Great post thank you for sharing. This attitude seems is very important online where the feedback loop between conversational parters is often an order of magnitude larger or more then when the conversation takes place in person.
Given person A perceives a insult from B in an online form. A’s negative reaction to a perceived insult can grow and take root in the amount of time it takes for B to clarify that no insult was intended. A can experience persisting negative emotions toward B even after it is clear to A on a conscience level that B intended no insult. In person it is often possible to clear these falsely perceived insults more quickly because of the quicker turn around time in the conversation and the high bandwidth communication allowed by the addition of body language and tone of voice.
The harder part in my opinion is communicating to peers the fact they are breaking these rules. In my observations even people who are good at updating on everyday topics have a difficult time updating how they update or changing/discussing their communication methods; many people attach these fundamentally to their definition of themselves and perceive any criticism as an attempt to harm them and react defensively.
Which one if either is do you perceive as more negative/harmful. B says to A.
I think you are wrong on topic T because of X and Y.
I think you are being irrational on topic T because of B and C.
Approach two is more likely to be received negatively, even though approach two helps to correct irrationalities that will often apply equal to many topics not just T, while approach one mainly helps with only topic T. Approach two directly tries to solve the root of the problem, while approach one tries to solve symptoms of the problem. Approach two is preferred in all cases where it is not urgent to come to a conclusion on topic T, when it is thought that person A’s reaction will not be to shut down conversation and approach two does not makes it considerably less likely for A to update.
There must be a good way to frame approach two. How about “I think B and C are causing you to come to wrong conclusions on topic T.”? Or some other way of trying to push the Bad bits to something A perceives as external. “I think B and C are causing you to communicate poorly on topic T.”
“I think B and C are causing you to come to wrong conclusions on topic T.”
This could work if you know them well enough to know what the root causes of the irrationality are. Online however that is often not the case. It is more likely that B and C are just symptoms. In some cases B and C are not evidence of irrationality and B has misperceived them. It does not matter how open B is to correction on the issue though if A reacts negatively to to the statement however.
“I think B and C are causing you to communicate poorly on topic T.”
This is definitely less heavy. Though I have encountered many people who tie themselves too closely to their method of communication and have a hard time updating on it.
When a particular communication style, argument style seems to be the cause of many communication failures and unresolved arguments, two options come to my mind: go for breadth or dig deep. Going for breadth would be taking a new approach or several to get the point across such as the new approaches you offered. Digging deep would be B reducing and defining every part of A’s supposed failing argument style iteratively with A. This would continue until it is clear where the difference in perception lies and weather or not it possible to resolve the issue with the data at hand or if further data is need and perhaps even how to obtain it.
Going for breadth can resolve the argument in one step if you hit one of the right argument out of the near infinite number of incorrect arguments. Being overly optimistic about picking the right argument by going for breadth increases the time it takes to resolve the argument compared to the many step, often tedious dig deep.
Digging deep is surprisingly often shortens the time to resolution when compared to going for breadth. It only works if A and B are will to spend the effort to do so though.
Great post thank you for sharing. This attitude seems is very important online where the feedback loop between conversational parters is often an order of magnitude larger or more then when the conversation takes place in person.
Given person A perceives a insult from B in an online form. A’s negative reaction to a perceived insult can grow and take root in the amount of time it takes for B to clarify that no insult was intended. A can experience persisting negative emotions toward B even after it is clear to A on a conscience level that B intended no insult. In person it is often possible to clear these falsely perceived insults more quickly because of the quicker turn around time in the conversation and the high bandwidth communication allowed by the addition of body language and tone of voice.
The harder part in my opinion is communicating to peers the fact they are breaking these rules. In my observations even people who are good at updating on everyday topics have a difficult time updating how they update or changing/discussing their communication methods; many people attach these fundamentally to their definition of themselves and perceive any criticism as an attempt to harm them and react defensively.
Which one if either is do you perceive as more negative/harmful. B says to A.
I think you are wrong on topic T because of X and Y.
I think you are being irrational on topic T because of B and C.
Approach two is more likely to be received negatively, even though approach two helps to correct irrationalities that will often apply equal to many topics not just T, while approach one mainly helps with only topic T. Approach two directly tries to solve the root of the problem, while approach one tries to solve symptoms of the problem. Approach two is preferred in all cases where it is not urgent to come to a conclusion on topic T, when it is thought that person A’s reaction will not be to shut down conversation and approach two does not makes it considerably less likely for A to update.
There must be a good way to frame approach two. How about “I think B and C are causing you to come to wrong conclusions on topic T.”? Or some other way of trying to push the Bad bits to something A perceives as external. “I think B and C are causing you to communicate poorly on topic T.”
This could work if you know them well enough to know what the root causes of the irrationality are. Online however that is often not the case. It is more likely that B and C are just symptoms. In some cases B and C are not evidence of irrationality and B has misperceived them. It does not matter how open B is to correction on the issue though if A reacts negatively to to the statement however.
This is definitely less heavy. Though I have encountered many people who tie themselves too closely to their method of communication and have a hard time updating on it.
When a particular communication style, argument style seems to be the cause of many communication failures and unresolved arguments, two options come to my mind: go for breadth or dig deep. Going for breadth would be taking a new approach or several to get the point across such as the new approaches you offered. Digging deep would be B reducing and defining every part of A’s supposed failing argument style iteratively with A. This would continue until it is clear where the difference in perception lies and weather or not it possible to resolve the issue with the data at hand or if further data is need and perhaps even how to obtain it.
Going for breadth can resolve the argument in one step if you hit one of the right argument out of the near infinite number of incorrect arguments. Being overly optimistic about picking the right argument by going for breadth increases the time it takes to resolve the argument compared to the many step, often tedious dig deep.
Digging deep is surprisingly often shortens the time to resolution when compared to going for breadth. It only works if A and B are will to spend the effort to do so though.