Satan thinks nobody says it like it is

The Lord of Lies appreciates honest communication but finds that whenever someone “says it like it is,” it is never like that.

People who “say it like it is” use simple words that are each readily understood, but the statements in which the words are used carry little or no meaning on their own. Often they are unclear, ambiguous, or incoherent and riddled with non sequiturs and random thought-associations, and make no sense to an educated or intelligent person, who attempts to analyze and understand the statements. Such statements make sense only if the audience fills in the blanks and finishes the sentences as the statements trail off with no ending.

Less gifted people overlook the inherent inconsistencies and missing internal logic, however. They are provided with fuzzy implications and hazy connotations only and then reach their own conclusions—believing it was the speaker who offered them this conclusion, too. If they are assured that “you know who I’m talking about,” they imagine the speaker describes whoever they think it is, and if the speaker knowingly assures them that he offers a solution without mentioning which one, they each believe that the speaker is talking about the solution they are thinking of.  They introduce their own bias into the incomplete statements believing it to stem from the speaker.

By thus leaving it to the audience to fill in the blanks with their own ideas, explanations, and desired solutions, the audience is bound to agree with the speaker because they are their own ideas. From an analytical point of view the speaker said nothing at all, but it sounds as if the speaker “says it like it is” because all they hear is their own voice.

Everyone is prone to such confirmation bias, especially if feelings are involved, as is usually the case when someone delights in hearing something being “said like it is.” Feelings are the language of the “primitive” part of the human brain which is concerned mostly with survival. It thinks fast but is careless and error-prone, as opposed to the later evolutionary layer of the brain which adds rational thinking and the capability of weighing pros versus cons and outlining plans, at the expense of speed. All other things being equal, the capacity of afterthought and critical thinking enabled by intelligence and education helps reduce the tendency to add confirmation bias; or as Satan prefers to phrase it: confirmation bias is wholesale among stupid people.

All of the above is true for written documents, too. No book is known with certainty to provide sufficient information, and no text is exempt from interpretation. All communication, written or otherwise, is a two-way street. There is no book that “says it like it is” or provides “bedrock” that is not subject to the reader’s adding his or her bias wherever the reader fails to understand the author’s intent, regardless of cause or blame. Satan wishes to skip any detailed examples, however, because He feels at risk of insinuating that His followers are stupid for believing that, say, The Satanic Bible clearly outlines “it” in a way that anyone should be able to understand, or that His followers in His temple are stupid for believing that seven vague tenets suffice.

At the end of the day, the Devil knows that whenever you think that someone “says it like it is,” it is just you who are being stupid.