Dear Chaosmage, thank you for this post. I agree that communicating in abstracts is very hard. There seems to almost always be an element of who-what is good-bad and right or wrong with the content of any communication and are the people involved in the communication good-bad, right/wrong as people. Yodkowsky’s statement that arguments are soldiers comes to mind.
I am 63. I spent a lot of my life trying to impose my views on people from a testosterone fueled classic male dominance ego. No one would be wrong to accuse me of arrogance and a belief in my intellectual superiority. But I am older now and I see how often I really was wrong. I wish I had learned collaborative communicating skills so much earlier. I have learned that accepting I may be as wrong as right in a discussion with someone about opinions and feelings is important. Giving someone a way out, realizing and actually accepting they have to have whatever time is needed to consider what I’m trying to communicate or engaging (if possible) in a manner that allows both sides legitimacy works best. And generally, I have found people resist facts until it is comfortable for them to accept them, and always, always people have honor and pride in the game. I learned a long time ago to try and see the other person’s side, and listen/read to learn and understand not just to reply.
We have more technology than ever, but our brains essentially work the same as they did 10,000 or years ago.
I think learning to communicate in a clear concise “concrete” manner is always a good thing to have in our human toolbox. In my experience, trying to “crack somones head open” and pour in a lot of information we want them to accept often fails. That’s irrational in my opinion. Getting people interested and enthused and guiding them to the subject and allowing them to learn at their pace works better in my life experiences. I easily accept that this is not always true, because people are in fact forced to learn and humans sometimes do change their views/behaviors when being forced too.
Lastly, I intentionally tried to make this post concrete and easy to see my points. I left out all the complex words that go with the thinking behavior genre.
Dear Chaosmage, thank you for this post. I agree that communicating in abstracts is very hard. There seems to almost always be an element of who-what is good-bad and right or wrong with the content of any communication and are the people involved in the communication good-bad, right/wrong as people. Yodkowsky’s statement that arguments are soldiers comes to mind.
I am 63. I spent a lot of my life trying to impose my views on people from a testosterone fueled classic male dominance ego. No one would be wrong to accuse me of arrogance and a belief in my intellectual superiority. But I am older now and I see how often I really was wrong. I wish I had learned collaborative communicating skills so much earlier. I have learned that accepting I may be as wrong as right in a discussion with someone about opinions and feelings is important. Giving someone a way out, realizing and actually accepting they have to have whatever time is needed to consider what I’m trying to communicate or engaging (if possible) in a manner that allows both sides legitimacy works best. And generally, I have found people resist facts until it is comfortable for them to accept them, and always, always people have honor and pride in the game. I learned a long time ago to try and see the other person’s side, and listen/read to learn and understand not just to reply.
We have more technology than ever, but our brains essentially work the same as they did 10,000 or years ago.
I think learning to communicate in a clear concise “concrete” manner is always a good thing to have in our human toolbox. In my experience, trying to “crack somones head open” and pour in a lot of information we want them to accept often fails. That’s irrational in my opinion. Getting people interested and enthused and guiding them to the subject and allowing them to learn at their pace works better in my life experiences. I easily accept that this is not always true, because people are in fact forced to learn and humans sometimes do change their views/behaviors when being forced too.
Lastly, I intentionally tried to make this post concrete and easy to see my points. I left out all the complex words that go with the thinking behavior genre.
Keep up the good work! Best, Mike
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.” E. O. Wilson
https://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente