time goes on. It's been at least a year since I've watched an SC2 tournament. I don't care about the scene anymore and I've been visiting this site about once a week for liquibet and that's it. I don't know why I keep coming back. There really isn't anything here for me anymore. This might just be my last post on this website, in fact. It's been a good 3 years, guys. I feel like I haven't done too much in my time here, but oh well, I still enjoyed it. Some of the most fun times I've ever had have been with TL, watching tournaments and spamming LR threads. I loved it. However, I think it's time to move on. See you guys around.
