BobG said:
I do have one personality "quirk". I tend to overanalyze everything.
Even things that should be strictly emotional or romantic issues. For example: I was considering asking someone out, but then found out her ex-husband was getting a biopsy to see whether he had pancreatic cancer or not. I laid out all the potential problems (even though divorced for over 10 years, they did successfully coparent a daughter and even wound up being friends; the adult daughter lives with the mother and will be crushed, to say the least) and figured out how things could theoretically work out (people may want to support a dying friend, but they don't stop their own life; they've been divorced so long the daughter forgets they were ever married) and how there's no way this is going to work. Normal people said I was overanalyzing things and I should just ask her - things will either work out or not and something else entirely could keep it from working out (in fact, a few said his dying of cancer would be a good thing as she'd be vulnerable to anyone that offered emotional support).
Even things that are stupid. There's a reason the butter side always lands on the floor. It has to do with the moment of inertia of toast and its angular acceleration. Once on its way to the floor, the toast continues rotating at the same speed and that speed just happens to carry it just far enough for the butter side to be on the bottom when the toast hits the floor. Change the size of the toast or the height of the table and you can change which side lands up. For example, drop Ritz crackers instead and they have a different moment of inertia. Sure enough, the crackers manage to rotate all the way around until the non-buttered side lands on the floor. Granted, I was only able to make three successful trials. The dog ate the cracker before it hit the floor on the fourth attempt. Normal people think things like that are strange.
Even things that are really strange. The rocket booster for the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory launched in 1968 reentered the atmosphere a few days ago. The satellite, itself, will reenter the atmosphere before the end of May. This is strange since satellites in an elliptical orbit can't lose altitude at perigee until the orbit becomes circularized. Both of these objects have eccentricities over 0.9. In fact, they become more elliptical. Apogee goes up and perigee goes down. They go out so far that I think the Moon must tug on them when they're at apogee (since sometimes they behave like normal satellites, which must be when the Moon is on the other side of the Earth? - okay, this is something I just noticed a couple days ago, so I haven't actually done any analysis except notice the patterns in perigee/apogee heights and look at the direction of the Moon vector during a couple orbits). Normal people just say, "Huh? We're all going to be killed by a falling satellite!?" They just totally miss the point.
I overanalyze everything. Normal people comment on it all the time. I don't think it's something that anyone at PF would notice, though.
re: bold... We notice, but we're all too busy overanalyzing to respond! I like how you think... it's that kind of mentality and view that makes it so lonely to think critically and have an education. The people you dislike... meh... but the people you love missing a point?... ouch. On the upside, I think that people (such as yourself) who have that quality mitigate it over time, and become exceptional teachers. You have to learn, not only the material, but how to move someone from one view of the universe (the sattelite falls!) to one that doesn't agree with what they feel and see everyday. It takes time and patience to use those everyday examples to make your point, instead of the raw analysis you describe.
In short, while the constant "rumbling" of analyzing intellectually can be... tiring... sometimes, you've already turned it into an advantage.
For me... temper, irritability, and a need to balance intellectual distance with emotional proximity gets me. I've always been keenly aware of the pain of others, and at some point when I was young, I remember beginning the process, consciously, of shutting that down so I could stop being sad, and think. Long story short... I spend a lot of time seeing very VERY sick people (mentally and physically, mostly the former) who have no hope of "full recover". I'm used to moving people from a point of total divorce with the world, to some kind of connection, but.. reaching out there each time, there's a small, cold part of me that's still trying to understand people more than help them.
There are those times where that part of me, that, "seed of monstrosity" that anyone in or around medicine is so guarded against, is right there, and it's just dispassionate curiosity and a desire to understand others and myself. MOSTLY, I want to help and learn now, but you can add and whittle when it comes to who you are, but nothing ever goes completely away.
Oh, and I enjoy 'spirited debate' so much, that sometimes I lose track of WHY, in the sheer joy of the debate itself. That is, and feels selfish and counterproductive, but I think, "stirring up trouble", is sometime I've realized is common to many educated people who are just stone-bored with what's said about the water-cooler. Anyway, that's all that's fit to share on a website, and more than I have before or likely will again.
