The peril of talking to normal people
math-chocolate-circus.com
math-chocolate-circus.com
Coming from a music, then music theory, then philosophy, then technology background, it's an understatement to say that being precise in my language is extremely important.
Most people just don't care that much about the exact meanings of what the say or the chain of logical implications implied by certain types of careless wording.
It's a constant challenge for me to interact with people in a casual social way, so I mostly just don't.
I probably come across as a pedant in many cases, but that's not my intent. I just have a hard time intuiting what people mean when it's something other than what they say.
I have to spend a lot of mental energy to get all the social clues and body language and all the things that seems natural to most people. No matter how much effort I put on social interactions people see me as arrogant or pedantic or a plain jerk.
My son is my best friend, and the way he thinks make more sense for me than the rest of mankind.
Too much effort gets the opposite effect. Others feel the interaction forced and weird. I used to be guilty of this too. A more relaxed attitude helps a lot, but is not easy when my mind is optimised to analyse everything...
I can't think of a situation like this where I couldn't intuit the desired answer the authority questioning me was looking for. I've often chosen not to give that answer for various reasons (I can be a prick, usually), but there's never been a situation to my recollection that I've been genuinely stumped.
That's why there are dictionaries of metaphor to help people understand that "raining cats and dogs" just means "raining heavily".
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-Raining-Cats-Dogs-Expressions/dp...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asperger-Dictionary-Everyday-Express...
I actually think the opposite: the more knowledgeable you are in any area, the higher your standards and your interest in details, things that people with lower level of knowledge are not appreciative of and hence not interested in.
As for case of language, I wasn't referring to everyday casual chit chat at lunch or at a party but half serious discussion with people about a mutual area of interest.
As far as I can tell, the person you're responding to hasn't said anything offensive nor criticized anyone, so I can't understand why you're responding with insults and criticism.
And further, it sounds like they understand the situation pretty well, and I doubt your "explanation" is going to help anyone negotiate social interactions more easily by "getting with the program" or whatever.
Also no one mentioned anything about anyone being non-neurotypical before you.
I'm sorry but this is a huge overreaction. The op clearly stated he had a problem with talking to people because of their vagueness implying that the other person was "problematic". By stating the op is problematic instead of the "normal" person he is just stating that he is the source of the problem, not the normal person.
Anyway, there's a slight irony considering we are talking about people taking words to literally.
I said that communication is a problem between me and people who have different backgrounds. Not one single thing about that statement implies that I think it's other people who are problematic. In fact, a two-sided situation can be problematic without either individual side actually being problematic. And in realistic terms, sometimes situations arise that are completely okay, even though both sides are equally problematic.
@aninhumer, it was an insulting use of the word, and I took it as both a misreading of my words and and intentions as well as a personal attack. So I don't think cname was overreacting.
@gkya, I think you are putting some very severe and artificial constraints on the purpose and definition of language. In my opinion language is quite a lot more than a tool for communication. It is, for some examples, a means of mis-communication (sarcasm), a way to communicate nothing (some types of modern abstract poetry), or even a way to talk about itself in ways that no one can possibly understand, i.e. anti-communication (literary criticism comes to minds here.)
But in all seriousness, language can be a lot of different things at different time, just the same way that sometimes paint is just a tool to protect your house from the weather but other times paint is used to creat a work of art.
Music works the same way. Sometimes music is just there as a tool the department store is using to psychologically induce you to buy more things and get out faster. Sometimes music is used to create some of the greatest and most meaningful works of art mankind has ever seen.
Any medium that can be used as "a tool for communication" can be used as something else entirely. And it doesn't necessarily involve communication.
In my opinion, your comment was the least likely interpretation of what I said about my ability to interact with other people. You might want to try reading what I wrote again because, as I mention in my post, I tend to be quite specific about what I say. In case I need to clarify that, when either speaking or writing, I do my best to make sure that no one needs to try to infer anything from what I say.
This is the last I will say on this thread. I didn't mean for it to be about me. I meant to affirm the thoughts and fears of the original article and to add my own thoughts and perspective because the article resonated with me.
