I think perhaps you have missed the point I was making, which is that what you call “being aware that you have sensed a cue” is just what everyone else calls “sensing the cue” (perhaps “perceiving the cue” might be a better phrase, by the way; that does seem to me to be more consonant with how the concepts of perception and sensation are used elsewhere…). Whatever we call it, the interesting and important thing is the part where the intended cue-recipient ends up having any idea whatsoever that a cue is being sent (or, more likely, instead fails to end up with any such idea).
Approximately nobody accurately picks up on womens’ subtle cues, including other women (at least that would be my strong guess, and is very cruxy for me here). … (Of course there’s an obvious alternative hypothesis: most men do pick up on such cues, and I’m overindexing on myself or my friends or something. I am certainly tracking that hypothesis, I am well aware that my brain is not a good model of other humans’ brains, but man it sure sounds like “not noticing womens’ subtle cues” is the near-universal experience, even among other women when people actually try to test that.)
In short, approximately everybody senses women’s cues whether they recognize it or not, whether they know what to do with it or not, and they’re only subtle and ambiguous to the extent that their purpose is served by being subtle and ambiguous.
Now, given the way you are using the phrase “sensing the cue”, we can now see that the second quote is totally non-responsive to the first. Like, it’s literally just a non sequitur.
An analogy: suppose that certain billboards, signs, etc., were designed in such a way that they secretly also worked like those Magic Eye pictures, and if you squinted at them just right, you could see a hidden image. Suppose that such special double-duty displays weren’t marked in any obvious way.
Now, suppose I said: “You know how some billboards and signs and such are secretly also magic eye images? I have no idea how to spot when a sign is one of those! Much less how to squint at them the right way, even if I did spot them…” And suppose you replied: “Well, you know, the light reflected from the those signs is hitting your retina, so you can totally tell that the signs exist.”
Would that be an even remotely useful reply?
Does the reply point out any errors in the complaint, or contradict the complaint in any way at all? No, of course not. Does the reply talk about anything whatsoever to do with the reason why the problem exists? Not in the least. Can it possibly point the way to a solution? Not a chance.
If you follow this up with “ah, but there is a distinction between noticing ‘the billboard exists’ and noticing ‘I have noticed that the billboard exists’”, is that relevant or useful? It is not. Yes, I am indeed aware of billboards, and aware of my awareness of billboards, and aware of that… is this fact even slightly relevant to my (and most people’s) hypothetical inability to spot which billboards are, hypothetically, also secretly Magic Eye images? Alas, no.
I think perhaps you have missed the point I was making, which is that what you call “being aware that you have sensed a cue” is just what everyone else calls “sensing the cue” (perhaps “perceiving the cue” might be a better phrase
I haven’t. It’s just something you’re going to struggle to understand until you recognize the difference—and the importance of the difference—between the quotation and its referent. So that’s where we have to start.
It is true that many people will call the thing I refer to as “being aware that you have sensed the cue” “sensing the cue”, yes. But it is also true that people will call what I refer to as “sensing the cue” “sensing the cue”.
It’s not that people who refer to “being aware that you have sensed a cue” as “sensing the cue” simply have a different definition of terms, it’s that they’re failing to track a critical distinction.
It’s not possible to understand “female signals”—or male signals, or your own signals, even—until you understand the importance of the things people perceive and understand which they aren’t aware that they perceive and understand. It all hinges on the fact that your assumption that you have to be aware of things for them to matter is unjustified—and, it turns out, very very false.
I’m happy to explain where your billboard analogy goes wrong, but we really gotta nail this down first.
It all hinges on the fact that your assumption that you have to be aware of things for them to matter is unjustified—and, it turns out, very very false.
What do you mean by “matter” here?
Remember, we’re talking about the following situation:
Woman attempts to “send cues”, with the intended result being that a certain man will perceive these cues and react in a certain desired way.
Man has no idea that this is happening.
Man does not react in the desired way to the supposed cues that the woman is supposedly sending (and how could he, not being aware of any such things?).
Woman is annoyed, frustrated, etc., that she is not getting what she wants.
