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Comment by hiq | Hacker News Reader

I still can't reconcile how verbose he is about pretty much anything that goes through his mind with the fact that both his parents are lawyers.

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I've noticed this pattern with other high IQ, well-written people. It's almost a defense mechanism, retreating back to the medium through which they're usually most successful. "If I can put things eloquently enough, perhaps they'll understand why I did what I did."

It's not dissimilar to some of the ripped athletic types I'm friends with that try and use their size to an advantage even when the situation definitely doesn't call for it. If a tongue-lashing or an ass-kicking is the immediate gut response, it's probably not the most pragmatic, I've found.

I think even more so than “If I can put things eloquently enough, perhaps they'll understand why I did what I did.", it can be motivated as “I don’t think I’m a bad person and I didn’t intend to cause harm; if people are still mad at me, it must be because they don’t understand and I should explain harder.”

It can also be a case of "If I can put things eloquently enough, perhaps they won't understand and give up.". Sometimes it's a defence mechanism to think "if I can't explain myself it's because I'm so much more clever than the others. "

That didn’t happen.

And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.

And if it was, that’s not a big deal.

And if it is, that’s not my fault.

And if it was, I didn’t mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it.

The ol' if you can't convince them then confuse them lol

And if you can’t blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit

He's talking to politicians, and a golden rule is: never try to bullshit a bullshitter.

Probably Adderall.

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