1) is this a situation where signaling of agreement is more important than accuracy to the participants? It seems to be at first glance, as I can see no harm to them getting very wrong answers, but some harm to them failing to agree. I think a preferable outcome would have been agreement on an estimate, but also agreement that there’s very low confidence in the estimate.
2) would you post a followup about your friends’ reactions when you tell them how far off you all were? Reaction to being wrong seems important when discussing how to be less so in the future.
3) what will you do differently next time a similar situation arises? The obvious first try would be offering a wager.
I’m curious about the specifics of this situation in trying to figure out the most likely explanation.
Did the two people go to Italy together or separately? Are they romantically involved? If not, is the woman conventionally attractive? And if so, did the exchange roughly fit the pattern of “woman expressing an opinion” and “man agreeing with woman not matter what”?
You don’t remember who one of the two parties in a recent conversation was even though you do remember the details of the conversation well enough to quote it? That’s pretty unusual.
It has happened to me too. I was surprised not that it happened but that it seemed to happen just 2 days after the event occurred and at what was probably the first telling of the story. When it happens to me, it’s generally much later than 2 days and after I’ve told the story at least a couple of times, so that by that point, the decontextualized story is all that remains of the original memories.
1) is this a situation where signaling of agreement is more important than accuracy to the participants? It seems to be at first glance, as I can see no harm to them getting very wrong answers, but some harm to them failing to agree. I think a preferable outcome would have been agreement on an estimate, but also agreement that there’s very low confidence in the estimate.
2) would you post a followup about your friends’ reactions when you tell them how far off you all were? Reaction to being wrong seems important when discussing how to be less so in the future.
3) what will you do differently next time a similar situation arises? The obvious first try would be offering a wager.
Maybe. Maybe the best explanation is that a young man who is truly intelligent, as opposed to merely clever, avoids disagreeing with a young woman.
And in line with that, I don’t plan to tell either of them how far off they were.
(I was pretty close; I thought it was 150 yards tall.)
Did you remember to worry about being primed, even by the absurd 30 feet?
Between worrying about being primed, and trying to update your opinion in response to others’, what are you supposed to do?
I’m curious about the specifics of this situation in trying to figure out the most likely explanation.
Did the two people go to Italy together or separately? Are they romantically involved? If not, is the woman conventionally attractive? And if so, did the exchange roughly fit the pattern of “woman expressing an opinion” and “man agreeing with woman not matter what”?
Separately; not romantically involved (the man is dating someone else); and now I don’t remember who the woman was, so I can’t answer the rest.
You don’t remember who one of the two parties in a recent conversation was even though you do remember the details of the conversation well enough to quote it? That’s pretty unusual.
I’m content-oriented.
Honestly, this happens to me far too often.
It has happened to me too. I was surprised not that it happened but that it seemed to happen just 2 days after the event occurred and at what was probably the first telling of the story. When it happens to me, it’s generally much later than 2 days and after I’ve told the story at least a couple of times, so that by that point, the decontextualized story is all that remains of the original memories.
Me too. It gets especially embarrassing when you end up telling someone a story about a conversation they themselves were involved in.