I have an explicit mode and tone of conversation where, by design and by having warned the people around me beforehand of the existence of this mode, the only subtext is:
“If you perceive any other subtext than this one, it’s almost certainly your imagination, and if after verification it so happens to be the one-in-a-hundred where I really was sending some other subtext, punch me. But if you accuse me of something based on some intent or subtext which was not there, I will punch you instead.”
Sometimes, I am saying the above explicitly, for which the subtext is usually “I am serious and I will really punch you or implement some other stringent and severe form of punishment, or failing that cut all further contact and interaction with you ever, if you do not take this seriously.”
Incidentally, once I’ve said the first I can then say the second explicitly, where the subtext for the latter will be the former and the subtext for the former will be the latter! We have a circular reference that can be initiated from outside and closed from inside!
It seems I have found a loophole in the no-free-explicit-message principle.
You personally? You shouldn’t. You should also not trust my words that you shouldn’t read into my description of a potential action I sometimes take the subtext that I would want you to act as if I were saying those words to you now, if you are not so inclined. There’s no reason you should in particular.
In other words, I use this trick for helping my friends understand that I don’t want them misreading my intent and inventing subtext when I am explicitly doing everything I can to communicate only explicit information. It is assumed a priori that said friends will believe me enough to at least take this at face value and trust my efforts, at the very least.
What seems so hard? I just have a method for setting up a rule with my friends where, when the rule is active, we should not be reading any subtext into eachothers’ words, because doing so will usually be detrimental and stupid, with common knowledge that the words we say will be said as if humans were incapable of reading subtext, and thus any subtext “read” will be at best a gross perversion of the actual speaker’s intent / qualities.
Okay. I’m not sure my friends or circles have the same default assumptions about the violence level of the kind of punch someone promises to give a friend if said friend does something stupid.
It may also be worth noting, and omitting this may have been a mistake on my part, that I’m referring especially to intentional subtext (which is the only definition I was using “subtext” for). Things like “This guy probably had trouble with people misinterpreting his intentions due to bad phrasing before” are true, are easily inferred from the grandparent’s words, and aren’t part of the communication—they are inferences based on the evidence presented (the fact that I pinpoint that to talk about in the first place instead of any of the million other things I could talk about).
Some seem to be counting this “inference based on what the other said” as direct subtext in all cases. Is there permanently the subtext “I am a human and I will not catch on fire in the next [0..inf] seconds and I will not eat a train and I will not eat a bear and I will not [...]” in every single sentence I say, just because of the way I say it and it is true that these things can be inferred (trivially) from the conversation?
So the inclusion of every little unintentional, collateral, inferable (?) detail as “subtext” kind of baffles me.
The technique in the grandparent successfully, in all cases I’ve tried, prevents all the instances and sorts of misunderstandings generally attributable to someone reading from “subtext” some sort of “reason”, “motive” or “intention” in my words or behavior that was not there, in fact and in hindsight.
So no, I don’t want them to pretend not to notice subtexts. I want them to stop assuming that there is a subtext!Motive/HiddenIntent. Of course if they entirely mistrusts the words in the grandparent, this will not work. That’s why I don’t even try on people who don’t trust me.
Okay. I’m not sure my friends or circles have the same default assumptions about the violence level of the kind of punch someone promises to give a friend if said friend does something stupid.
It’s almost as if your friends are able to read subtext and infer what you actually mean rather than take your explicit threat of assault literally. That sounds like a terribly useful and generally applicable social skill for them to have that has the potential to greatly simplify their social experience.
So wedrifid!”read_subtext” == Make any inference on the specific intended communicative meaning of a Label (AKA “word”) when the specific real-world meaning of the label or sentence is ambiguous or unspecified
Oh wow, it’s almost like I wedrifid!”read_subtext” on the comment you just made!
Thanks for arguing about definitions without mentioning my point.
In order to distinguish intentional subtext from subtext, the listener has to make a very fine judgement about your intent. That is a very noisy thing to communicate.
How do you avoid the “I am a violent person” subtext along with the “I am masochistic” subtext, while explicitly and implicitly threatening to punch people and telling them to punch you?
Yes, it is, when the punch is relatively benign, weak and as non-violent as any punch can get, yet I promised to punch them if they read such subtexts and I did when they did.
But that’s entirely irrelevant. I think we weren’t using the word “subtext” with remotely the same subtext at all. See my other response here for more details on what I assumed we were talking about.
Yeah, I was including the entire band of communication that isn’t in the words, not just the intentional part. There are messages sent entirely within the unintentional subtext, especially messages about the emotional state and perceived social status of the speaker. Those messages are important to most social groups, and I don’t think typical LW meetup participants can avoid receiving those messages, even when they don’t want to.
