Comment by paskozdilar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paskozdilar | Hacker News Reader

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I remember a conversation with a dear friend of mine. I was studying CS at the time, he was studying Philosophy.

We went into a discussion over some esoteric topics, and we got stuck on a definition of a word, so I asked him "but how do we know what exactly does [the word] mean?", to which in response he paused, looked me in the eye, and just said:

    It means whatever the hell we agree it means.

That sentence has been with me ever since. For some reason, my whole life before that moment, I've had a feeling that words have some definite meaning that we can somehow learn. Only then did I realize how language actually works - every word is just an agreement between humans.

Ever since I've been spending a lot of time learning how to communicate effectively. I believe that a lot of bad things in the world happen simply because of miscommunication of ideas - more precisely, not being in agreement to what some words mean, while using them in discussions, assuming the other person has exactly the same understanding of the word as we do.

Nowdays, in discussions, when I feel that there's "something wrong" in the air, I tend to ask people "what do you mean by X" and some people get annoyed by it. But the number of times I've defused a conflict that way, by revealing it to be pure misunderstanding, makes it worth it.

There's a discipline of communication called, Nonviolent Communication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7TONauJGfc It talks about communication via emotions, vs thoughts. I would suggest taking a look.

This is great. So many ideas that I've had cooking in the background of my mind are crystallized and presented clearly in that video. Thank you for this.

This becomes apparent when studying another language as well. Words don't map cleanly because, ultimately, definitions are arbitrary and decided by tradition and shared understanding.

I still had problems with this, though, because I took the "assuming the other person has exactly the same understanding of the word as we do" to the other extreme and got pedantic in my conversation, frequently side-tracking to explain every important concept.

Since I read Conscious Business, I've changed to more of what you describe and only detour when we seem to be butting heads on something unexpected.

Yeah it’s interesting how much people unknowingly fight over semantics.

> Ever since I've been spending a lot of time learning how to communicate effectively

How exactly do you learn this?

> How exactly do you learn this?

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer to this. My learning process is somewhat chaotic and random. Reading analytic philosophy and psychology definitely gave me important insights.

However, the method I've found works the best is try to imagine society as a system, and humans as processes in the system. Every human has their own will, and they decide what they will or will not do. Nobody owes anyone anything, so every human protocol relies on the will of the other person to follow the protocol with us. So the most important question for any kind of communication is "how do we get the other person to do what we want?".

This may sound selfish, but is (in my experience) more efficient than trying to read minds or conform to some abstract authority of how we should act, then being mad at other people when they act the way that doesn't fit the abstract authority. Even more, it makes dealing with you easier for other people, which makes other people like you more.

If what you say is true, would that mean you view human interaction as a series of manipulation games?

In a way, yes.

However, we need to know what we mean by "manipulation" here. Manipulation, in colloquial usage, refers to the act of deceiving others, and often causing harm, in order to achieve some selfish desire.

In general, "manipulation" as "human interaction" does not require malice (malice, in my experience, leads to extremely poor manipulation tactics, as humans are not stupid, and will realize what you're doing and retaliate).

E.g. when you're encouraging a friend to call a girl he likes by telling him about all the good things that may come out of it, you're manipulating him - you're telling him things that will affect his feelings in a way that will make him do what you want, i.e. call the girl. In this particular case, this kind of manipulation is actually benevolent.

Human beings can and do influence each others' feelings using words all the time. Most of the time, that influence is subconscious, and often it is harmful. Being aware of how your words and actions influence other people - i.e. knowing how to manipulate people - is a tool, and just like any other tool, it can be used for both good and evil (of course, "good" and "evil" are always subjectively defined, but you can take any measure you want and you will always be able to use manipulation for either).

I don't like using the word "manipulation" because of the above reasons. I prefer the more Wittgenstein-ian term "wordplay", because that's all it is - just playing with words in some contexts that we're familiar with, which we know will make stuff happen.

I learned the mechanics of this from Conscious Business [1]. The point of view is in business, but you can transfer all of these lessons to personal communication too.

Fighting over semantics is like negotiation or discussions on 'alignment' in business. Ensuring you're talking about the same thing by ensuring you have a common point of understanding and purpose in the discussion.

[1] https://www.embracepossibility.com/blog/conscious-business-h...

For me, simply spending time with a Philosophy graduate in, and having these exact sorts of discussions around language quite frequently has had the effect of encouraging me to constantly question how efficiently I'm communicating (at times, to detriment).

On a more basic level however, logical sentence structure is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_form

I found the book Nonviolent Communication helped me a lot to improve my style of communication.

It helped reinforce the importance of listening and communicating in a way that the other person knows they’ve been listened to. How to change the framing of what I’m saying so the other person doesn’t feel like they’re being attacked.

Maybe some of this stuff is obvious/natural to some people. But for the rest of us are this book is a good place to start.

In lots of ways?

Good spelling, grammar, and syntax, for example are basic prerequisites (and many people have margins for improvement).

An expanded and more precise vocabulary is also important. For this you can make an effort of looking up dictionary definitions (especially for any word you're not 100% clear on its meaning), read technical, historical, and philosophical dictionaries (those are special-purpose dictionaries, as opposed to a generic one).

Reading (widely accepted as) good prose and non-fiction also helps pick up ways to structure your own communication.

Reading books on writing (e.g. "On writing well", "The elements of style") will also help.

Learning a second language also makes more evident all kinds of internal language workings and subleties that monolingual people often ignore or take for granted.

And, of course, practice (talking to people, speaking publicly, writing a blog, etc.) makes perfect...

>How exactly do you learn this?

In some graduate programs, Getting to Yes[0] is the first book of the first semester. But isn't this book about negotiation, you might ask?[1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes [1]https://gfycat.com/likableglitteringaldabratortoise-keanu-re...

I get this epiphany every time I start driving on a particular side of the road!

That tends to be a short-lived kind of epiphany.

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