The common goal of a conversation is to get to the point, without an unnecessary worrying about the precision in relation to the side issues, which are mentioned only casually. Possibly, the side items were mentioned without even meaning them as something to be dwelt upon anymore. We are humans and not robots, hence we add occasionally this or that.
The lack of precision of the everyday language is its strength, but strengths and weaknesses tend to walk together. The everyday language will be abused easily when there is no good will on one or more of the conversing parties. And one of the ways is to zero on the side issues, when the other party have not even dreamed about actually discussing them and having their each word scrutinized in a hostile way.
For example, in the everyday language we often don't make it clear whether we talk about the total set or about the existence of just one member of a set, as in the phrase "young people tend to be careless" - are ALL young people assumed to have a tendency to be careless or just SOME of them? The speaker most likely didn't care about it at the time of saying it. But the precision police would give that speaker hard time. The surprised and shocked and frustrated by the attack speaker would possibly defend its pronouncement, would get trapped into new situations, and would be doomed. If you attack someone who didn't mean any battle, then the person will say things ad hoc, and you will prevail, and the communication will lose. You will always find something, you will always generate some "faults" in the other person, and you will feel so righteous.
Add to this some relaxed phrases, some light jokes, an occasional not politically correct wording, and the person allowing itself of such a luxury will be doomed, there will be so much material against the unsuspecting soul. The winner prevails, but how intellectually and emotionally poorer is the winner's life! And how meager are such "victories"!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Interpersonal (mis)communication, public and private
There is so much of miscommunication. A lot of it because people simply don't like one another, in which case the truth does not matter. There are also power games, ego games, psychological insecurities, etc., both in public and in personal exchanges. The difference of experience, of knowledge, of understanding, of class, between the participants also play a big role. Even when two people care about each other, the insecurities, the games, and similar, may still spoil the communication.
In adversary exchanges there is no point to even worry about such things. One should and often does address the public and not the adversary. Most of the time there is no chance to affect the adversary. For these reasons I have developed a flexible, neutral format for Internet discussion groups (it's an application of my Art of Agreement), but that is a topic for another thread.
Below, I'll provide an example of a (fictitious but realistic) conversation which went down the drain.
***
A. and D. talk about the treatment by different computer languages of the upper/lower case in the names of variables and similar. First languages had upper case only (e.g. Fortran). A. and D. remember that other old languages allowed for the either case; the lower and the upper case of any letter was treated as equivalent. Thus Mary mary MARY maRy mARy etc. would all stand for the same variable. This feature was widely used by programmers to enhance the readability of their programs. In particular A. was fond of the especially consistent and useful way this was done at the company for which A. had worked years ago.
Then D. mentions that a new option is offered by the wiki engine. According to this convenient in the wiki contest convention, wiki is sensitive to the case of all letters in the path except for the very first letter: you may write Albert_Einstein or albert_Einstein, and it will amount to the same link, but Albert_einstein and ALbert_Einstein will be different (and most likely each will be just a mistake).
D. knows A., hence he said carefully wiki engine. There are several wiki and wiki-like engines, while there is only one default wiki engine, the one that powers the English wikipedia (and several other wikipedias and similar portals, while there are also wiki portals which use different engines). All these things both A. and D. know well over the years of being somewhat interested in the topic (and D. being even active in some wiki portals; and each of them knows that the other one knows). D. was careful to say wiki engine, while it would be an exaggeration to spent more words on this precision. Nevertheless A. objects that not all wikis are alike, and asks: how do you know that all wikis are like this? D. answered that he knows only about three of them, including the English wikipedia. The conversation is ridiculously going along this line, with A. accusing D. of being a liar! According to A., the other person claimed in the beginning that ALL wikis are supporting the mixed convention. D. knows very well that it was not the case, of course not. So D., irritated, responds that it is A. who is the "liar". In a sense, D. even believes that this is the case – that A. is manipulating the conversation instead of allowing the pleasure of joint exchanges of knowledge and reminiscences.