I have an explicit mode and tone of conversation where, by design and by having warned the people around me beforehand of the existence of this mode, the only subtext is:
“If you perceive any other subtext than this one, it’s almost certainly your imagination, and if after verification it so happens to be the one-in-a-hundred where I really was sending some other subtext, punch me. But if you accuse me of something based on some intent or subtext which was not there, I will punch you instead.”
Sometimes, I am saying the above explicitly, for which the subtext is usually “I am serious and I will really punch you or implement some other stringent and severe form of punishment, or failing that cut all further contact and interaction with you ever, if you do not take this seriously.”
Incidentally, once I’ve said the first I can then say the second explicitly, where the subtext for the latter will be the former and the subtext for the former will be the latter! We have a circular reference that can be initiated from outside and closed from inside!
It seems I have found a loophole in the no-free-explicit-message principle.
When you say “If you perceive any other subtext than this one, it’s almost certainly your imagination”, why should I believe you?
You personally? You shouldn’t. You should also not trust my words that you shouldn’t read into my description of a potential action I sometimes take the subtext that I would want you to act as if I were saying those words to you now, if you are not so inclined. There’s no reason you should in particular.
In other words, I use this trick for helping my friends understand that I don’t want them misreading my intent and inventing subtext when I am explicitly doing everything I can to communicate only explicit information. It is assumed a priori that said friends will believe me enough to at least take this at face value and trust my efforts, at the very least.
What seems so hard? I just have a method for setting up a rule with my friends where, when the rule is active, we should not be reading any subtext into eachothers’ words, because doing so will usually be detrimental and stupid, with common knowledge that the words we say will be said as if humans were incapable of reading subtext, and thus any subtext “read” will be at best a gross perversion of the actual speaker’s intent / qualities.
I’m not sure intimidating people with threats of violence to make them pretend not to notice a subtext is actually a “loophole” as such.
Okay. I’m not sure my friends or circles have the same default assumptions about the violence level of the kind of punch someone promises to give a friend if said friend does something stupid.
It may also be worth noting, and omitting this may have been a mistake on my part, that I’m referring especially to intentional subtext (which is the only definition I was using “subtext” for). Things like “This guy probably had trouble with people misinterpreting his intentions due to bad phrasing before” are true, are easily inferred from the grandparent’s words, and aren’t part of the communication—they are inferences based on the evidence presented (the fact that I pinpoint that to talk about in the first place instead of any of the million other things I could talk about).
Some seem to be counting this “inference based on what the other said” as direct subtext in all cases. Is there permanently the subtext “I am a human and I will not catch on fire in the next [0..inf] seconds and I will not eat a train and I will not eat a bear and I will not [...]” in every single sentence I say, just because of the way I say it and it is true that these things can be inferred (trivially) from the conversation?
So the inclusion of every little unintentional, collateral, inferable (?) detail as “subtext” kind of baffles me.
The technique in the grandparent successfully, in all cases I’ve tried, prevents all the instances and sorts of misunderstandings generally attributable to someone reading from “subtext” some sort of “reason”, “motive” or “intention” in my words or behavior that was not there, in fact and in hindsight.
So no, I don’t want them to pretend not to notice subtexts. I want them to stop assuming that there is a subtext!Motive/HiddenIntent. Of course if they entirely mistrusts the words in the grandparent, this will not work. That’s why I don’t even try on people who don’t trust me.
It’s almost as if your friends are able to read subtext and infer what you actually mean rather than take your explicit threat of assault literally. That sounds like a terribly useful and generally applicable social skill for them to have that has the potential to greatly simplify their social experience.
So wedrifid!”read_subtext” == Make any inference on the specific intended communicative meaning of a Label (AKA “word”) when the specific real-world meaning of the label or sentence is ambiguous or unspecified
Oh wow, it’s almost like I wedrifid!”read_subtext” on the comment you just made!
Thanks for arguing about definitions without mentioning my point.
In order to distinguish intentional subtext from subtext, the listener has to make a very fine judgement about your intent. That is a very noisy thing to communicate.
How do you avoid the “I am a violent person” subtext along with the “I am masochistic” subtext, while explicitly and implicitly threatening to punch people and telling them to punch you?
By punching them for reading those subtexts in a context where it was clear that reading such subtexts was entirely their own mistake.
Right. Because punching people is an effective way to contradict the subtext that you are prone to violence.
Yes, it is, when the punch is relatively benign, weak and as non-violent as any punch can get, yet I promised to punch them if they read such subtexts and I did when they did.
But that’s entirely irrelevant. I think we weren’t using the word “subtext” with remotely the same subtext at all. See my other response here for more details on what I assumed we were talking about.
Yeah, I was including the entire band of communication that isn’t in the words, not just the intentional part. There are messages sent entirely within the unintentional subtext, especially messages about the emotional state and perceived social status of the speaker. Those messages are important to most social groups, and I don’t think typical LW meetup participants can avoid receiving those messages, even when they don’t want to.