That's all.
Follows a refutation of your response to me.
Firstly, you drew a profile, publically, of someone who is so pedantic that they couldn't interact with other people, and I commented on such profile, which incidentally happened to be yours. If you do not want comments on your character, why write about it on HN? And by answering you, I answered you and other people like you, thus commented on the situation itself, rather than your personal phenomenon. I don't know you, I wouldn't bother to attack your personality. You opened it to discussion, and I stated my ideas about it.
Now, on language, the purpose of the language is to communicate some meaning. Sarcasm is used to communicate some meaning to, but the meaning happens to be the opposite of the literal meaning of the words. Even abstract poetry does communicate something. Whether the message is coherent and comprehensible is another discussion. But language _cannot_ be used in a non-communicating manner.
You stated that you avoid social interaction because of others' ambiguous use of language. And I answered you mistake contexts and registers of language. I may have used the word problematic mistakenly--and I'm sorry if I did. English is my L2. But I do support my stance on the situation that you share with many others. I had severe social interaction problems, including those like yours, and one needs to admit them and understand that he is the source of the problem to be able to fix oneself. You may want to continue to be asocial, in which case it's your decision, I have no say, I'm not your psychiatrist. I comment on the situation that you described, that's all.
I appreciate that English is your L2, and I will try to keep that in mind.
But you are still blindly asserting that Language has one and only one purpose, and that it cannot be used for any other. I disagree with that, and I think that you will find that many other artists and philosophers of language disagree.
But let's back off from such a highly charged subject for a moment. Let's consider the case of the lowly hammer.
A hammer has one purpose, right? To drive nails by hitting them. That's all it is supposed to do. Unless it has a claw, in which case, it has a purpose for removing a nail. Or perhaps you can generalize that a hammer has only one purpose: to communicate force to a nail, in some way or another. Possibly in a positive way (to drive the nail into something), possibly in a negative way (to remove a nail from something).
What do you call a hammer that's used in a hammer throwing contest? Something that has nothing to do with nails? It's just people completely outside the context of the normal use of a hammer throwing it as far as they can. Is the hammer being used to communicate force to a nail? No.
What about a hammer being used to destroy the video screen of an authoritarian figure? Again, not the normal communication of force to nail that you would expect.
What you are basically saying is that you can't use a hammer to do anything but hit or pry a nail. And that's simply not true.
Language plays a huge role in communication, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient tool for communication to happen. And it is absolutely possible to use language in ways that are non-communicative.
Let's say I speak only German, and I visit Inuits in the tundra. When I meet them, I quote Rilke on Snow. I am speaking to people who have no knowledge of this language and no hope of understanding it, and I don't care. I am saying the words because the words themselves are beautiful in and of themselves.
There is no communication there. Information has not been transmitted. These are just noises to the Inuit that have no meaning, yet language still preserves a function. We're sort of getting into a tree falling/no one around/sound of one hand clapping/sort of situation, but my point stands, and your baseless assertions do not.
You are claiming, with a lot of arrogance and no evidence, that language can only do one thing: communicate. I don't agree. I think that language can be used for lots of different things, much like a hammer can. If you disagree with this, that's fine, we will have to agree to disagree.
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I do not think I drew a profile of someone who is "so pedantic that I can't interact with other people."
I think there's a difference between me and a pedant, and the difference is what you get out of it. In my opinion, a pedant gets off on showing other people that they are wrong.
In my case, I am just trying to understand what the person said. Much like the author of the original article, I constantly wonder, "What does this question really mean? What does this statement really mean?"
Because my ultimate goal in any social situation is to understand the people I'm interacting with. A pedant is someone who doesn't care what the other person thinks and just wants to go around showing off how smart he or she is.
But a pedant and a thoughtful person can often appear very much alike. Which is a shame.
As far as your last paragraph goes, there's nothing in my original post or in this one that implies anything other than that I am the one with the problem. So your point about me admitting that I have a problem is either moot or, dare I say it, pedantic.
Regardless of how much I disagree with you, I appreciate your willingness to clarify and am giving you an upvote.
