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Your commonly-held technical opinion is actually wrong! (Read on to discover why it’s really mostly right)

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March 30, 2022|3 min read

You’ve heard of topic before, right? Of course you have. Who hasn’t?

And everyone knows that the correct opinion to have about topic is the common opinion.

But what if I told you that there are other opinions to have about topic than the common opinion? It may sound crazy, but it’s actually true!

To see why, let’s first take a quick spin through an anecdote. The anecdote has a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, an end. But the thing that’s especially interesting about this particular anecdote is that it has a somewhat counterintuitive end.

anecdote diagram

You see, the preconceived notions you had going into this post would have led you to believe that the end of the anecdote wouldn't happen the way that it did. But the rhetorical tools used in the anecdote have convinced you that the surprising result is actually perfectly reasonable.

This leads you to question whether the opinion you started with was really the correct opinion in the first place! This makes you slightly angry, and you are already considering engaging with this post in a way that can be quantified. These quantifiable metrics are how I determine my own value as an author and demonstrate that value to others (but that’s another topic for another time).

But wait! Before you get too angry, let’s revisit several of the assumptions we made in the anecdote. Sure, they’re reasonable - the anecdote wouldn't be very convincing if the assumptions weren't reasonable! But the anecdote is just one special case of topic, and doesn't represent topic as a whole.

It turns out, as we revisit the larger topic at hand, that our original opinion on topic is a pretty reasonable one to have.

And sure, maybe there’s a special case you hadn't thought too much about before. In the future you’ll use the anecdote in meetings to make it sound like you've really thought about topic quite a lot more than most people (who are only really familiar with the common opinion).

But on the whole, it turns out you were mostly right about topic after all, and this makes you feel pretty smart. You may even be considering engaging with this post (measurable ways only, please!) to share with others that you were right all along, and the anecdote really shouldn’t be an issue for most people dealing with topic.

engagement diagram

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Note: We hope you enjoyed this break from our blog-standard fare. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Additional Reading

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