Pursuit of Passion || *.* excuses

by phil on Tuesday Jan 6, 2004 3:55 PM
logical fallacies, passion pursuit

I'm re-taking a course this quarter, Math 53 - Differential Equations. I had taken this course this past summer, but at the last minute decided that I didn't want to take the final. Why did I do this?

I came to the conclusion that week that the pursuit of my passions was principally important (and it still is). Part of pursuing those passions involves maximizing the amount of activities that you do that are passionate from the get go. That at every instant, I should be pursuing my passions. I said to myself, well, if I REALLY wanted to prove to myself that this was an important goal, then I wouldn't even take this final coming up. And so I didn't. I proved something, but in retrospect I don't think my reasoning was correct.

Reasoning that "rejecting the dispassionate committed me to the pursuit of passion" was a little irrational. I committed the fallacy of denying the antecodent. I took "Doing things I'm passionate about means I care about my passions" to mean also "Doing things I'm not passionate about means I don't care about my passions" Bad Phil Bad Phil.

From an aphorism-like perspective, I could've smelt an excuse and thought about the problem more deeply, or applied some "common sense" algorithm. Further proof that you sould unify both your rational thinking and your emotions.

On the other hand, rejecting things you are dispassionate about gives you more time for things that you are passionate about, so indirectly it helps your passions, but only indirectly.