4 ms·
I feel similarly. I often find that I run into people who are eager to have a face-to-face debate about something, and who come up with opinions and rationaliz
by EdgarVerona 8y ago
I feel similarly. I often find that I run into people who are eager to have a face-to-face debate about something, and who come up with opinions and rationalizations that sometimes end up being dubious. But I feel a strong desire to hear them out and I generally have a hard time piecing together what makes an argument fallacious until I have time to analyze it more deeply, so I generally just take whatever they've said and chew on it a while.
I feel like this helps me come to better conclusions in the long term. Sometimes, I come to agree with what they've said. Sometimes, I find their conclusions flawed. In some cases, I can tell that it's made people who present arguments that ultimately turn out to be fallacious feel justified in those arguments. The fact that I end our conversation by thanking them for giving me something to think about sometimes feels like I'm endorsing their opinion with my inability to come up with an equally quick retort.
I've never really found a solution to this. At various times in my life, I have tried to hone my ability to make equally quick retorts: but I found that I didn't like who I was as a person when I tried to discuss in that way. My conversations with people became needlessly rhetorical and combative, and that I was often failing to hear what they had to say except in the context of how I could weaken it. On top of that, I became an angrier person in general. All of that felt shitty, and like the opposite of truth-seeking.
For me, it's an unsolved problem. I'm mostly at peace with the fact that I need extra time to chew on opinions presented to me in the heat of the moment, but occasionally I feel deep regret for not having said something on the spot.
Nonverbal conversations tend to help me with this personally - even the few moments you get to better put together how you're feeling/what you're thinking, or the ability to re-read what someone has posted, helps significantly. When it's written/typed conversation, you also don't have to deal with the sometimes disarming nature of people's reactions/facial expressions/distractions of the environment around you. I'm often most impressed with people who can do this sort of quick filtering and refinement of what they intend to say with verbal conversation: it's so alien to what I experience when talking with people face-to-face.
- jannyfer 8y agoI can relate. I used to be mostly a listener, formulating thoughts slowly and independently of my situation. Like you, I also tried to be a quick thinker/talker in situations and disliked who I was becoming. But nowadays I've learned to be ok with it... because I found value in trying to be charismatic so I can rally people around my cause. Put me in a completely new situation and I'll revert back to listening and thinking slowly. But talk to me about something I'm really passionate about, and I'll be a quick talker. It feels like a flow state.
- wirrbel 8y agoThis is why I despise most power point presentations so much and would most of the times prefer a writeup on two pages...
- arvinsim 8y agoI find myself nodding a lot while reading this because I can relate to this. I just don't have the bandwidth to process information for quick responses.
- soapdude 8y agoIn The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, the author extends a metaphor where humans act as a person riding an elephant. The elephant is strong and self-willed, and although it may be open to suggestions by the rider, it will ultimately be the prevailing force when dealing in immediate/reactionary circumstance. Over a period of time, the rider can influence the elephant such that it has a different "lean" in the future. You seem to grapple with feeling hypocritical by not having a logical response to something you later find to be wrong, but perhaps your elephant simply wasn't "leaning" in the direction of the wrong-sayer. I like the idea that the majority of forces acting on a humans actions/behavior are non-verbal; not necessarily big news, but it helps me to justify why I have trouble communicating with friends who are on the bleeding edge of social politics while I spend my weeks writing proprietary code and reading classic fiction novels.