Last week whilst on the ferry to and from Stockholm, my wife bought some chocolate from the duty-free shop to give to her family, as is the tradition. However, last night I was looking at the packet while deciding whether I should crack it open and stuff my face with it and read something I saw strange.
Can you see it?
I am pretty sure that they mean pastilles, especially since Fazer (the chocolate brand) make this product:
If you look up "French lentils" you get:
They look like lentils to me.
Someone got some 'splaining to do!
I sent them a message through their website as a concerned citizen and someone hoping that they will get some free chocolate out of it, but it reminded me of another thing I saw on the same boat trip.
What??
I don't get it. The first is Swedish, the second Finnish, but why have they translated captain as Master for English? But, while this seems like a translation error, it might not be, as "Master" is the official term used in English and requires examinations and so forth, and captain is colloquial, essentially meaning anyone who is controlling the ship at any given point in time - no matter the type of ship - but there is a lot of ambiguity depending on various factors and conditions, laws, locations, military, commercial...
Best not to dig too deep, since I don't care as after all,
It isn't chocolate.
And while after some searching I was able to see that "Master" might be right - I am yet to find something that points to "lentils" being correct - since in English, we use the French "pastilles" to explain the same thing - so why translate it as something different?
Now, the reason I had a look into these two things a little was because normally I wouldn't. Under normal conditions, I would make note of the "mistake" and move on, assuming I am right. But, after digging a little further, I found that there are a couple other references to "Lentils" being the chocolate Smartie or M&M type thing also, but they were from Denmark. What I assume has happened is that for some reason at some point in time, there has been a translation error in the the Nordics and that has become industry standard. Or, perhaps there is some other reason for it that I have no visibility on and can't be looking further into.
However, my "point" is that while I make judgements, feel correct and walk away believing I am right, it doesn't actually mean I am and, this is something we all do without ever looking into whether we are right or not.
We do this when we see someone down the street and we judge their character based on their hair, what they are wearing or the expression on their face, but never getting the feedback that we might be incorrect. And, because we only get feedback on a fraction of our judgements, we end up feeling that more often than not, we are right.
However, have a look at how many people choose bad partners that are unsuitable for them and realize that, each have made a decision to get into that relationship in the first place and have actually generally considered it well, talking a lot with them, getting to know them first, seeing them interact with others for an extended period of time before getting into a more serious relationship and...
Still fucking it up.
The amount of people who say, "I'm a good judge of character" but continuously prove themselves to be the antithesis of a good judge, is quite telling. Yet, how many actually recognize this in themselves? The divorce rate should be a pretty good indication of inability.
Yet, we keep doing it. We keep making judgements on things and people we will never have enough insight into to be able to verify, but walk away thinking that we are right. This gives us a false sense of security, making us confident to keep making judgements as based on the feedback we get, out of all the judgements we make, we are only "wrong" a small percentage of the time.
I wonder though, if we were able to get feedback on every judgement we made that definitively proved us correct or incorrect, what would our strike rate be? I believe that it wouldn't even be better than a 50/50 coin toss, because when we are making the judgement, we are making it on things we don't know much about but our emotions and preconceptions are in play, meaning we are entering into the decision already biased.
However, if we were to get this feedback consistently, over time, we might actually recognize how wrong we are and whilst we might not stop making judgements as it is human nature, the experience through the feedback might improve the judgements we make, as we adjust to our failures and improve our pattern recognition.
You might think I am wrong - but I think I am right.
But, right or wrong, the chocolate still tastes good.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]