Now you’re claiming that, somehow, these cues are nevertheless being “sensed” (ok, sure), and also that they nevertheless “matter” in some way.
What is the meaning of “matter” in this context that makes your claim true?
EDIT: By the way, this is false in my experience:
But it is also true that people will call what I refer to as “sensing the cue” “sensing the cue”.
I’ve never encountered this usage from anyone other than you.
Remember, we’re talking about the following situation:
If that’s what you think we’re talking about then I have a couple questions for you:
1) I told you that I addressed this failure mode in another comment. Why did you ignore when I told you this instead of reading that comment and responding to what I said over there instead? Isn’t that the only thing that makes sense, if that’s all you want to talk about?
2) Why are you talking whether men pick up on these things in general? It feels like you’re saying “We’re talking about the people who died during heart surgery. In this context, where’s the evidence that heart surgery works!?”. The evidence for the effectiveness of heart surgery obviously isn’t in the corpses… but you’re smart enough to know this, so wtf?
Even though it’s normally rude to point out so bluntly like this, I certainly prefer the respect of “What you’re saying sounds obviously dumb. What am I missing?” than the polite fictions that condescend and presuppose that you’re not only in error but also too emotionally immature to admit it.
I’m placing my bet that you also both want and deserve this kind of honesty—and will either say “Oops, good catch”, or else point out something I’m missing that makes it seem less like you’re flinching from admitting what you sense.
We’ll see if it pays off. If not, I’ll probably bow out.
EDIT: By the way, this is false in my experience:
You’re still misunderstanding what I’m saying though. Again, you can’t judge truth of a statement until you know what the statement means.
I told you that I addressed this failure mode in another comment. Why did you ignore when I told you this instead of reading that comment and responding to what I said over there instead? Isn’t that the *only *thing that makes sense, if that’s all you want to talk about?
I read the comment in question (this one, yes? if that’s not the comment you meant then please link the correct one) and it did not seem to me to have addressed this. (I did not particularly find anything specific to respond in it, either, although I certainly can’t say that I agree with the model you give therein.)
Why are you talking whether men pick up on these things in general?
Sometimes this is due to the woman in question not recognizing how subtle she’s being, and losing out on a date with a man she’s still interested in.
I would guess that this is approximately 100% of the time in practice, excluding cases where the man doesn’t pick up on the cues but happens to ask her out anyway. Approximately nobody accurately picks up on womens’ subtle cues, including other women (at least that would be my strong guess, and is very cruxy for me here). If the woman just wants a guy who will ask her out, that’s still a perfectly fine utility function, but the cues serve approximately-zero role outside of the woman’s own imagination.
EDIT: In fact, let me expand on this.
Your linked comment answers the question “why don’t women just ask, if they really want the guy”. (I find the answer unconvincing, as I said, but that’s actually beside the point here.) But the reason I brought up the scenario in question wasn’t to pose the question “why don’t women just ask”, but rather to point out that in said scenario:
The woman is definitely sending cues as hard as she can.
The man does not pick up on those cues.
If asked later, the man will say that he did not perceive any cues. (Indeed, he’d be surprised by the question—“Cues, what cues? From whom…? That one woman? Flirting? With whom? With me?! No, you’ve got something mixed up, surely…”)
If asked later, the woman will say that the man did not pick up on any cues. (And will be very frustrated by this; she was being so obvious, how could this absolute dunce of a man not have noticed?! Ridiculous! And she was really into the guy, too…)
So even in this case where one person is trying as hard as they can to send cues, nevertheless the other person is totally oblivious. (Does this happen all the time? Yes it does.)
Given this, does the suggestion that actually, everyone is perceiving all the cues all the time, is obviously silly. If even trying this hard, “sending” this “loudly”—at such extreme “transmission intensity”—can fail to be enough to get the signal through, at all, then how could it be true that the signal is actually successfully getting through pretty much all the time? The answer is obvious: it can’t be true.
(Now, you might say: “but I am making no such suggestion, because you have misunderstood my…”—sure, fair enough. But this should, at least, clearly and definitively answer the question of why I brought up that scenario and what relevance I think it has to the general question.)
(Edit ends.)