Super! :-) Now, what is the mechanism of such disasters? It seems that A. has the need of being right, and being the only one who is right. Thus others have to be wrong. The conversations for A. are trials where he is the prosecutor, the investigation officer, the judge and the jury. While D. naively treats the conversation like it were about the upper/lower case option, it turns out that the conversation is about D., that D. has to defend in true or imaginary detail each of D.'s casual pronouncements -- surprise, surprise! A. believes in being always right, that others are sloppy, illogical and stupid. A. is sane enough and has the necessary self knowledge about A. not being an Einstein, that A. has not won a Noble prize nor the wealth of Bill Gates. Thus to have its self-respect A. needs to put others down. A. will go so far (and with a strong conviction! -- ridiculous as it sounds) as to call others liars, where it is A.'s inability to listen and to stick to the topic. One may, like A., have difficulties to concentrate and catch all the fine points but then one should allow for the margin of not getting them, and of not understanding everything all the time. A good conversation requires patience and trust. And first of all, a conversation should not be a trial on which one puts the other person, who never got any court invoice. When a conversation is strictly about a computer language option of upper/lower case , with neither partner having any material interest in the topic (just intellectual curiosity), A. has no right to switch to an investigation of the D.'s personality qualities (say, to true or imagined D's inability of expressing things precisely) -- that's absolutely wrong.
The basis for such disasters is psychological, but there is also a tool (a method), which A. uses with a practiced agility to achieve such spectacular negative effects. The A.'s method is grounded in the common usage of the everyday language (as opposed to scientific language). See the next post.
In adversary exchanges there is no point to even worry about such things. One should and often does address the public and not the adversary. Most of the time there is no chance to affect the adversary. For these reasons I have developed a flexible, neutral format for Internet discussion groups (it's an application of my Art of Agreement), but that is a topic for another thread.
Below, I'll provide an example of a (fictitious but realistic) conversation which went down the drain.
***
A. and D. talk about the treatment by different computer languages of the upper/lower case in the names of variables and similar. First languages had upper case only (e.g. Fortran). A. and D. remember that other old languages allowed for the either case; the lower and the upper case of any letter was treated as equivalent. Thus Mary mary MARY maRy mARy etc. would all stand for the same variable. This feature was widely used by programmers to enhance the readability of their programs. In particular A. was fond of the especially consistent and useful way this was done at the company for which A. had worked years ago.
Then D. mentions that a new option is offered by the wiki engine. According to this convenient in the wiki contest convention, wiki is sensitive to the case of all letters in the path except for the very first letter: you may write Albert_Einstein or albert_Einstein, and it will amount to the same link, but Albert_einstein and ALbert_Einstein will be different (and most likely each will be just a mistake).
D. knows A., hence he said carefully wiki engine. There are several wiki and wiki-like engines, while there is only one default wiki engine, the one that powers the English wikipedia (and several other wikipedias and similar portals, while there are also wiki portals which use different engines). All these things both A. and D. know well over the years of being somewhat interested in the topic (and D. being even active in some wiki portals; and each of them knows that the other one knows). D. was careful to say wiki engine, while it would be an exaggeration to spent more words on this precision. Nevertheless A. objects that not all wikis are alike, and asks: how do you know that all wikis are like this? D. answered that he knows only about three of them, including the English wikipedia. The conversation is ridiculously going along this line, with A. accusing D. of being a liar! According to A., the other person claimed in the beginning that ALL wikis are supporting the mixed convention. D. knows very well that it was not the case, of course not. So D., irritated, responds that it is A. who is the "liar". In a sense, D. even believes that this is the case – that A. is manipulating the conversation instead of allowing the pleasure of joint exchanges of knowledge and reminiscences.
Super! :-) Now, what is the mechanism of such disasters? It seems that A. has the need of being right, and being the only one who is right. Thus others have to be wrong. The conversations for A. are trials where he is the prosecutor, the investigation officer, the judge and the jury. While D. naively treats the conversation like it were about the upper/lower case option, it turns out that the conversation is about D., that D. has to defend in true or imaginary detail each of D.'s casual pronouncements -- surprise, surprise! A. believes in being always right, that others are sloppy, illogical and stupid. A. is sane enough and has the necessary self knowledge about A. not being an Einstein, that A. has not won a Noble prize nor the wealth of Bill Gates. Thus to have its self-respect A. needs to put others down. A. will go so far (and with a strong conviction! -- ridiculous as it sounds) as to call others liars, where it is A.'s inability to listen and to stick to the topic. One may, like A., have difficulties to concentrate and catch all the fine points but then one should allow for the margin of not getting them, and of not understanding everything all the time. A good conversation requires patience and trust. And first of all, a conversation should not be a trial on which one puts the other person, who never got any court invoice. When a conversation is strictly about a computer language option of upper/lower case , with neither partner having any material interest in the topic (just intellectual curiosity), A. has no right to switch to an investigation of the D.'s personality qualities (say, to true or imagined D's inability of expressing things precisely) -- that's absolutely wrong.
The basis for such disasters is psychological, but there is also a tool (a method), which A. uses with a practiced agility to achieve such spectacular negative effects. The A.'s method is grounded in the common usage of the everyday language (as opposed to scientific language). See the next post.
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