Reading the Black Swan (Taleb). So far, quite good, and aligned with many of my own observations and concerns.

I am unfriendly to the evaluations that arise from examining (in conversation) ‘normative’ persons, circumstances or behaviors…

I often find it disturbing when, in conversation or analysis of some situation or idea… persons I know often leap to speak of ‘norms’ and evaluate themselves or abstract ‘others’ by standards that do not admit their implicit conceits — namely, that they are inventing these ‘norms’ according to their concern in criticism or evaluation, and worse still, that the judgements thus derived seem to me both illusory and somehow fundamentally dishonest… if not simply wrong.

But then there is the bizarre irony here. I am, in a sense, doing something like what I am calling out! And here we see one of the peculiar dangers of declarative or descriptive language (and conception). These habits are somehow seductive, and their thorns are largely invisible to we who are untrained in discovering and evading them…