Woman: of course I have a Linkedin account, I wasn’t born yesterday… I just wanted to rant about this interviewer who was rude to me. I don’t need my husband to fix the problem of some people being rude, I just wanted support. Instead I learned that he sees me as an idiot. Grand.
This response, however, betrays the fact that the woman in your scenario doesn’t understand even slightly what the man is asking or why.
If I ask someone—let us call this person “Alice”—who has a problem “did you try [solution X] to solve the problem”, of course that is not because I am assuming that Alice didn’t try solution X.
Rather, the point is this: Alice tells me that she has a problem that, in my understand, can be solved by solution X (although it might also not be solved by solution X). Therefore, it is either the case that Alice didn’t try X, or that Alice tried X but her problem persisted.
If the former is true, then the next question is “why not”. If the answer is “I didn’t think of that” / “I didn’t know that X existed” / etc., well, now Alice has a thing to try. If the answer is “I don’t know how to do X” / “X is hard” / etc., then perhaps I can help Alice with X, or find someone else who can help.
If the latter is true (Alice tried X but her problem persisted), then the next question is “ok, what exactly happened with you tried X”—how exactly did the attempt fail, etc. Based on the answer to that, further questions can be asked, other solutions tried, etc.
This is how you solve problems. When the support tech (the real support tech, not the trained monkey “level 1 support” person) asks “did you restart your computer”, it’s not because he thinks that you’re an idiot[1]—it’s because he needs to know what you’ve already tried in order to help you solve your problem. The answer could be “yes I tried restarting but the problem persisted”, or the answer could be “no I did not try restarting, because the ‘restart’ button is not working”, or who knows what else.
The inference from “person trying to help me asks whether I’ve tried the obvious solution” to “person trying to help me thinks that I am an idiot” is completely unwarranted.
The man interrupts her almost immediately, moving straight to problem-solving mode before she can share her experience. Even for tech support, the tech should allow the customer to describe their issue before asking them to reboot. He’s hijacking the conversation and relegating his wife to tier 1 tech support rather than starting from a reasonable model of her and going from there. It makes sense for tech support to start from step 0. This is rarely wise in an interpersonal context unless normal levels of mutual understanding are absent.
I don’t think that’s the essential element. (It definitely doesn’t happen in the “nail in head” video, please note.) Suppose the man didn’t interrupt her almost immediately (or at all); the rest of the conversation could proceed in the same way (as satirized in the video) and the woman could draw the same wrong conclusion (and people often do, in my experience).
I was responding to the hypothetical seed posed, in which it is a highly salient detail. Were the hypothetical different, I would indeed assess it differently.
This response, however, betrays the fact that the woman in your scenario doesn’t understand even slightly what the man is asking or why.
If I ask someone—let us call this person “Alice”—who has a problem “did you try [solution X] to solve the problem”, of course that is not because I am assuming that Alice didn’t try solution X.
Rather, the point is this: Alice tells me that she has a problem that, in my understand, can be solved by solution X (although it might also not be solved by solution X). Therefore, it is either the case that Alice didn’t try X, or that Alice tried X but her problem persisted.
If the former is true, then the next question is “why not”. If the answer is “I didn’t think of that” / “I didn’t know that X existed” / etc., well, now Alice has a thing to try. If the answer is “I don’t know how to do X” / “X is hard” / etc., then perhaps I can help Alice with X, or find someone else who can help.
If the latter is true (Alice tried X but her problem persisted), then the next question is “ok, what exactly happened with you tried X”—how exactly did the attempt fail, etc. Based on the answer to that, further questions can be asked, other solutions tried, etc.
This is how you solve problems. When the support tech (the real support tech, not the
trained monkey“level 1 support” person) asks “did you restart your computer”, it’s not because he thinks that you’re an idiot[1]—it’s because he needs to know what you’ve already tried in order to help you solve your problem. The answer could be “yes I tried restarting but the problem persisted”, or the answer could be “no I did not try restarting, because the ‘restart’ button is not working”, or who knows what else.The inference from “person trying to help me asks whether I’ve tried the obvious solution” to “person trying to help me thinks that I am an idiot” is completely unwarranted.
Although many people are in fact idiots, and have in fact not tried the obvious thing.
The man interrupts her almost immediately, moving straight to problem-solving mode before she can share her experience. Even for tech support, the tech should allow the customer to describe their issue before asking them to reboot. He’s hijacking the conversation and relegating his wife to tier 1 tech support rather than starting from a reasonable model of her and going from there. It makes sense for tech support to start from step 0. This is rarely wise in an interpersonal context unless normal levels of mutual understanding are absent.
I don’t think that’s the essential element. (It definitely doesn’t happen in the “nail in head” video, please note.) Suppose the man didn’t interrupt her almost immediately (or at all); the rest of the conversation could proceed in the same way (as satirized in the video) and the woman could draw the same wrong conclusion (and people often do, in my experience).
I was responding to the hypothetical seed posed, in which it is a highly salient detail. Were the hypothetical different, I would indeed assess it differently.