Success in social interaction is not about holding more things in your head but often about holding less things in your head.
Sounds like we do need to go into the longer conversation.
I view most of these skills are something like the follows: at level 0, you have no clue what’s going on; at level 1, you have a system 2 model of what’s going on that’s too slow / clumsy to operate successfully in real time; at level 2, you have a system 1 model of what’s going on that’s fast and good enough to operate successfully in real time.
Most people go directly from level 0 to level 2, with some level 1 help. Most language speakers don’t have an abstract grammatical model of their language in their heads, some constructions “just look weird” or don’t come to mind, and they often can’t articulate rules even if they use them correctly.
For example, in English, why is something “harder” instead of “more hard”? Why is it “more difficult” instead of “difficulter”?* (This came to mind because my mother is teaching ESL classes and had been surprised that there was a simple underlying rule, which I could not successfully identify before the question was spoiled, even though for any particular word I could correctly determine whether ‘more’ or ‘er’ was appropriate.)
But there are situations where it seems better to go through level 1. If you’re teaching someone a second language, for example, they’re much more likely to be able to make use of abstractly stated grammatical rules than children are. If someone has already been a child and yet not developed a ‘normal’ level of social intelligence, then the normal approach is inadequate, and we need to consider alternatives.
When developing those alternatives, it’s worth noting that the right approach for going from level 0 to level 1 (learning more grammatical rules into system 2) is different from the right approach for going from level 1 to level 2 (practicing the grammatical rules into system 1). So yes, someone who is at level 1 would not get much out of holding more things in their head, but someone who is at level 0 would.
(To elaborate even further, I think someone at level 0 probably has some feature of their personality / communication style at a fundamental enough level of their model that they won’t generate hypotheses that contradict it, and thus large parts of human interactions will be fundamentally mysterious to them. The point of reading about personality styles and communication styles and so on is that it generates alternative hypotheses at that level—many ‘nerds’ do not realize that there are people out there who interpret statements as about relationship closeness instead of as about factual accuracy, and pointing that out to them is the fastest way to level up their interaction ability.)
* Single syllable adjectives get an “er” or “est,” multi-syllable adjectives get a “more” or “most,” at least most of the time.
I think the problem is that you ignore the physiological effect of being in your head and how it makes people less likely to want to engage in social interaction with you.
A problem that is about not being in contact with one’s emotions is not helped by having concept with you can use to label the person with whom you are interacting.
The point of reading about personality styles and communication styles and so on is that it generates alternative hypotheses at that level—many ‘nerds’ do not realize that there are people out there who interpret statements as about relationship closeness instead of as about factual accuracy, and pointing that out to them is the fastest way to level up their interaction ability.
I don’t think that it’s useful to people into the bracket of caring about relationship closeness and people who care about factual accuracy. Depending on the context of the conversation the same person will focus on a different layer of the communicatoin.
Schulz von Thun’s model describe the issue well. You don’t need to put people into categories for that.
I think that page oversimplifies the rule for constructing comparative forms. One-syllable adjectives definitely take suffixes and three-syllable adjectives take words, but two syllable adjectives are difficult. I think this page is largely correct. For two syllable adjectives, some terminal syllables (-y, -le) require suffixes and some (-ing, -ed, -ful, -less) require words. The rest are OK either way (quieter, more quiet).
This rule is incomplete. Most two-syllable adjectives ending in “y” can be converted to comparative form with “er”. Some of these may be uncommon, but not all, and my spell checker agrees they are real words, in both British and American English.
Eg. Angrier, heavier, cleverer, friendlier, happier, lazier, tidier, etc.
And even three syllable words can take “er”: bubblier, foolhardier, jitterier, slipperier, many words starting with “un”.
Sounds like we do need to go into the longer conversation.
I view most of these skills are something like the follows: at level 0, you have no clue what’s going on; at level 1, you have a system 2 model of what’s going on that’s too slow / clumsy to operate successfully in real time; at level 2, you have a system 1 model of what’s going on that’s fast and good enough to operate successfully in real time.
Most people go directly from level 0 to level 2, with some level 1 help. Most language speakers don’t have an abstract grammatical model of their language in their heads, some constructions “just look weird” or don’t come to mind, and they often can’t articulate rules even if they use them correctly.
For example, in English, why is something “harder” instead of “more hard”? Why is it “more difficult” instead of “difficulter”?* (This came to mind because my mother is teaching ESL classes and had been surprised that there was a simple underlying rule, which I could not successfully identify before the question was spoiled, even though for any particular word I could correctly determine whether ‘more’ or ‘er’ was appropriate.)
But there are situations where it seems better to go through level 1. If you’re teaching someone a second language, for example, they’re much more likely to be able to make use of abstractly stated grammatical rules than children are. If someone has already been a child and yet not developed a ‘normal’ level of social intelligence, then the normal approach is inadequate, and we need to consider alternatives.
When developing those alternatives, it’s worth noting that the right approach for going from level 0 to level 1 (learning more grammatical rules into system 2) is different from the right approach for going from level 1 to level 2 (practicing the grammatical rules into system 1). So yes, someone who is at level 1 would not get much out of holding more things in their head, but someone who is at level 0 would.
(To elaborate even further, I think someone at level 0 probably has some feature of their personality / communication style at a fundamental enough level of their model that they won’t generate hypotheses that contradict it, and thus large parts of human interactions will be fundamentally mysterious to them. The point of reading about personality styles and communication styles and so on is that it generates alternative hypotheses at that level—many ‘nerds’ do not realize that there are people out there who interpret statements as about relationship closeness instead of as about factual accuracy, and pointing that out to them is the fastest way to level up their interaction ability.)
* Single syllable adjectives get an “er” or “est,” multi-syllable adjectives get a “more” or “most,” at least most of the time.
I think the problem is that you ignore the physiological effect of being in your head and how it makes people less likely to want to engage in social interaction with you.
A problem that is about not being in contact with one’s emotions is not helped by having concept with you can use to label the person with whom you are interacting.
I don’t think that it’s useful to people into the bracket of caring about relationship closeness and people who care about factual accuracy. Depending on the context of the conversation the same person will focus on a different layer of the communicatoin.
Schulz von Thun’s model describe the issue well. You don’t need to put people into categories for that.
I think that page oversimplifies the rule for constructing comparative forms. One-syllable adjectives definitely take suffixes and three-syllable adjectives take words, but two syllable adjectives are difficult. I think this page is largely correct. For two syllable adjectives, some terminal syllables (-y, -le) require suffixes and some (-ing, -ed, -ful, -less) require words. The rest are OK either way (quieter, more quiet).
This rule is incomplete. Most two-syllable adjectives ending in “y” can be converted to comparative form with “er”. Some of these may be uncommon, but not all, and my spell checker agrees they are real words, in both British and American English.
Eg. Angrier, heavier, cleverer, friendlier, happier, lazier, tidier, etc. And even three syllable words can take “er”: bubblier, foolhardier, jitterier, slipperier, many words starting with “un”.