Unfortunately, I think the average person doesn’t understand misunderstanding. I think it can be taken as…
You’re too dumb to understand
You’re being purposely ignorant
You’re making fun of them
I’ll give an example:
—
I was recently in a conversation with a non-rationalist. I organised it because I wanted to talk about negative opinions they had on me. We talked a lot about certain scenarios.
In one scenario, I had seemingly rejected the suggestion that we all go bowling. I had said out loud “I hate bowling”. When what I meant was “I hate bowling, but I’m still very happy to sit in a bowling alley and watch my friends play.”
I think I did a bad job communicating there. It made my friends very angry (extra details about situation left out).
During our conversation, I asked for levels of anger or annoyance at me before and after I had explained what I had meant to say.
I was surprised when one friend didn’t adjust their anger levels at all. I thought I must have done another bad job at explaining.
“So, you started at 80% angry at me. And now that I’ve told you my perspective, you’re still 80% angry?” This surprised me. I would adjust my levels down if someone explained that to me.
I went back and forth trying to get to the bottom of this for ~half an hour. After which I came to realise we were just wired very different. To do this I used your suggested technique.
In the time it took for me to understand this one point, I had deeply annoyed my friend. They were under the impression that I was misunderstanding them on purpose somehow.
I think I would have been less comfortable or fulfilled, but better off. If I had just accepted that they were still very angry. And had moved on.
Instead, being confused and asking questions made my situation worse.
To be clear though. I did get to the truth with this technique. But sometimes winning can’t be about knowing the truth. Which is sad. I don’t like that. But I think it is true.
It is unfortunately impossible for me to know exactly what happened during this interaction. I will say that the specific tone you use matters a huge amount—for example, if you ask to understand why someone is upset about your actions, the exact same words will be much better received if you do it in a tone of contrition and wanting to improve, and it will be received very poorly if you do it in a tone that implies the other person is being unreasonable in being upset. From the very limited information I have, my guess is you probably often say things in a tone that’s not interpreted the way you intended.
I’d say that’s a good guess given the information I provided.
I think I did a good job in this particular circumstance as coming off as confused or curious. That was my aim, and I placed a lot of focus there.
However, I haven’t listened back to the audio recordings of the conversation. It’s likely my previous comment is heavily bias.
Unfortunately, I think the average person doesn’t understand misunderstanding. I think it can be taken as…
You’re too dumb to understand
You’re being purposely ignorant
You’re making fun of them I’ll give an example:
— I was recently in a conversation with a non-rationalist. I organised it because I wanted to talk about negative opinions they had on me. We talked a lot about certain scenarios.
In one scenario, I had seemingly rejected the suggestion that we all go bowling. I had said out loud “I hate bowling”. When what I meant was “I hate bowling, but I’m still very happy to sit in a bowling alley and watch my friends play.”
I think I did a bad job communicating there. It made my friends very angry (extra details about situation left out).
During our conversation, I asked for levels of anger or annoyance at me before and after I had explained what I had meant to say. I was surprised when one friend didn’t adjust their anger levels at all. I thought I must have done another bad job at explaining.
“So, you started at 80% angry at me. And now that I’ve told you my perspective, you’re still 80% angry?” This surprised me. I would adjust my levels down if someone explained that to me.
I went back and forth trying to get to the bottom of this for ~half an hour. After which I came to realise we were just wired very different. To do this I used your suggested technique. In the time it took for me to understand this one point, I had deeply annoyed my friend. They were under the impression that I was misunderstanding them on purpose somehow. I think I would have been less comfortable or fulfilled, but better off. If I had just accepted that they were still very angry. And had moved on. Instead, being confused and asking questions made my situation worse.
To be clear though. I did get to the truth with this technique. But sometimes winning can’t be about knowing the truth. Which is sad. I don’t like that. But I think it is true.
It is unfortunately impossible for me to know exactly what happened during this interaction. I will say that the specific tone you use matters a huge amount—for example, if you ask to understand why someone is upset about your actions, the exact same words will be much better received if you do it in a tone of contrition and wanting to improve, and it will be received very poorly if you do it in a tone that implies the other person is being unreasonable in being upset. From the very limited information I have, my guess is you probably often say things in a tone that’s not interpreted the way you intended.
I’d say that’s a good guess given the information I provided.
I think I did a good job in this particular circumstance as coming off as confused or curious. That was my aim, and I placed a lot of focus there. However, I haven’t listened back to the audio recordings of the conversation. It’s likely my previous comment is heavily bias.