The knowledge that communication with another brain through words and/or body language is hard. It’s very lossy and almost always the source of error when I think someone has just said something absurd or incomprehensible. I may be ignorant of their train of thought, but that does not mean it’s inherently random.
I use this constantly to quickly identify non-surface-level differing usages of terms, or to tell when I’m interpreting a phrase someone said differently than they mean me to. Latest concrete example: a couple hours ago, when I suggested that a D&D 4e melee was not well supported by the rules at all, and specifically that “what would the DM do?” summed up my objections. My roommate replied that he would do exactly what he always did, which didn’t jive with what I (thought I) was saying, and I immediately knew we were interpreting “melee” in different ways.
Either that’s availability bias, or it comes up very frequently, since the most recent event was mere hours ago. :)
The knowledge that communication with another brain through words and/or body language is hard. It’s very lossy and almost always the source of error when I think someone has just said something absurd or incomprehensible. I may be ignorant of their train of thought, but that does not mean it’s inherently random.
I use this constantly to quickly identify non-surface-level differing usages of terms, or to tell when I’m interpreting a phrase someone said differently than they mean me to. Latest concrete example: a couple hours ago, when I suggested that a D&D 4e melee was not well supported by the rules at all, and specifically that “what would the DM do?” summed up my objections. My roommate replied that he would do exactly what he always did, which didn’t jive with what I (thought I) was saying, and I immediately knew we were interpreting “melee” in different ways.
Either that’s availability bias, or it comes up very frequently, since the most recent event was mere hours ago. :)