January 23, 2025

Jumping to conclusions

From Volume 11, Issue 6:According to Wikipedia, “jumping to conclusions” (officially the jumping conclusion bias, often abbreviated as JTC, and also referred to as the inference-observation confusion) is a psychological term referring to a communication obstacle where one “judge[s] or decide[s] something without having all the facts; to reach unwarranted conclusions.”

JTC has caused me more grief than any other Knower/Judger reaction I can think of.

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Enemy-ness

From Volume 11, Issue 6:Can you imagine toilet paper being the root cause of someone’s murder? Well, structurally, I can.
In my workshops and keynotes, I bring up the age-old debate on whether toilet paper should roll off the top of the roll or the bottom. My research shows that about 5% of the population is rigidly certain (from their Knower/Judger, of course) that the only proper way toilet paper should come off a roll is off the bottom. The other 95% is convinced (from their K/J) that God meant it to roll off the top. It can be quite amusing when two combatants start debating this in a workshop—and quite difficult to get them back on track.
I use the example to get people to feel just how concrete some of our rules of life, no matter how trivial, can be.

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What pisses you off?

From Volume 11, Issue 5:Seriously. What event, person, occurrence, treatment routinely puts you over the edge? Write it down… on paper.

Got it? For me, it’s pretty routinely my level of anger of stupid things that I do, personal failures, frequently forgetting details or things that cascade into bigger things—like leaving the phone on my nightstand when I’m expecting an important call.

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