Everything is backwards. When I try to show people I like them, they often get annoyed or mad. At least, based on my experience, and everything seems backwards right now. Things can go wrong, but that’s not backwards. People can mishear “black paint” and get dark brown paint, a mistake. But, they could, for some reason, hear “black paint” and twist it around to end up getting “white” paint. Perhaps they are focusing on the fact that the paint is either black or white, and that’s easy to remember. They could be so certain that you said “white” when you never did. Or, the person who is asking for black makes the mistake in communication, and therefore gets white paint.

If an accounting error says I owe you $25 instead of $24, I’m in debt to you an extra dollar. That could be mildly annoying, and in an extreme case could be problematic, but it’s not that big of a deal. It’s an error somewhere. But, if the error is that instead of $25 it’s -$25, in other words, you owe me that much money, that’s backwards. It would be especially frustrating if it didn’t reflect what was true.