Now, all of that having been said, here’s a counter-question, before we get to kenshō: can you provide an analogous sort of answer, for “having a paranoid delusion” in place of “falling in love”? Does it exist? Does it have any value?
How on Earth is this relevant? I’m really not following you here. What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
Maybe you’re trying to… I don’t know, get even with me for asking something you find absurd? Trying to defeat me in some kind of dual where you think I issued the first challenge? I really don’t know.
In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like. It really does land as a type error to me. But if you could say “Oh, for falling in love, thus-and-such would be ‘cake’”, then I could go “Oh! Okay. Cool! So I think the analogy for kenshō might be XYZ. Does that work for you?” Then we could communicate.
The feel — and I could easily be misreading you here — but the feel I get from you here is like intellectual one-upmanship. Mental fencing.
If that’s the case, please understand that I’m just not available for that. I will not engage with you at that level anymore.
If I’ve misread you, then please clarify what you’re doing. I don’t know how to orient to your tone here. If you meant it collaboratively, then please help me see how. I’d very much like to.
How on Earth is this relevant? I’m really not following you here. What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
Well, if the relevance isn’t obvious, I think it will likely become obvious in the process of answering it. But, if not, I will certainly explain (what I see as) the relevance afterwards, in response to your answer.
In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like.
Indeed, that is also why I asked my counter-question; both to explain, and to understand.
Maybe you’re trying to… I don’t know, get even with me for asking something you find absurd? Trying to defeat me in some kind of dual where you think I issued the first challenge? I really don’t know.
(ETA: I certainly don’t think that your question was absurd. If I did, I’d’ve said so, and not spent effort answering it!)
The feel — and I could easily be misreading you here — but the feel I get from you here is like intellectual one-upmanship. Mental fencing.
If that’s the case, please understand that I’m just not available for that. I will not engage with you at that level anymore.
I really don’t know what you mean by any of this (especially the “anymore” part, but really all of it).
If I’ve misread you, then please clarify what you’re doing. I don’t know how to orient to your tone here.
As I said—the point is to make clear what we’re talking about.
(I don’t think that it’s necessary to “orient to my tone”? In any case, generally speaking, if you assume that I mean just what I say, you won’t go far wrong.)
I really don’t know what you mean by any of this (especially the “anymore” part, but really all of it).
…
(I don’t think that it’s necessary to “orient to my tone”? In any case, generally speaking, if you assume that I mean just what I say, you won’t go far wrong.)
This is actually really clarifying. Thank you.
I now suspect there’s a dimension of communication that’s hyper-salient for me but invisible to you.
I won’t try to convey that maybe invisible-to-you dimension here. I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Instead I’ll try to assume you have no idea what you’re “saying” on that frequency. Basically that you probably don’t mean things they way they implicitly land for me, and that you almost certainly don’t consciously hold the tone I read in what you’re saying.
That’s as close as I can get to assuming that you “mean just what [you] say”. Hopefully that’ll smooth things out between us!
(ETA: I certainly don’t think that your question was absurd. If I did, I’d’ve said so, and not spent effort answering it!)
Okay, cool. Thanks for saying this!
> In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like.
Indeed, that is also why I asked my counter-question; both to explain, and to understand.
I have to admit, I find this very confusing. I’m trying to understand what you mean by “cake”. Maybe you were hoping to go “Here’s ‘cake’ for falling in love. Now you try on this other topic, so I can thumbs-up or thumbs-down that you’ve understood what I mean by ‘cake’.” Is that it?
The thing is, I think I could provide a similar analysis, but I don’t think it’d help me understand at all what you mean by “cake”. That makes me pretty hesitant to spend the time and cognitive effort on producing that kind of matching analysis.
I now suspect there’s a dimension of communication that’s hyper-salient for me but invisible to you.
I won’t try to convey that maybe invisible-to-you dimension here. I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Instead I’ll try to assume you have no idea what you’re “saying” on that frequency. Basically that you probably don’t mean things they way they implicitly land for me, and that you almost certainly don’t consciously hold the tone I read in what you’re saying.
That’s as close as I can get to assuming that you “mean just what [you] say”. Hopefully that’ll smooth things out between us!
Okay, this is perhaps a complete side note, but this feels like a very precise pinpointing of what things like reduced affect and other of the most mysterious autistic communication difficulties can look like from the other (allistic, hyperfocused on emotional expressiveness, or otherwise very sensitive to affect) side.
From the perspective of folk with reduced affect, talking to people who rely strongly on affect, the experience strongly resembles that people they are interacting with are effectively listening to a random word generator rather than what they are saying. It is quite baffling and frustrating; especially since the explicit communication is often very carefully selected to communicate what they are trying to communicate.
So, basically, it’s really good to recognize that this channel of communication can indeed hold random noise sometimes, and be aware of the extent to which you’re focusing on it and the failure modes. (Presumably some of the times people have indeed corrected your perception of them.)
I don’t think reduced affect necessarily corresponds (though might correlate) with an inability to discern things like emotional tone in other people, but it might be a bit trickier depending how much processing mirror neurons tend to handle. (I don’t think anyone knows that, currently.)