The problem is more that they've learned a different set of language cues to most people, because of the social group they frequent.
Edit: There's a reason why top politicians never say unscripted comments.
I'll use a question from the article as an example: "Are you absolutely sure that you will not hurt yourself today?" Now, this is obviously a silly question and what they really ought to want to know is the probability that you'll hurt yourself today or in the near future, so the answer, rather than yes or no, ought to be something like "I have not deliberately hurt myself before, and consider it very unlikely that I will do so in the near or medium-term future." Accompany this with a head-shake in case they don't understand what you said.
Not only does this prevent wacky misunderstandings, but it also acts as a shibboleth, telling the more precise-minded doctors that they can converse more naturally with you. This is a great blessing when it happens.
Why can't nonverbal cues and other contexts also be brought into your estimation? Or perhaps asking for clarity on the question if you really, truly aren't sure what's being asked?
Asking for clarification, rather than answering the wrong question, seems like a superior approach.
The patient is usually, by definition, less able to understand other people.
But it's the professional's job to make themselves understood, and to check the patient's understanding.
Is not x ?
Yes, X is not.
No, X is not.
If it makes you happier to know, it does not exactly make my day to go through blindingly obvious alternatives with people that clearly are capable of inferring them all.
But sure, I see your point, and experience it too with some people that probably would be better working with something else.
I have a coworker like this.
Coworker: "Im going to instantiate an instance of this Class and assign it these values from one of its constructors"
Me: "cool - you made an object. go on..."
- "So logic doesn't apply to this topic, then?"
- "Right, but I have to adjust for the fact that you have a strong incentive to say things like that."
It would feel like neutral spelling out of the facts, and I thought I was being helpful ... but naturally, it doesn't get taken that way and you have to be careful for how it comes across.
It's a gift and a curse, right? Being pedantic is actually welcomed in various fields, including the ones you mentioned, so it sounds like it's working out quite alright.
Casual interaction is hugely overrated anyhow - it's value drops off as you get older, people care about 'hey how are you?' less and less I find.
Finding those few people you really click with is the only tricky part it sounds like - that's just how it is.
I've found 'literal-minded' people to be emotionally closed off to an extreme degree. I theorize that opening up emotionally would help a great deal. The way I did it was through a good friend and alcohol when I was younger - I went from not knowing what to say to being able to blabber about anything in an entertaining manner. The quick mind gives me the ability to be self-amused about the most mundane situations - and that's what my small-talk consists of, making clever observations about the world.
Don't know if that's at all helpful.
Learning to navigate your emotions and finding people and places/routines that work for you is one of the bigger challenges a person faces in his/her lifetime.
The next step is learning to manage other people's emotions and helping them blossom, bringing them out of their shell.
I try to do that to a small extent :)
Instead of being pedantic about language, the psych is being pedantic about protocol.
Mostly people don't want you to propose a solution to a problem they just want someone to listen.
It's a trap because when you really look into it you realise the world isn't absolute, I think most of us could come up with a better tax system for example in theory which looks obvious however when you start to look into it you realise the the real world is messy.
It is a bit like saying WW1 was caused by some archduke getting shot I guess, a lot of humans like simple answers.
The moral given in the podcast is to "tread carefully" when attempting to fix something, because there are often many moving parts which can't immediately be observed.
And sometimes it even works and they get filthily rich.
I completely disagree. Yes, the real world is messy, but it's not that messy. A better tax system would be very easy to come up with, and I can prove it with one word: Europe.
European tax systems are far simpler than the US tax code. This is objectively true, and easy to verify for yourself with a little research (or just talking to someone who lives in Europe). This is despite these countries being generally more socialistic than the US.
So, it's very simple: if countries like Germany and France and Belgium can come up with far simpler tax codes than America, then there's no reason the US can't too.
You're right about your other points, but this was just a terrible example, and completely US-centric and myopic. The US tax code isn't a mess because "the real world is messy", it's a mess because the US has extremely poor governance compared to other developed nations. Most European laugh about our stressing about taxes, and having to hire H&R Block or use TurboTax when we just have a regular W-2 job.
