SeahorseTrebleWhat is the best way to respond to "You have an answer for everything", "You always have to be right", or "You always need to have the last word"?
Is it valid criticism? Do you focus more on winning the argument than finding the truth?
Well that’s another thing I was wondering. What if you already know what the truth is? I’m open to having my beliefs challenged or reassessing my conclusions about what the truth is, but if that’s not happening, and you’re still confident that your position is correct, then is maintaining your position really such a bad thing? And, what would the alternative be; surely not to pretend to admit defeat when you don’t really believe that? (I feel like that sets a bad precedent)
You don’t know what the true truth is, no one does; you only have your own. You need the truth of others to focus your views closer to the real truth. Say you already know what the truth is closes you off to the possibility of growth regardless of what you say, and makes it pointless to have a debate.
As a hypothetical then. Costco hands out “freebies”. Who pays for the freebies?
The members, Costco, the businesses manufacturing the items being sampled, or a combination of these?
Or would you claim Costco pays for this completely, and that the money that pays for this is completely unrelated to the members, the money just comes from somewhere?
…I encountered someone who made the latter claim. Perhaps the truth is some other third option I have not considered (which I would appreciate you pointing out, I need more practice thinking outside the box), but I highly doubt there is some money box that pays for customer “freebies” that isn’t somehow funded from customer revenue.
but I highly doubt there is some money box that pays for customer “freebies” that isn’t somehow funded from customer revenue.
Marketing budgets funded by venture capitalists who made the wrong bet
Yeah, possibly. Not sure how often they are involved with funding Costco samples haha.
(And there are definitely no VC involved in the discussion I had with the person, as we were discussing small family owned businesses that only have one location)
So lets make it simpler. Coke spends more on marketing than it does production. Does this make coke more expensive for the average joe? No it makes it cheaper. Why? Because they can sell more coke, and selling larger quantities of things can mean better pricing by either production scale or better deals on ingredients. Back to Costco, samples are a rounding error level of cost for massive gains in sales.
And where did the money come from on the first place? I get that advertising increases sales (literally why anyone would do samples), but it’s not like that money isn’t from previous sales.
Efficiency, its not a closed ecosystem. The world is not static like an econ 101 textbook question. There is so many factors like credits, seasonal pushes during peak supply, producers offers for floor space. A lot of factors go into pricing a product, the amount sampling is not really one of them, thats just to push sales and is done at a completely different level of management.
That’s interesting, but I feel like that means we can’t make any kind of assessments or conclusions about anything, when it also seems like we have to in order to live our lives in the absence of 100% knowing something definitively. I also think some things can be known to be objectively true, such as the number of people inside a building (as an example).
For example, if we’ve been able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that something is true or most likely true, but a person is arguing with us that it’s not (you might say “arguing that black is white”), we can be open to being proven wrong despite doubting that it will happen, but should we really not pursue a line of dialogue just because we think we’re probably correct?
I can see how saying I know what the truth is might turn people off more than just conversing about it, so I probably wouldn’t say that to them, but is being fairly confident in what you’re saying a reason not to say it?
There has been one constant in my life: the older I get the more I understand that few things are objectively true/scientifically proven and (while I do hope that number grows) the more I realize the importance of being comfortable with uncertainty. Not only uncertainty about particular facts, but about my positions on stuff being right.
Let me ask you, how often are you wrong? And of those, how often do you admit it and quit talking? How often do you admit it to yourself but keep the fight going? How often do you make excuses?
Whether you answer me or not doesn’t matter, you need to truly, honestly answer it for yourself. Think about it. A person who can’t admit they’re wrong is done learning, a person who is done learning is done growing, and a person who is done growing is dead already.
You really only need to state your case once and then don’t belabor it. People are not going to always agree with you, but it’s not because you haven’t sufficiently and thoroughly overwhelmed them with facts and logic.