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And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say,

by dkarl 7y ago

And of course whether charity is applied or not is all about the presumed social fault lines in the situation. For example, in the U.S. right now, if you say, "The expert predictions about the coronavirus are all over the place and changing every day," it's an uncontroversial statement when everyone's politics are assumed to be the same. Among liberals, it will be interpreted as meaning that the coronavirus is extremely dangerous and not fully understood and we need to play it safe. Among conservatives, it will be interpreted as undermining expert authority and casting doubt on social distancing. In a mixed group, though, the important aspect will not be the meaning, which nobody will bother thinking too hard about; the only thing that matters will be the presumed intent to precipitate an argument.

sneak 7y ago
This is why anything partisan or partisan-adjacent in the US, which includes most current "news" events of any kind, has become so supremely boring to me. It's literally no longer about what is factual or not, or what is actually being said, simply what it it assumed that someone is attempting to imply. It's a terrible situation, and one that has infected a lot of other areas of USian everyday communication: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ If you're not fluent in euphemism and current-events context, making a plain factual statement can frequently be heard/interpreted by the listener as you saying the opposite, and the listener is usually totally unaware of the fact that they're flipping things around like this. It's one thing when I'm acting like like the beep boop robot I am, but it's leaked out and over, into just plain speech.
glaugh 7y ago
This is a nicely crafted example. Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless. In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people. My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs. I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wool_gather 7y ago
  > My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. This sounds quite interesting; would you be able to provide an example?

by dkarl 7y ago

sneak 7y ago

This is why anything partisan or partisan-adjacent in the US, which includes most current "news" events of any kind, has become so supremely boring to me. It's literally no longer about what is factual or not, or what is actually being said, simply what it it assumed that someone is attempting to imply. It's a terrible situation, and one that has infected a lot of other areas of USian everyday communication: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ If you're not fluent in euphemism and current-events context, making a plain factual statement can frequently be heard/interpreted by the listener as you saying the opposite, and the listener is usually totally unaware of the fact that they're flipping things around like this. It's one thing when I'm acting like like the beep boop robot I am, but it's leaked out and over, into just plain speech.

glaugh 7y ago

This is a nicely crafted example. Human communication is so densely laden with nuance and context and subtext that it takes soooo much work and a dose of generosity to have a real conversation that doesn’t spin off into something useless. In a technical context you can define things clearly, but in a political context it’s just too hard, there are so many things that mean different things to different people. My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. I think it sometimes works. But it’s a ton of conversational work with unclear payoffs. I don’t see how we’re not doomed to usually have largely fruitless conversation in the current climate. I don’t like the approach, but I understand why people move towards a “screw convincing them, let’s rally the base.” Bit of a prisoner’s dilemma there, I think, where the whole country is left impoverished by the individually rational approach to rallying the base

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wool_gather 7y ago
> My attempt in daily life to deal with this is to offer a place where my “side” is wrong to foster generosity then try to tightly circumscribe the thing we’re discussing. This sounds quite interesting; would you be able to provide an example?