So, to again try to summarize: you claim that people (and in particular, men) “sense the cues” that other people (and in particular, women) send. What exactly it means to “sense the cues”, in your usage, remains unclear. It likewise remains unclear how (or if) that claim is responsive to johnswentworth’s claim quoted above (with which I agree). It certainly seemed like you were disagreeing with him. But then, based on your later explanation of how you are using the relevant words, it seemed like you were not disagreeing with him but instead were saying… something… unrelated…?
Could you, perhaps, express your position on this matter using the same terminology as is being used by your interlocutors? (I understand if you prefer an idiosyncratic usage, and it’s fine if you return to that usage afterwards, but it would help if you could “translate” your point into the normal usage at least temporarily, just so that we could at least get clear on what it is that you’re actually saying.)
Even though it’s normally rude to point out so bluntly like this, I certainly prefer the respect of “What you’re saying sounds obviously dumb. What am I missing?” than the polite fictions that condescend and presuppose that you’re not only in error but also too emotionally immature to admit it.
Yes, of course, likewise.
EDIT: By the way, this is false in my experience:
You’re still misunderstanding what I’m saying though. Again, you can’t judge truth of a statement until you know what the statement means.
Well, I’m definitely confused about at least one thing. Namely, I am confused about whether you claim that you have already explained what you mean by “sense the cue”.
If you haven’t already explained it… well, the obvious question is “why not”, but never mind that, we can move past it, and instead proceed to: please do go ahead and explain it.
If you have already explained it (as seems to me to be the case), then what makes you think that, despite your explanation, I do not understand what you meant? (As far as I can tell, you’re not saying “aha, I conclude from this here statement of yours that you didn’t understand my explanation”, but rather “I know in advance that you didn’t understand my explanation, and on the basis of that fact, I conclude that this here statement of yours is false”. But how do you know it in advance…?)
flinching from admitting what you sense
Needless to say, I can’t decipher this comment, because I am once again (or still?) not sure how you’re using the word “sense” here…
Perhaps you could go ahead and explain what you think is wrong with the billboard analogy I offered?
As a meta-level comment, I’d like to note that I’ve asked quite a few questions to try to understand your points, and you’ve ignored almost all of them, whereas I have (as you see) tried to respond directly to your questions in my replies. (Perhaps it seemed to you like the questions were rhetorical? But no, I actually did want answers to them!) For example, in the grandparent I asked:
What do you mean by “matter” here?
That wasn’t a rhetorical question; I really would like to know what you meant when you disputed my alleged assumption that you have to be aware of things for them to “matter”. In what sense do things you’re not aware of “matter”? (I can think of some obvious cases where this is true—one need not be aware of electromagnetism for it to affect you, for instance—but presumably you don’t suspect me of being a solipsist with regard to physics, so this can’t be what you meant. On the other hand, if someone is trying to communicate something to you—“sending cues”—but you are not aware of this, then, clearly, you cannot be receiving the message that is being transmitted. Is that something you dispute? Or does “matter” mean something else entirely here?)
(And likewise with the other questions I asked; they were meant to help me understand your points, not as some sort of rhetorical ploys. But let’s start with that last question, at least; it’ll do for now.)
I think perhaps you have missed the point I was making, which is that what you call “being aware that you have sensed a cue” is just what everyone else calls “sensing the cue” (perhaps “perceiving the cue” might be a better phrase, by the way; that does seem to me to be more consonant with how the concepts of perception and sensation are used elsewhere…). Whatever we call it, the interesting and important thing is the part where the intended cue-recipient ends up having any idea whatsoever that a cue is being sent (or, more likely, instead fails to end up with any such idea).
Thus we had the following exchange:
johnswentworth:
jimmy:
Now, given the way you are using the phrase “sensing the cue”, we can now see that the second quote is totally non-responsive to the first. Like, it’s literally just a non sequitur.
An analogy: suppose that certain billboards, signs, etc., were designed in such a way that they secretly also worked like those Magic Eye pictures, and if you squinted at them just right, you could see a hidden image. Suppose that such special double-duty displays weren’t marked in any obvious way.
