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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Has anyone else noticed a shift towards 'I feel' and against 'I think'? This is in writing but especially in speech, unprepared dialogue.

It's been irking me for months now. 'I feel like' sounds weaker than 'I think that'. It's like a defensive measure, a way to avoid being shown up. You can have a wrong or incorrect thought but it's much harder to have a wrong feeling. There's also a lack of rigor to feelings, it's as though they're reading into vibes (another similar idea). Thoughts should at least be connected to logic and some kind of fact, there'd be some kind of basis for them. Feelings need no basis.

I recall that there used to be more confidence and surety. People would say 'I think' or just make a plain factual statement. Or even a plain normative statement like 'X should do Y to Z'.

I did a quick ctrl F and found there to be 35 'I thinks' and 1 'I feel' in this thread, which perhaps disproves my paranoia. But then again this is an unusual place.

I find myself going back and forth, precisely along the lines of what you've described. I do mathematically-heavy research, and intuition really is a thing. When something just feels like it should be right. You don't actually think it yet, but you're like, "If there is any beauty in mathematics, this should be right somehow, or at the very least, thinking about it should lead me to something relatively profound." It's purely a feeling, looking through a very hazy glass, extremely darkly. Once you can start to erect at least a shell of how you're going to get to a result, you can move toward, "I think."