Agreed that there’s a lot of suffering involved in this sort of interaction. Not sure how to fix it in general—I’ve been working on it in myself for decades, and still forget often. Please take the following as a personal anecdote, not as general advice.
The difficulty (for me) is that “hoping to connect” and understanding the person in addition to the idea are very poorly defined, and are very often at least somewhat asymmetrical, and trying to make them explicit is awkward and generally doesn’t work.
I find it bizarre and surprising, no matter how often it happens, when someone thinks my helping them pressure-test their ideas and beliefs for consistency is anything except a deep engagement and joy. If I didn’t want to connect and understand them, I wouldn’t bother actually engaging with the idea.
It’s happened often enough that I often need to modulate my enthusiasm, as it does cause suffering in a lot of friends/acquaintances who don’t think the same way as I do. This includes my habit of interrupting and skipping past the “obvious agreement” parts of the conversation to get to the good, deep stuff—the parts that need work. With some friends and coworkers, this style is amazingly pleasant and efficient. With others, some more explicit (and sometimes agonizingly slow, to me) groundwork of affirming the connection and the points of non-contention are really important.
I find it bizarre and surprising, no matter how often it happens, when someone thinks my helping them pressure-test their ideas and beliefs for consistency is anything except a deep engagement and joy. If I didn’t want to connect and understand them, I wouldn’t bother actually engaging with the idea.
I feel like I could have written this (and the rest of your comment)! It’s confusing and deflating when deep engagement and joy aren’t recognized as such.
It’s happened often enough that I often need to modulate my enthusiasm, as it does cause suffering in a lot of friends/acquaintances who don’t think the same way as I do.
I’ve tried the same with mixed effectiveness. In in-person contexts, nonverbal information makes it much easier to determine when and how to do this. I’ve found it’s more difficult online, particularly when you don’t know your interlocutor—sometimes efforts to affirm the connection and points of non-contention are read as pitying or mocking. I imagine this is partially attributable to the high prevalence of general derision on social media (edit: and of course partially attributable to faulty inference on my part).
Agreed that there’s a lot of suffering involved in this sort of interaction. Not sure how to fix it in general—I’ve been working on it in myself for decades, and still forget often. Please take the following as a personal anecdote, not as general advice.
The difficulty (for me) is that “hoping to connect” and understanding the person in addition to the idea are very poorly defined, and are very often at least somewhat asymmetrical, and trying to make them explicit is awkward and generally doesn’t work.
I find it bizarre and surprising, no matter how often it happens, when someone thinks my helping them pressure-test their ideas and beliefs for consistency is anything except a deep engagement and joy. If I didn’t want to connect and understand them, I wouldn’t bother actually engaging with the idea.
It’s happened often enough that I often need to modulate my enthusiasm, as it does cause suffering in a lot of friends/acquaintances who don’t think the same way as I do. This includes my habit of interrupting and skipping past the “obvious agreement” parts of the conversation to get to the good, deep stuff—the parts that need work. With some friends and coworkers, this style is amazingly pleasant and efficient. With others, some more explicit (and sometimes agonizingly slow, to me) groundwork of affirming the connection and the points of non-contention are really important.
I feel like I could have written this (and the rest of your comment)! It’s confusing and deflating when deep engagement and joy aren’t recognized as such.
I’ve tried the same with mixed effectiveness. In in-person contexts, nonverbal information makes it much easier to determine when and how to do this. I’ve found it’s more difficult online, particularly when you don’t know your interlocutor—sometimes efforts to affirm the connection and points of non-contention are read as pitying or mocking. I imagine this is partially attributable to the high prevalence of general derision on social media (edit: and of course partially attributable to faulty inference on my part).