The psychiatrist did what he/she did to cover their own ass. Those questions are mandatory procedure and if someone is potentially going to hurt themselves and you knew and decided 'ah probably not', then it is YOUR fault. Nobody's going to take that chance.
That's simply knowing how the game works - the same way you're supposed to pretend you've gotten along with every workplace you've ever been in during an interview to avoid raising red flags. There are many many more examples of unspoken social rules you simply have to learn.
Being smart has the advantage of having the capacity to catch up and make up for traits you naturally aren't good at. An average person does not have that luxury - if they're born unattractive, they have almost no way to overcome that as one simple example.
There is an awful lot of brainpower dedicated to skills like walking into a party where you know noone, meeting with annoyed customers, or even polite conversation, etc.
What I meant by smart and what I got from the original article is someone who is a systemic thinker who likes to categorize things. That's a very valuable skill.
Learning to get along with people who don't naturally do that (most people) is a skill you can expedite by using systemic thinking and figuring out how emotion-based conversations go :)
Mental health problems exist on wide spectrum of different types of from things like schizophrenia or bipolar or borderline personality disorder through to eating disorder, anxiety disorders, OCD, or depression.
Some of these are very treatable.
People with a mental health problem should be able to seek help from that problem without being inappropriately sent to hospital for an asessment.
In this example the professional could have checked OP's understanding of the question. Modern guidance is to avoid questions like "do you intend to hurt yourself" and ask more direct questions such as "do you self harm?" and "do you have thoughts of suicide? Do you plan to kill yourself?"
A college counsellor is absolutely there to provide treatment and advice for the so-called "mild to moderate" end of mental illness.
I have no idea if OP had those thoughts or not, but it doesn't sound like it.
Works well with doctors as well. Tell them what is wrong with you, so they'll give you the right treatment without jerking you around and wasting your time.
Yeaaah about that, am I the only one concerned about the state of medicine, i.e. diagnosis? There always seems to be a myriad of symptoms that are common between various diseases/conditions. I honestly don't see how to blindly trust doctors.
inb4 edit: I am not saying we shouldn't trust doctors.
And whenever they recommend treatment it's always good to ask "What happens if we don't do this? What happens if we just watch and wait?"
And then you don't do that and spend $1400 in vet bills to find out your bird had a tummy ache. Thanks overly worried girlfriend.
Given that my symptoms matched a host of things and its a 7 to 20 in 100,000 thing that only got caught because a good AE (ER) doc told me to forcefully request an MRI I've learnt which doctors to trust over time.
Also if you have a rare condition don't expect your average doc to know much about it even my specialist (first one) wasn't that up on the latest research (again unsurprising, they are concerned with hundreds of patients, I'm only concerned with one).
Doctors are generally excellent but they are not omniscient and the good ones own it.
The more people are willing to say "I don't know", the higher the likelihood that they are saying what they really believe to be true when they don't.
I'm really hoping some of the people I knew who got into med school will go into research.
Yet I find doctors routinely dispense diagnosis and treatments with very little clarification of their knowledge or certainty on the particular issue at hand. I find they also bristle at efforts for patients to clarify or understand their judgements. I absolutely am NOT the kind of person that wants my doctor to "always convey confidence" even when they are uncertain. I happen to know a thing or two about logical reasoning and diagnostic assessment -- I want the straight truth so I can make the decisions I can.
What is the problem I wonder? As other comment says, I'd love to get a doctor that would just say something like "we don't really know about this one...but we can throw a couple Hail Marys and see what sticks" In some cases that is the most accurate and sensible thing they could say. I sometimes wonder if it is just the doctors I have access to via my regular health insurance. Just like engineers, there must be a distribution of quality among doctors. How do I find the good ones?
I agree that, in a situation with possible adversarial repercussions (e.g. social services), you should be extra-careful; and in the original post the author's fault was that she did not recognize the self-harming question was such a situation. However, resorting to silence does not seem like a practical way to solve any problem -- it works with the police only because someone else (your lawyer) will do the talking for you.
