The reason I hate rigid people is that I’m one of them and they remind me of my greatest flaw. Today, for instance, Klara started screaming like she never had before. Strangely, she’d stop whenever I took her outside and then would resume screaming the moment we went back inside. I put her in the bathtub, and she stayed silent. Took her out, and she screamed. She wasn’t hungry, sleepy, colicky, or cold. So I was at a loss as to what was bothering her.
Finally, N came home from the store and immediately figured it out: she was hot! Since she’d never been hot before, I didn’t even consider this possibility. Even though I was hot myself and one would think I should find it easy to notice when people are hot since hot weather is my greatest complaint against the universe.
It’s very frustrating never to be able to notice things until somebody takes the trouble of pointing them out to me.
“Why do you never go to conference X?”
Because nobody told me I should, that’s why!
“If you like these sprouts so much, why don’t you buy them?”
Because nobody told me I could!
For years, I’d make an idiot out of myself, putting a hundred used plastic bags into the tiny opening of a recycling bin one by one instead of lifting the lid and dumping them there all at once. Because nobody told me to!
In what concerns work, though, I’m a very original thinker, brimming with fresh ideas.
Clarissa's Blog 
This isn’t really related to the anecdote above, but I was meaning to ask anyway. You seem to prize both internal consistency of worldview and flexibility of thought. How do you square the two?
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This is a very good question. I believe it’s important to keep in mind the basic difference between the core principles that organize one’s worldview and everything else. Once you arrive at the basic principles, it doesn’t make sense to question them. But everything else should be open to questioning and reevaluation all the time. Which I’m falling at, obviously.
As for the underlying basic principles, one of mine, for instance, is that the only money that exists in the world is that which I earned. I don’t buy lottery tickets, hunt inheritances, fantasize about fortunes, bemoan the money I’m prevented from having by political circumstances, etc. It simplifies life enormously.
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Relatedly, what’s the difference between consistency and rigidity?
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