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"Meta-contrarianism" is a good phrase to capture this phenomenon. In computers, I associate it with the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABA_problem and in life, with the joke about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

The part that misses for me is his (my pronoun choice is conscious signalling [double 'l' is too, I suppose {as are the parentheticals}]) emphasis on triads.

For me, the key concept is that one never knows which level one is at. There is no absolute "level 1", just the "level n" that you occupy, and "level not n", which is never clearly n - 1 or n + 1.

One frequently assumes that those who disagree with you are missing something, but every now and then you have to wonder if they actually one ahead. And it happens often enough that people I think I agree with are actually viewing the situation in a completely foreign way.

Are there philosophical movements that deal with these situations? What names would I search for? What should I read?



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