>innumeracy being so widespread, no one would dare put numbers on that sheet of paper. If "amputation" is listed as a consequence with a probability of 0.0001%, patients will run screaming out of the office, crying, "Not my toe! I don't want to lose my toe!"
https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning-risk
>The probability that one of these women [asymptomatic, aged 40 to 50, from a particular region, participating in mammography screening] has breast cancer is 0.8 percent. If a woman has breast cancer, the probability is 90 percent that she will have a positive mammogram. If a woman does not have breast cancer, the probability is 7 percent that she will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a woman who has a positive mammogram. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?
> Eight out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women with breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram. Of the remaining 992 women who don't have breast cancer, some 70 will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a sample of women who have positive mammograms in screening. How many of these women actually have breast cancer?
His point is that it's not just patients who don't know the numbers. Doctors and nurse, who use these numbers every day, also don't understand them.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/17/statistical-literacy-am...
In practice things are not quite as dire as you'd expect, thanks to diagnostic guidelines written with input from people who know about conditional probability.
http://physicshead.blogspot.com/2007/09/feynman-gets-psychia...
http://surelyyouarejokingmrfeynman.blogspot.com/2015/01/uncl...
This has the failure mode that you tell someone what you think is an inconsequential lie, and it turns out to hurt them. Unfortunately, it turns out that it is usually better to err on the side of lying than on the side of being pedantic.
Gauge people's receptiveness to truth-seeking as you get to know them. Actively seek out people whom you can trust to have the patience to listen to more true explanations. If you can do that, you can build for yourself the privilege of lying less severely.
absolute 1. not qualified or diminished in any way; total. 2. viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative.
Whether the therapist meant within a certain context or not, by saying "absolutely sure", she/he precluded that possibility.
So, the therapist did overreact, (and considering it is a routine question in order to determine whether to commit someone, it is a systemic overreaction as well).
Sure: confident in what one thinks or knows; having no doubt that one is right.
So to be 'absolutely sure' means you are totally 100% confident in your thinking, but this does not necessarily mean you are predicting the future. You can be sure of something and still be proven wrong.
The therapist did not say "are you absolutely certain you will not under any circumstances kill yourself", she just asked if in her mind and from her perspective, she had the confidence of not killing herself (regardless of any unforeseen circumstances of say the apocalypse happening).
But besides that, you said that "absolutely" qualifies "sure", which I agree with, and this seems to indicate that you have an idea of what a qualification is. It modifies, or limits something.
Now, let me repeat definition 1 of "absolute": "not qualified or diminished in any way; total".
In your two interpretations:
* "'absolutely sure' means you are totally 100% confident in your thinking, but this does not necessarily mean you are predicting the future", and
* "she just asked if in her mind and from her perspective, she had the confidence of not killing herself (regardless of any unforeseen circumstances of say the apocalypse happening),"
both contain qualifiers.
In the first case you substitute "sure" with "confident in your thinking", but you still qualify it with "but this does not necessarily mean you are predicting the future"
In the second case, you substitute "sure" with just "confident", and then qualify it twice:
* ...if in her mind and from her perspective...
* ...(regardless of any unforeseen circumstances of say the apocalypse happening)...
Finally, in your first post, you said "[the therapist is] asking it within a certain context", which is also a qualification.
It seems to me that you are taking what the therapist said and interpreting in ways your brain can understand without paying precise attention to meaning, as indicated by your substitutions of the word "sure", three separate interpretations (across both posts) and not describing at all how the meaning of the individual words relate to each other, despite your attempt to be "pedantically logical".
Therefore, I think you are a normal person, and do not get where the author is coming from. In the future, I wouldn't be so quick to tear down the ideas of perspectives you do not understand.
These are important questions to revisit from time to time, though. We train ourselves to give the easy answer in social and even medical conversation (or maybe you always knew to do that), but in some situations this is bad. I'm working on projects right now that focus on risk analysis -- focus on identifying and quantifying those outlier events. I now have to train the people I'm working with not to say, oh (I'm 95% sure) we'll be fine! but instead look at how bad things could be if they went bad, and think of all the creative ways things could go bad. I'm finding I have a bit of a talent there ;)
And last, you don't seem to understand that in her/my "academic" circle, this is in fact a common trait. What does academic have to do with communicating, anyway? It has to do with writing papers!
