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"!
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One guy writing on the political forums on Gazeta.pl had following signature: "Nie kłóć się z idiotami. Sprowadzą cię do swego poziomu i pokonają doświadczeniem." (for english speaking persons: "Never argue with idiots. They will bring you down to their level and beat you by experience!").
The paradox is, that sometimes, especially when discussion takes place on the public forum, like most of the discussions in Internet, we tend in the same time to underestimate and overestimate the crowd of listeners. Overestimate, because we care too much about how we will look in their eyes, underestimate, because reasonable point is typically accepted despite of abusing behaviour of the opponent.
Hey man, what's going on? Interesting post, and I agree with your thoughts on "all" young peope being referred to as ignorant. Perceptions are articulated the way people think about them in their minds, so I don't think it's going to be easy to change the mentality of the hundreds of online public forum speakers when they speak to their audiences. I just wrote a "Thank You" post which is addressed to bloggers like you (your post regarding Knol was interesting).
Hi Artur and Nishant Mishra,
The sentiment about avoiding wrong conversation partners is very old, classical.
The issue is not directly related to anybody's age, nor even to their IQ and intellectual brightness. It is more about wisdom, which includes the attitude.
The ideal is known: don't remember about your own existence. Some peoplpe call it by a narrow term modesty, which is less adequate and prone to abuse (one rethorical way to get an upper hand is to play the modesty card, making the other person look immodest and ignorant – a neat trick and so ugly). And one should also forget about the existence of the other person. There is no need to judge the other person, and to prejudice the value of their statements. The idea is the same as in the game of bridge: assume the highest possible quality of the bidding of your partner. Only then you have a chance to imagine the cards. When you assume in advance that your partner's bidding is poor then you already lost the game. Thus one should be ready to hear and accept the most paradoxical bidding, and then one should ask: what cards do fit this bidding? The more paradoxical the bid the more wonderful is the chance of playing something exceptional.
As we see, wisdom is related to trust rather than to cleverness and being tricky. And trust in turn is related to modesty.
(This was not a complete essey but just a signal or two).
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