Challenge: Steve Patterson

Have you ever stymied inquiry for popularity?

Steve. My dude.

You’re a relentless philosopher. I don’t think I’ve met many people (maybe not anyone) with the same level of relentless drive to find the truth, even if it’s tiring, inconvenient, or hell on your reputation. You just want to know answers that are logically sound, and want to get to the most fundamental part of everything.

Sometimes this makes you unpopular.

Though I think you are very often spot on or very near the truth, I’m not setting this up as an overly flattering, “You make people mad because you speak truth to power.” That’s a part of it for sure. But it’s more than that. Whether truth or not, you often rile people because you just simply can’t accept,“Good enough”, or, “You get the general idea” for an answer.

I know you well enough to know you’re not persistent out of arrogance or malice or trolling or one-upsmanship. But sometimes you get misunderstood as such.

So here’s my challenge. I want to know:

Have there been times when you knowingly left a weak argument alone for sake of keeping the peace or not becoming unpopular for persisting to poke through paradigms?

Do you ever feel the social cost of the relentless pursuit of truth is higher than the benefit of finding logically sound concepts?