Some people don't cancel plans because they're flaky. They committed when one version of their energy was available and the person who wakes up that morning is operating on a completely different reserves system. The commitment was real. The capacity isn't. - Silicon Canals

"The conventional interpretation of cancelled plans treats the cancellation as a character revelation; the person who bails is understood to be flaky, unreliable, or someone whose enthusiasm was performative from the start. This framework is almost entirely wrong, and the error is not a minor one."

"The commitment was real. The capacity is not a stable quantity. And the entire apparatus of social expectation built around the premise of a continuous, uniform self is, one might argue, a polite fiction that produces more damage than the cancellations it purports to judge."

"The question worth asking is not 'why do people fail to follow through?' but something structurally prior: given that human capacity is genuinely variable at the molecular level, what would an honest system of social commitment even look like?"

The conventional view of cancelled plans as a reflection of character is fundamentally flawed. It assumes a consistent self that can honor commitments, ignoring the variability of human capacity. The commitment made is genuine, but the ability to fulfill it can fluctuate due to various factors. This perspective calls for a reevaluation of social commitments, emphasizing that integrity and consistency are not synonymous. A new model should acknowledge the dynamic nature of human engagement and the biological factors influencing it.

Read at Silicon Canals