Alice: "I could never marry you"If you rely upon common knowledge you'll interpret this conversation to mean that Bob will die single, never having married, and that Alice would die never having married Bob but perhaps marrying someone else. That interpretation relies upon common knowledge as you infer the meaning based on what you see, hear, and think or feel. You see a conversation, you hear what is said, and you interpret meaning based on what you think it was intended to mean, or what you feel it was intended to mean.
Bob: "I will never marry anyone but you"
Some of you will have sensed where this post was headed and chose to interpret the conversation literally. Those of you who chose this option fall into the category of technical knowledge, that is to say you base your understanding of the world on what you can see and do not rely on your thoughts and feelings but rather on the logical deductions you can extract. In the conversation about you would assert that 'could' is a future conditional and as such modifies the meaning of the sentence. "Could be" implies a chance that something might happen, this is easy to follow for most people, however "Could never be" is interpreted incorrectly by most people to mean "Will never" when in reality even when 'could' is used in conjunction with 'never' there is still a chance that it may happen due to the conditional nature of 'could' therefore the logical conclusion someone of a technical mind will make from this conversation is that Alice may or may not die single, having married or not married Bob, whereas Bob who asserted "will never" commits to that fate and either marries Alice or never marries anyone.
Those of you with an existential mind will have ignored the common and the technical interpretations entirely and instead posed a series of questions in an attempt to determine a more resolute answer to the question being posed. That is to say those of an existential mindset discard assumptions and thoughts and feelings entirely and instead look for evidence, and past experiences to draw upon to form a conclusion. Those with this mindset would have asked first why Alice said what they did, and whether or not they meant it. Whether the conditions that led them to say it could change in time and whether that could change the possible outcome. In short those of an existential mind dismiss the statements entirely and state that no knowledge can be extracted from the conversation.
Which of these three mindsets you rely on most gives an insight into you as a person and your thought process. Simple parallels can be drawn to say that those who were common minded would be the most social and least academic, those who were technical would be the most logical and calculating, whilst those who were existential would be the most artistic and creative from all three.
The problem is as can be demonstrated by the fact you know so little about Alice and Bob other than their names, is that we make assumptions. Without knowing all the information there is to know there are no conclusions that can actually be conclusive, everything is speculation. The truth is until both Alice and Bob die and the outcome is then immutable, there can be no conclusion drawn that is binding. There are many pieces of information that can not be derived from what you have read alone, you can't assert gender for example, beyond gender normative assumptions based on the names. You can't assert age either, and a more interesting one, you can't even assert species or classification for either Alice and Bob, you assume they are human because they can speak but even at that there are many animals that can mimic speech, and there are robots and computers that can be programmed to do so too. When you begin to think about what you do not know you realise how much of our daily lives we base on assumptions, and how little we actually think about we see, hear, and do.
