an attempt to blog

i was eating porridge yest night and Alicia saw me adding the 'juice/sauce/liquid' from a jar of pickles into the porridge... It made her terribly disturbed and she told me that "it's not good for you... it's used for making pickles..." to which i replied "i've been eating like that since i was young but i'm still alive wah.." so i was in the shower just now and i realised how terribly stupid and pointless such a line of argument was...

i mean to a certain extent, it was kinda like the non-swimmer saying "i've already walked so far into the sea and i'm still not drowning wah..." i think i make such statements quite often... and i also think it's really quite amazing how as human beings we can sometimes stick so stubbornly to certain things and actions in our lives and justify them with the most irrational reasons, all the way till something drastic happens...

well i guess that statement didn't sound all that interesting on its own, presumably becos we are human beings and the statement may simply describe how we do stuff, hence making it seem to be just pointing out the obvious... to make that more interesting, compare such a decision making process with that of a computer's. everytime a computer makes a decision, it makes all the possible considerations that it's been told to consider and then makes a decision... i'm inclined to say that most humans don't... for example, after hearing what Alicia told me, i should have 1) Think back on how long it's been since i first started adding pickle sauce to porridge, 2) Looking at the time-frame, find out all the changes that has happened to me, 3) Obtain data on the changes to an average person during a similar time-frame, 4) Compare the two to see if there are any adverse effects...

Of cos, all of that would have been terribly time consuming and troublesome... it was much easier to throw her a "i've been eating like that since i was young but i'm still alive wah.."

Bottomline: Humans are not rational. Trust me, i'm an economist-to-be, i know.

P/S: i suddenly realised why they are called "bottomlines", cos they are usually found at the bottom of the writing. Unfortunately, by writing this PS, i've effectively nullified that meaning.