In the rest of the world, when I find it necessary to invoke the concept, I generally ask people to clarify what they mean by a word and then echo back the phrase they used the word in, substituting their explanation.
Generally speaking, people respond to this as though I’d played some dirty rhetorical trick on them and deny ever having said any such thing, at which point I apologize and ask them again to clarify what they mean by the word.
Among conversations that continue past this point, it works pretty well. (They are the minority.)
Yeah, that works pretty well for me too. Unfortunately, the side effects—extremely powerful dork and/or argument-winning sophist signalling, misinterpretation as a status move, etc. - often far outweigh the benefits I would get from this tactic.
If people decide to trust me enough to actually engage honestly with the question, I try to be careful about engaging honestly with their answer, and often that can lead to some exceptionally interesting conversations. I’ve made some excellent friends this way, as well as a few educational opponents.
Most people don’t trust me that much, of course. But I’m at a stage in my life where efficiently working my way through lots of people in order to find one or two worth exploring as excellent friends, even if it means unnecessarily alienating dozens of people who would have made perfectly adequate friends, feels like a pretty good tradeoff. I already have more perfectly adequate friends than I’m capable of fully engaging with.
The major benefit I see is that in discussions where this ends the conversation, the conversation would have had very little value if it had continued.
In the rest of the world, when I find it necessary to invoke the concept, I generally ask people to clarify what they mean by a word and then echo back the phrase they used the word in, substituting their explanation.
Generally speaking, people respond to this as though I’d played some dirty rhetorical trick on them and deny ever having said any such thing, at which point I apologize and ask them again to clarify what they mean by the word.
Among conversations that continue past this point, it works pretty well. (They are the minority.)
Yeah, that works pretty well for me too. Unfortunately, the side effects—extremely powerful dork and/or argument-winning sophist signalling, misinterpretation as a status move, etc. - often far outweigh the benefits I would get from this tactic.
Yeah, there’s that.
For me it becomes a matter of tradeoffs.
If people decide to trust me enough to actually engage honestly with the question, I try to be careful about engaging honestly with their answer, and often that can lead to some exceptionally interesting conversations. I’ve made some excellent friends this way, as well as a few educational opponents.
Most people don’t trust me that much, of course. But I’m at a stage in my life where efficiently working my way through lots of people in order to find one or two worth exploring as excellent friends, even if it means unnecessarily alienating dozens of people who would have made perfectly adequate friends, feels like a pretty good tradeoff. I already have more perfectly adequate friends than I’m capable of fully engaging with.
The major benefit I see is that in discussions where this ends the conversation, the conversation would have had very little value if it had continued.