Part 3: In Praise of the Blissfully Unbothered
Coherence Is Expensive — and Not Always Worth It
A post from the series: The Art of Getting Along
Some people hear a contradiction and light up like a smoke alarm.
Others… just smile, nod, and keep chatting about lunch.
This post is about them.
You’ve met them. You might even envy them.
They say one thing Monday, the opposite Thursday — and somehow everyone’s still fine with it.
If you’re the kind of person who loses sleep over internal consistency, this might seem like madness.
But here’s the twist: they’re not broken. They’re adapted.
Because coherence isn’t cheap.
It burns cognitive fuel. It introduces social friction.
And honestly? In most day-to-day ecosystems, it doesn’t even help.
So maybe the real glitch isn’t in their simulation.
Maybe it’s in the assumption that making sense is always the point.
Let’s poke at that.
🧠 Recursion Is a Resource Hog
Every time you trace a contradiction, revise a belief, or reflect before reacting — you’re spending energy.
Recursive simulation burns fuel:
- Working memory to hold competing frames
- Emotional discipline to not flinch at dissonance
- Social nerve to say, “actually, that doesn’t add up…”
It’s metabolically expensive.
And socially… kind of annoying.
Which is why most people don’t bother — and often, they’re right not to.
🌏 Some Ecosystems Punish Precision
Imagine trying to run a high-integrity simulation:
- At a family dinner where “don’t bring that up” is the unspoken rule
- In a workplace running on subtext, hierarchy, and vibe maintenance
- Inside a friend group that survives on shared stories and selective forgetting
In these environments, recursion doesn’t signal intelligence.
It signals disruption.
Surface a contradiction and you’ll hear:
- “You’re making this more complicated than it is.”
- “Let it go.”
- “Why do you always have to be right?”
Because from their point of view, you’re breaking the simulation.
And if the simulation was holding the group together — they might not thank you for the clarity.
💡 Ambiguity Is Often Adaptive
Not every environment rewards depth.
Sometimes what keeps things afloat is buoyancy, not insight.
This is where the Floaters and Integrators shine (see Part 2):
- Floaters glide through contradiction without getting caught in it
- Integrators metabolise it gently, reframing just enough to keep the peace
They’re not running coherence.
They’re running functionality.
And in many social settings — that’s the simulation that wins.
📊 How Common Is High-Recursion?
Statistically? Rare.
From large-scale interaction modelling:
- Fewer than 5% of people consistently maintain coherent simulations across contexts
- Around 60–70% run low-coherence strategies — where contradiction simply doesn’t register as urgent
- About 25–30% are contradiction-tolerant — able to hold dissonance without needing to resolve it
Most people don’t revise when they contradict themselves.
They reframe. They soften. Or they float away entirely.
Not because they’re in denial.
Because their simulation engine doesn’t ping the way yours does.
⚠️ The Revealer’s Dilemma
If you’re built for recursion — if truth feels sacred and contradiction itches like sand in your shoe — this can be a hard thing to accept:
Your clarity may not be welcome.
Not because it’s wrong.
But because it disrupts simulations that are working just well enough.
You might think you’re offering insight.
Others feel like you’re puncturing the vibe.
This is the Revealer’s curse:
- Noticing where things don’t add up
- Wanting to say something
- Realising… no one else thinks it’s a problem
🪶 In Praise of the Blissfully Unbothered
Some people just don’t glitch when frames conflict.
They don’t need it all to line up.
They shift tone, change stance, tell a different story — and somehow the simulation keeps running.
You could call it inconsistency.
You could also call it… social grace.
They’re not faking. They’re smoothing.
They’re not incoherent. They’re unfused.
And in a world full of fragile systems and volatile egos,
they might be the ones keeping it all from blowing up.
🔍 What This Means for You
If you’re recursion-heavy:
- Choose your battles. Don’t pour clarity into a simulation built for comfort.
- Notice when your correction is for truth — and when it’s for control.
- Coherence is precious. Use it where it creates value.
If you’re a Floater or Integrator:
- Don’t sell yourself short. Your contradiction tolerance is a form of social intelligence.
- But keep an eye out: smoothing can become self-erasure if overused.
- You don’t need to fuse to a frame — but know when to anchor one.
🧭 The Strategic Question
Forget what feels virtuous.
Ask what works:
What simulation keeps this system functional — here, now, with these people?
Sometimes that’s deep truth.
Sometimes it’s light deflection.
Sometimes it’s a weird little dance of both.
And let’s be honest:
Sometimes it’s better to be chill than right.