Now, suppose I said: “You know how some billboards and signs and such are secretly also magic eye images? I have no idea how to spot when a sign is one of those! Much less how to squint at them the right way, even if I did spot them…” And suppose you replied: “Well, you know, the light reflected from the those signs is hitting your retina, so you can totally tell that the signs exist.”
Would that be an even remotely useful reply?
Does the reply point out any errors in the complaint, or contradict the complaint in any way at all? No, of course not. Does the reply talk about anything whatsoever to do with the reason why the problem exists? Not in the least. Can it possibly point the way to a solution? Not a chance.
If you follow this up with “ah, but there is a distinction between noticing ‘the billboard exists’ and noticing ‘I have noticed that the billboard exists’”, is that relevant or useful? It is not. Yes, I am indeed aware of billboards, and aware of my awareness of billboards, and aware of that… is this fact even slightly relevant to my (and most people’s) hypothetical inability to spot which billboards are, hypothetically, also secretly Magic Eye images? Alas, no.
I haven’t. It’s just something you’re going to struggle to understand until you recognize the difference—and the importance of the difference—between the quotation and its referent. So that’s where we have to start.
It is true that many people will call the thing I refer to as “being aware that you have sensed the cue” “sensing the cue”, yes. But it is also true that people will call what I refer to as “sensing the cue” “sensing the cue”.
It’s not that people who refer to “being aware that you have sensed a cue” as “sensing the cue” simply have a different definition of terms, it’s that they’re failing to track a critical distinction.
It’s not possible to understand “female signals”—or male signals, or your own signals, even—until you understand the importance of the things people perceive and understand which they aren’t aware that they perceive and understand. It all hinges on the fact that your assumption that you have to be aware of things for them to matter is unjustified—and, it turns out, very very false.
I’m happy to explain where your billboard analogy goes wrong, but we really gotta nail this down first.
What do you mean by “matter” here?
Remember, we’re talking about the following situation:
Woman attempts to “send cues”, with the intended result being that a certain man will perceive these cues and react in a certain desired way.
Man has no idea that this is happening.
Man does not react in the desired way to the supposed cues that the woman is supposedly sending (and how could he, not being aware of any such things?).
Woman is annoyed, frustrated, etc., that she is not getting what she wants.
Now you’re claiming that, somehow, these cues are nevertheless being “sensed” (ok, sure), and also that they nevertheless “matter” in some way.
What is the meaning of “matter” in this context that makes your claim true?
EDIT: By the way, this is false in my experience:
I’ve never encountered this usage from anyone other than you.
If that’s what you think we’re talking about then I have a couple questions for you:
1) I told you that I addressed this failure mode in another comment. Why did you ignore when I told you this instead of reading that comment and responding to what I said over there instead? Isn’t that the only thing that makes sense, if that’s all you want to talk about?
2) Why are you talking whether men pick up on these things in general? It feels like you’re saying “We’re talking about the people who died during heart surgery. In this context, where’s the evidence that heart surgery works!?”. The evidence for the effectiveness of heart surgery obviously isn’t in the corpses… but you’re smart enough to know this, so wtf?
Even though it’s normally rude to point out so bluntly like this, I certainly prefer the respect of “What you’re saying sounds obviously dumb. What am I missing?” than the polite fictions that condescend and presuppose that you’re not only in error but also too emotionally immature to admit it.
I’m placing my bet that you also both want and deserve this kind of honesty—and will either say “Oops, good catch”, or else point out something I’m missing that makes it seem less like you’re flinching from admitting what you sense.
We’ll see if it pays off. If not, I’ll probably bow out.
You’re still misunderstanding what I’m saying though. Again, you can’t judge truth of a statement until you know what the statement means.
I read the comment in question (this one, yes? if that’s not the comment you meant then please link the correct one) and it did not seem to me to have addressed this. (I did not particularly find anything specific to respond in it, either, although I certainly can’t say that I agree with the model you give therein.)
Because, as I have said, I agree with johnswentworth when he wrote:
EDIT: In fact, let me expand on this.
