Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

Two stick out:

1. Answering questions fairly literally.

a. "Did you like the salad?" "No, I did not."

b. "Would you like to go to the fine art museum with me and 4 of my friends on Friday night?" "No, I would not like that."

c. Note that I can escape from this pattern only when it's extremely obvious the truthful answer is a bad one.

"Do these jeans make my ass look fat?" "I don't think it's the jeans..." I can avoid those at least...

2. Intentionally filtering out mundane trivia from my brain. "Do you know so-and-so's phone number?" "No, but it's in my phone." "When you left this morning, did you notice if my black gloves were on the counter?" "I would never notice them unless they were on fire or something..."

I wish I could give you more karma on this comment. This sounds just like me and it is hilarious. I also find that people say "You know what I mean" to which I answer "yes". They interpret this as "yes and I agree", but what I really mean is "yes, I hear the words coming out of your mouth, and I believe I understand their meaning".

Along those lines, I find myself increasingly impatient with the verbosity of spoken English. Many times someone will ask me something, and before I even start explaining my reasoning, I think: "is accomplishing this worth the time commitment of explaining it?" ... sometimes it is not, so I simply just say "nevermind".

When it comes to responding to questions, I'm pretty sure this just makes me look rude. When asked about the salad or museum, I'd just reply "No." About the phone number: "Yes" (then I'd look it up in my phone). For the gloves: "Yes" (I tend to remember stuff like that). All the rest just seems extraneous and time-consuming to say, especially when it can be inferred by the listener if they would just think it through.

There could be a correlation between programming and the habits you've pointed out but correlation does not imply causation.

Correlation implies synergism!

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