Contradiction?

I usually cook for my family at Christmas. Last year I made a different kind of Tiramisu but tweaked it some using different ingredients. Everyone loved it and my mom said Kris, you should've been a chef. This past October I attempted to do the same with squid ink pasta for a Halloween inspired dish. It didn't turn out right. My mom said Kris, you're not a chef, always go by a recipe before you try things on your own. So are my aspirations to be a chef only based on my successes of my own attempts at tweaking recipes? 

The passage you've provided contains a potential contradiction and raises questions about ambition and self-assessment based on success or failure. Let's break down the logic and reasoning involved:

1. **Contradictory Feedback**: The mom's feedback seems contradictory. After a successful dish (tiramisu), she encouraged Kris by suggesting they should have been a chef. Conversely, after an unsuccessful dish (squid ink pasta), she discouraged Kris by implying they should stick to recipes, which could be demotivating. This could be an example of **inconsistent standards** where success leads to praise and failure leads to disparagement.

2. **Single Instance Generalization**: The inference that Kris's culinary aspirations are only based on their successes might be oversimplified. This could be an example of the **hasty generalization fallacy**, where a conclusion is drawn from a small amount of data—in this case, one successful dish. It's logical to assume that aspirations to become a chef could be based on a broader range of experiences or desires beyond tweaking recipes.

3. **Overreliance on Family Feedback**: Basing one's career aspirations purely on familial feedback can be problematic. Family members' opinions may not always offer the most objective viewpoint due to emotional biases. This is related to the **anchoring bias**, where excessive weight is placed on the first piece of information (in this case, the mom's comments) encountered when making decisions.

4. **Cognitive Dissonance**: The conflicting feedback might also cause cognitive dissonance—experiencing mental discomfort when confronted by conflicting beliefs or opinions. Kris might be drawn to a chef career but feels doubt due to the mixed messages received, highlighting internal conflict.

5. **Straw Man Fallacy**: It's also worth noting that Kris might be creating a straw man argument against their own aspirations by suggesting they're solely based on successes. This could weaken their rationale and make it easy to dismiss their goals based on isolated incidents, rather than addressing the broader reasons for their culinary interest.

Overall, it's important to have a nuanced understanding of skill development, recognizing that improvement often involves learning from both successes and failures. Career aspirations should be guided by a deeper personal passion and commitment rather than just reactive feedback from individual experiences.

I'll answer this one from my own experience - I'm a long time hobbyist home cook, although I have prepared food as part of multiple jobs I've had, and known a few professional chefs. So, to answer the question about your aspirations, here what I'd keep in mind.

• Being a professional chef comes with a lot of responsibilities, and those responsibilities are going to vary based on the restaurant. Common ones are ordering food, managing the kitchen staff, cooking, and writing the menu. Improvising recipes isn't necessarily going to be one of them. It's pretty common for restaurants to have a list of standard recipes they work off of, and for the chef to go through multiple iterations of a new recipe before it hits the menu.
• The ability to improvise a recipe is a skill that you can develop with practice. If you wanted to become a professional chef, you likely wouldn't be able to start right away unless you're willing to plop down the cash for your own restaurant. Typically, it involves either going to culinary school, working your way up from being a line cook, or both.
• Professional chefs do experience burnout much faster than people in other jobs, due to the fact that restaurant kitchens tend to be fast-paced, physically demanding, high stress environments that often entail long hours, and generally don't pay that well. The ability to thrive under pressure tends to be a very make or break skill for restaurant chefs.

So, to return to your mom's statements. If those are her verbatim statements, "you should have been a chef" and "you are not a chef" technically don't contradict each other, but it seems pretty clear that her opinion on your ability to become a chef are based on the quality of the last dish you cooked.

“So are my aspirations to be a chef only based on my successes of my own attempts at tweaking recipes?” Only you know upon what to base your aspirations to be a chef are and how much effort you want to put into becoming a chef. It is a psychological issue, not a logical one.