I have to admit, I find this very confusing. I’m trying to understand what you mean by “cake”. Maybe you were hoping to go “Here’s ‘cake’ for falling in love. Now you try on this other topic, so I can thumbs-up or thumbs-down that you’ve understood what I mean by ‘cake’.” Is that it?
That would be a side benefit, certainly.
The thing is, I think I could provide a similar analysis, but I don’t think it’d help me understand at all what you mean by “cake”. That makes me pretty hesitant to spend the time and cognitive effort on producing that kind of matching analysis.
It need hardly be much effort. Not even as much as you’ve already spent on the last 2–3 comments in this thread, I’d say!
But if you could say “Oh, for falling in love, thus-and-such would be ‘cake’”
The grandparent provides 700 words of this.
What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
I read it as a warm-up question. Said provided what he considers a cake-like explanation of “falling in love.” The obvious next step would be for him to ask you for an analogous explanation of kenshō. But if that were expected to go poorly, one might be tempted to try asking about something else, like “having a paranoid delusion”, to exercise (or test) your ability to provide cake-like concreteness.
How on Earth is this relevant? I’m really not following you here. What do you hope to gain by having me try to grapple with this weird thing?
Maybe you’re trying to… I don’t know, get even with me for asking something you find absurd? Trying to defeat me in some kind of dual where you think I issued the first challenge? I really don’t know.
In case it’s not clear, the reason I asked you about the “falling in love” thing was to better understand what kind of thing “cake” as you mean it might even look like. It really does land as a type error to me. But if you could say “Oh, for falling in love, thus-and-such would be ‘cake’”, then I could go “Oh! Okay. Cool! So I think the analogy for kenshō might be XYZ. Does that work for you?” Then we could communicate.
The feel — and I could easily be misreading you here — but the feel I get from you here is like intellectual one-upmanship. Mental fencing.
If that’s the case, please understand that I’m just not available for that. I will not engage with you at that level anymore.
If I’ve misread you, then please clarify what you’re doing. I don’t know how to orient to your tone here. If you meant it collaboratively, then please help me see how. I’d very much like to.
Well, if the relevance isn’t obvious, I think it will likely become obvious in the process of answering it. But, if not, I will certainly explain (what I see as) the relevance afterwards, in response to your answer.
Indeed, that is also why I asked my counter-question; both to explain, and to understand.
(ETA: I certainly don’t think that your question was absurd. If I did, I’d’ve said so, and not spent effort answering it!)
I really don’t know what you mean by any of this (especially the “anymore” part, but really all of it).
As I said—the point is to make clear what we’re talking about.
(I don’t think that it’s necessary to “orient to my tone”? In any case, generally speaking, if you assume that I mean just what I say, you won’t go far wrong.)
This is actually really clarifying. Thank you.
I now suspect there’s a dimension of communication that’s hyper-salient for me but invisible to you.
I won’t try to convey that maybe invisible-to-you dimension here. I don’t think that’d be helpful.
Instead I’ll try to assume you have no idea what you’re “saying” on that frequency. Basically that you probably don’t mean things they way they implicitly land for me, and that you almost certainly don’t consciously hold the tone I read in what you’re saying.
That’s as close as I can get to assuming that you “mean just what [you] say”. Hopefully that’ll smooth things out between us!
Okay, cool. Thanks for saying this!
I have to admit, I find this very confusing. I’m trying to understand what you mean by “cake”. Maybe you were hoping to go “Here’s ‘cake’ for falling in love. Now you try on this other topic, so I can thumbs-up or thumbs-down that you’ve understood what I mean by ‘cake’.” Is that it?
The thing is, I think I could provide a similar analysis, but I don’t think it’d help me understand at all what you mean by “cake”. That makes me pretty hesitant to spend the time and cognitive effort on producing that kind of matching analysis.
Okay, this is perhaps a complete side note, but this feels like a very precise pinpointing of what things like reduced affect and other of the most mysterious autistic communication difficulties can look like from the other (allistic, hyperfocused on emotional expressiveness, or otherwise very sensitive to affect) side.
From the perspective of folk with reduced affect, talking to people who rely strongly on affect, the experience strongly resembles that people they are interacting with are effectively listening to a random word generator rather than what they are saying. It is quite baffling and frustrating; especially since the explicit communication is often very carefully selected to communicate what they are trying to communicate.
So, basically, it’s really good to recognize that this channel of communication can indeed hold random noise sometimes, and be aware of the extent to which you’re focusing on it and the failure modes. (Presumably some of the times people have indeed corrected your perception of them.)
I don’t think reduced affect necessarily corresponds (though might correlate) with an inability to discern things like emotional tone in other people, but it might be a bit trickier depending how much processing mirror neurons tend to handle. (I don’t think anyone knows that, currently.)
That would be a side benefit, certainly.
It need hardly be much effort. Not even as much as you’ve already spent on the last 2–3 comments in this thread, I’d say!
The grandparent provides 700 words of this.
I read it as a warm-up question. Said provided what he considers a cake-like explanation of “falling in love.” The obvious next step would be for him to ask you for an analogous explanation of kenshō. But if that were expected to go poorly, one might be tempted to try asking about something else, like “having a paranoid delusion”, to exercise (or test) your ability to provide cake-like concreteness.