There is an (in)famous psychological phenomenon called the Barnum effect. It is one among hundreds of our cute cognitive biases, the one horoscopes and salesmen feed upon. It is the effect in which generic, vague personality descriptions feel uncannily specific to us. The descriptions are often self-validating and aspirational, and the fact that they are mostly universal does reveal something about our shared human nature. But the fact that we are far more likely to accept positive or desirable traits as accurate descriptions of our “true” selves could just as well be called a delusion. Or, to soften it a bit, an illusion.

(it reminds me of a nice psychostatistical impossibility: a majority of people strongly believe they are more intelligent than average! an impossibility assuming “intelligence”, which I consider an empty concept, is normally distributed and that the mean equals the median).

Take a typical Barnum statement that has been bugging me for a while:

“I am usually curious and try to get to the bottom of things.”

If you saw this in a personality test, would you mark it as accurate? I bet you would. I would too. I consider myself curious. But for me it is not a virtue. It is medicine. If curiosity aims to reduce uncertainty, then it is medicine in a world I do not understand.

One of the things I do not understand is how often people take things for granted. My favorite example is the toilet flush. Could you explain how it works? I am not sure I could, and that unsettles me.

I walk around with the illusion that I understand other people, that I can pigeonhole their personalities and see through them, yet I have no fucking idea how a flush works! And flushes are much simpler systems than humans, I hope.

One might say that there is simply not enough time to “get to the bottom of things”, and that is fair. I have been overdosing on curiosity lately and I can see how ruthlessly it feeds on time. But let us at least acknowledge this and stop telling ourselves that we are curious. More often, we merely aspire to be.

And let us also acknowledge how often we confuse “curious” with “nosy”.
Because there always is time for gossip and other people’s affairs.
Isn’t there?