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This is part of the point. Many of us are pedantic nerds. I had to train myself out of the exact same habits (the "what if"s, the "but you actually asked"s), bu

by kaitai 11y ago

This is part of the point. Many of us are pedantic nerds. I had to train myself out of the exact same habits (the "what if"s, the "but you actually asked"s), but I could only do that once I realized when people habitually "lie". I also had to realize it wasn't exactly lying, it was cutting off the outliers... it's assumed that your answer to whether you will show up at 10 has silent riding disclaimers regarding being hit by a bus, being offered brunch with Beyonce, buildings collapsing due to earthquakes, etc. These are important questions to revisit from time to time, though. We train ourselves to give the easy answer in social and even medical conversation (or maybe you always knew to do that), but in some situations this is bad. I'm working on projects right now that focus on risk analysis -- focus on identifying and quantifying those outlier events. I now have to train the people I'm working with not to say, oh (I'm 95% sure) we'll be fine! but instead look at how bad things could be if they went bad, and think of all the creative ways things could go bad. I'm finding I have a bit of a talent there ;) And last, you don't seem to understand that in her/my "academic" circle, this is in fact a common trait. What does academic have to do with communicating, anyway? It has to do with writing papers!

proc0 11y ago
Sure, but maybe the article just has bad examples. I suffer from being too logical. I'm a software person, and have many times told my friends to pretend I'm a computer, simply because I just don't want to enter their world of illogical thinking. Things like "it's the same difference", for example, mean two things are the same, so there is NO difference! It's not the same difference (this implies there is one), there is NO difference. Anyway, in the end, I can see language is simply a tool, in which words and phrases take on different meaning depending on the context. To effectively communicate, it's important to see this context, which includes the _intentionality_ of the communicators. What did that person __mean__, when they said XYZ. I understand the article was about that, but I guess it gave bad examples. When the therapist asks "are you absolutely sure..", the therapist is not asking to predict the future. She is simply asking if you are 100% confident with your current knowledge, and assuming no unforeseen circumstances, that you will not harm yourself. It's actually logically sound. You can be absolutely sure, because it's qualifying your confidence in YOUR thinking. You can be absolutely sure of something and still be wrong. So the author wasn't even pedantic enough! Regardless, it was easy to simply ask what the therapist meant, and avoid whatever came after. But I guess the author of the article is also not a native English speaker, which I think is really the cause here, not that she's "academic".

by kaitai 11y ago

proc0 11y ago

Sure, but maybe the article just has bad examples. I suffer from being too logical. I'm a software person, and have many times told my friends to pretend I'm a computer, simply because I just don't want to enter their world of illogical thinking. Things like "it's the same difference", for example, mean two things are the same, so there is NO difference! It's not the same difference (this implies there is one), there is NO difference. Anyway, in the end, I can see language is simply a tool, in which words and phrases take on different meaning depending on the context. To effectively communicate, it's important to see this context, which includes the _intentionality_ of the communicators. What did that person __mean__, when they said XYZ. I understand the article was about that, but I guess it gave bad examples. When the therapist asks "are you absolutely sure..", the therapist is not asking to predict the future. She is simply asking if you are 100% confident with your current knowledge, and assuming no unforeseen circumstances, that you will not harm yourself. It's actually logically sound. You can be absolutely sure, because it's qualifying your confidence in YOUR thinking. You can be absolutely sure of something and still be wrong. So the author wasn't even pedantic enough! Regardless, it was easy to simply ask what the therapist meant, and avoid whatever came after. But I guess the author of the article is also not a native English speaker, which I think is really the cause here, not that she's "academic".