Yeah, (poor) context isolation is is a recurring theme I’ve observed in my discussions and debates. Here’s a typical scenario:
There’s an original topic, X. Then we talk back and forth about it for a bit: C1, D1, C2, D2, C3, D3, C4, D4. The C messages are me and D is the other guy.
Then I write a reply, C5, about a specific detail in D4. Often I quote the exact thing I’m replying to or explain what I’m doing (e.g. a statement like “I disagree with A because B” where A was something said in D4.).
Then the person writes a reply (more of a non sequitur from my pov) about X.
People routinely try to jump the conversation back to the original context/topic. And they make ongoing attempts to interpret things I say in relation to X. Whatever I say, they often try to jump to conclusions about my position on X from it.
I find it very hard to get people to stop doing this. I’ve had little success even with explicit topic shifts like “I think you’re making a discussion methodology mistake, and talking about X won’t be productive until we get on the same page about how to discuss.”
Another example of poor context isolation is when I give a toy example that’d be trivial to replace with a different toy example, but they start getting hung up on specific details of the example chosen. Sometimes I make the example intentionally unrealistic and simple because I want it to clearly be a toy example and I want to get rid of lots of typical context, but then they get hung up specifically on how unrealistic it is.
Another common example is when I compare X and Y regarding trait Z, and people get hung up b/c of how X and Y compare in general. Me: X and Y are the same re Z. Them: X and Y aren’t similar!
I think Question-Ignoring Discussion Pattern is related, too. It’s a recurring pattern where people don’t give direct responses to the thing one just said.
And thanks for the link. It makes sense to me and I think social dynamics ideas are some of the ones most often coupled/contextualized. I think it’s really important to be capable of thinking about things from multiple perspectives/frameworks, but most people really just have the one way of thinking (and have enough trouble with that), and for most people their one way has a lot of social norms built into it (because they live in society – you need 2+ thinking modes in order for it to make sense to have one without social norms, otherwise you don’t have a way to get along with people. Some people compromise and build fewer social norms into their way of thinking because that’s easier than learning multiple separate ways to think).
Yeah, (poor) context isolation is is a recurring theme I’ve observed in my discussions and debates. Here’s a typical scenario:
There’s an original topic, X. Then we talk back and forth about it for a bit: C1, D1, C2, D2, C3, D3, C4, D4. The C messages are me and D is the other guy.
Then I write a reply, C5, about a specific detail in D4. Often I quote the exact thing I’m replying to or explain what I’m doing (e.g. a statement like “I disagree with A because B” where A was something said in D4.).
Then the person writes a reply (more of a non sequitur from my pov) about X.
People routinely try to jump the conversation back to the original context/topic. And they make ongoing attempts to interpret things I say in relation to X. Whatever I say, they often try to jump to conclusions about my position on X from it.
I find it very hard to get people to stop doing this. I’ve had little success even with explicit topic shifts like “I think you’re making a discussion methodology mistake, and talking about X won’t be productive until we get on the same page about how to discuss.”
Another example of poor context isolation is when I give a toy example that’d be trivial to replace with a different toy example, but they start getting hung up on specific details of the example chosen. Sometimes I make the example intentionally unrealistic and simple because I want it to clearly be a toy example and I want to get rid of lots of typical context, but then they get hung up specifically on how unrealistic it is.
Another common example is when I compare X and Y regarding trait Z, and people get hung up b/c of how X and Y compare in general. Me: X and Y are the same re Z. Them: X and Y aren’t similar!
I think Question-Ignoring Discussion Pattern is related, too. It’s a recurring pattern where people don’t give direct responses to the thing one just said.
And thanks for the link. It makes sense to me and I think social dynamics ideas are some of the ones most often coupled/contextualized. I think it’s really important to be capable of thinking about things from multiple perspectives/frameworks, but most people really just have the one way of thinking (and have enough trouble with that), and for most people their one way has a lot of social norms built into it (because they live in society – you need 2+ thinking modes in order for it to make sense to have one without social norms, otherwise you don’t have a way to get along with people. Some people compromise and build fewer social norms into their way of thinking because that’s easier than learning multiple separate ways to think).