Your linked comment answers the question “why don’t women just ask, if they really want the guy”. (I find the answer unconvincing, as I said, but that’s actually beside the point here.) But the reason I brought up the scenario in question wasn’t to pose the question “why don’t women just ask”, but rather to point out that in said scenario:
The woman is definitely sending cues as hard as she can.
The man does not pick up on those cues.
If asked later, the man will say that he did not perceive any cues. (Indeed, he’d be surprised by the question—“Cues, what cues? From whom…? That one woman? Flirting? With whom? With me?! No, you’ve got something mixed up, surely…”)
If asked later, the woman will say that the man did not pick up on any cues. (And will be very frustrated by this; she was being so obvious, how could this absolute dunce of a man not have noticed?! Ridiculous! And she was really into the guy, too…)
So even in this case where one person is trying as hard as they can to send cues, nevertheless the other person is totally oblivious. (Does this happen all the time? Yes it does.)
Given this, does the suggestion that actually, everyone is perceiving all the cues all the time, is obviously silly. If even trying this hard, “sending” this “loudly”—at such extreme “transmission intensity”—can fail to be enough to get the signal through, at all, then how could it be true that the signal is actually successfully getting through pretty much all the time? The answer is obvious: it can’t be true.
(Now, you might say: “but I am making no such suggestion, because you have misunderstood my…”—sure, fair enough. But this should, at least, clearly and definitively answer the question of why I brought up that scenario and what relevance I think it has to the general question.)
(Edit ends.)
So, to again try to summarize: you claim that people (and in particular, men) “sense the cues” that other people (and in particular, women) send. What exactly it means to “sense the cues”, in your usage, remains unclear. It likewise remains unclear how (or if) that claim is responsive to johnswentworth’s claim quoted above (with which I agree). It certainly seemed like you were disagreeing with him. But then, based on your later explanation of how you are using the relevant words, it seemed like you were not disagreeing with him but instead were saying… something… unrelated…?
Could you, perhaps, express your position on this matter using the same terminology as is being used by your interlocutors? (I understand if you prefer an idiosyncratic usage, and it’s fine if you return to that usage afterwards, but it would help if you could “translate” your point into the normal usage at least temporarily, just so that we could at least get clear on what it is that you’re actually saying.)
Yes, of course, likewise.
Well, I’m definitely confused about at least one thing. Namely, I am confused about whether you claim that you have already explained what you mean by “sense the cue”.
If you haven’t already explained it… well, the obvious question is “why not”, but never mind that, we can move past it, and instead proceed to: please do go ahead and explain it.
If you have already explained it (as seems to me to be the case), then what makes you think that, despite your explanation, I do not understand what you meant? (As far as I can tell, you’re not saying “aha, I conclude from this here statement of yours that you didn’t understand my explanation”, but rather “I know in advance that you didn’t understand my explanation, and on the basis of that fact, I conclude that this here statement of yours is false”. But how do you know it in advance…?)
Needless to say, I can’t decipher this comment, because I am once again (or still?) not sure how you’re using the word “sense” here…
Perhaps you could go ahead and explain what you think is wrong with the billboard analogy I offered?
As a meta-level comment, I’d like to note that I’ve asked quite a few questions to try to understand your points, and you’ve ignored almost all of them, whereas I have (as you see) tried to respond directly to your questions in my replies. (Perhaps it seemed to you like the questions were rhetorical? But no, I actually did want answers to them!) For example, in the grandparent I asked:
That wasn’t a rhetorical question; I really would like to know what you meant when you disputed my alleged assumption that you have to be aware of things for them to “matter”. In what sense do things you’re not aware of “matter”? (I can think of some obvious cases where this is true—one need not be aware of electromagnetism for it to affect you, for instance—but presumably you don’t suspect me of being a solipsist with regard to physics, so this can’t be what you meant. On the other hand, if someone is trying to communicate something to you—“sending cues”—but you are not aware of this, then, clearly, you cannot be receiving the message that is being transmitted. Is that something you dispute? Or does “matter” mean something else entirely here?)
(And likewise with the other questions I asked; they were meant to help me understand your points, not as some sort of rhetorical ploys. But let’s start with that last question, at least; it’ll do for now.)