I understand the article was about that, but I guess it gave bad examples. When the therapist asks "are you absolutely sure..", the therapist is not asking to predict the future. She is simply asking if you are 100% confident with your current knowledge, and assuming no unforeseen circumstances, that you will not harm yourself. It's actually logically sound. You can be absolutely sure, because it's qualifying your confidence in YOUR thinking. You can be absolutely sure of something and still be wrong. So the author wasn't even pedantic enough! Regardless, it was easy to simply ask what the therapist meant, and avoid whatever came after. But I guess the author of the article is also not a native English speaker, which I think is really the cause here, not that she's "academic".
This is, unfortunately, very true. Once a few people have decided there is a problem there is often very little you can do about it, confirmation bias will set in and external influences often err on the side of "caution" - do not contradict the current widespread opinion.
You can find it online, the chapter is titled "Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!"
Is trivial not a word normal people use in conversation? Many people I know who are not Mathematicians or even in the STEM fields use this word in casual conversation. And even the ones that don't use it at least know what it means.
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>“Is anyone else concerned about your child’s hearing?” I was about to check “No” when Pink objected: “How would we know that no-one is? We can’t read everyone’s minds.”
So it looks like the author can actually think in a way that is not 100% logically correct. So answering “How could I be sure?” to “Are you absolutely sure that you will not hurt yourself today?” is obviously a bad idea, and was not a result of the author only being able to think and respond in a 100% logical way. She totally brought this on herself.
Just a thought: why is the doctor considered the "normal" one? Just because they're in the majority?
It's certainly possible that the majority is a temporary abberation. Even Homo Sapiens could be considered an abnormal mammal with a pesky, self-defeating, super-sized pre-frontal cortex.
I am now a manager of people. I have discovered that I suck at it. I have discovered that it's because so-called normal people don't talk precisely. They rely on emotions, interpreting the unsaid, and so on, especially in Asia where I am currently located.
I've had a ton of these communication issues with friends, family, co-workers, etc, at various points in my life. I've learned to adjust for other people, and some people have learned to adjust for me. But wow, does it take effort from both sides. If only one side is willing to make an effort to achieve understanding, my experience is that it usually doesn't resolve fully.
One story still rings for me. My family had a condo that we were renting out to people. The tenant moved out, so we were looking for a new tenant. I suggested Craigslist, but my father also wanted to put an ad in the local newspaper website's Classified section. I can't remember the exact cost, but it was ~$200 to put up the ad for a certain amount of time. What the heck. No Dad, let's not do that. Try Craigslist first, see whether you can get a tenant that way that would satisfy you.
Mom hears us arguing, she asks what's going on. I say that Dad wants to pay the newspaper for an ad on their website to find a new tenant. Mom says, "Well, if it's to find a new tenant, why not? Even if it's $300, that's a great idea!" At that point, I threw up my hands and said OK, whatever.
A little while later, Mom receives the credit card bill. She freaks out over this ~$200 charge, why did we pay so much for whatever this thing is? I blew up because she's the one who had said it was OK to pay over $300 if necessary. She was so confused and said, "But that was just an expression! I didn't mean actually pay over $300!" We had a long talk about how to communicate.
And now as a people manager, I discover that I must have this type of conversation every day. It was much easier when I didn't have to deal with ambiguity directly. Before, I could just wash away the ambiguity with detailed requirements documents, contracts, project schedules, knowledge bases, and the like. I am finding that I suck at talking with people. It was much easier when I was a project/program manager or a developer.
It's odd because I was great at talking with people when they're simply my client. I can provide amazing customer service, especially for difficult customers. The dynamic is completely different as a people manager. I think in my previous situations, I was driving the conversation to dig out problem details regarding technical stuff and working towards solutions with others. Much more black and white. Whereas currently, I'm trying to dig out problem details regarding feelings and personality disputes. So not black and white.