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Jacob G-W

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When I was recently celebrating something, I was asked to share my favorite memory. I realized I didn't have one. Then (since I have been studying Naive Set Theory a LOT), I got tetris-effected and as soon as I heard the words "I don't have a favorite" come out of my mouth, I realized that favorite memories (and in fact favorite lots of other things) are partially ordered sets. Some elements are strictly better than others but not all elements are comparable (in other words, the set of all memories ordered by favorite does not have a single maximal element). This gives me a nice framing to think about favorites in the future and shows that I'm generalizing what I'm learning by studying math which is also nice!

Someone recently tried to sell me on the Ontological Argument for God which begins with "God is that for which nothing greater can be conceived." For the reasons you described, this is completely nonsensical, but it was taken seriously for a long time (even by Bertrand Russell!), which made me realize how much I took modern logic for granted

-2Richard_Kennaway2y

Do adults actually ask each other “What’s your favorite…” whatever? It sounds to me like the sort of question an adult asks a child in order to elicit a “childish” answer, whereupon the adults in the room can nod and wink at each other to the effect of “isn’t that sweeet?” so as to maintain the power differential. If I am faced with such a question, I ignore the literal meaning and take it to be a conversation hook (of a somewhat unsatisfactory sort, see above) and respond by talking more generally about the various sorts of whatever that I favour, and ignoring the concept of a “favorite”.

1Jacob G-W2y

Just say something like here is a memory I like (or a few) but I don't have a favorite.

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