There is only a property, an owner who is standing right there, and two people the owner is asking to leave.” I watched the argument die in Julian’s face, watched him understand, for the first time, that the confident thing he had been so sure of was simply not true, and never had been.

I have noticed that a certain kind of person mistakes confidence for knowledge, mistakes the feeling of being sure for the fact of being right, and Julian was the purest example of it I have ever encountered.

He had said you can’t do that so many times, with such conviction, that he had clearly come to believe it was law.

And it is a seductive error, because confidence works, socially, most of the time.