Situation: Someone says something totally cuckoo crazy but they are someone I have to cooperate with in order to complete a task or who I have to maintain a good social relationship because we share friends or because they are otherwise cool. Also, the person is not convincible (I hang with hippies, this happens a lot).
Solution: a conspiratory shrug followed by “ehh… who can say, really” or “eh… the world is a strange place” or, if the statement is totally super crazy, just “ehh...”
Examples:
“I switched to a gluten free diet and I think my energy centers really cleared up!”
shrug “ehh… the world is a strange place”
“Why do people say its strange that I named my baby Glutenball? They just don’t understand how gluten symbolizes the glue that holds us all together!”
shrug “ehh… who can say really?”
“9/11 was a conspiracy by the gluten lobby!”
shrug “ehh...”
Seconded! Another phrase (whose delivery might be hard to convey in text) is “Look, I dunno, but anyways...”
Maybe the big idea is to come across as not expressing much interest in the claim, instead of opposing the claim? I think most people are happy to move on with the conversation when they get a “move on” signal, and we exchange these signals all the time.
I also like that this is an honest way to think about: I really am not interested in what I expect will happen with that conversation (even if I am interested in the details of countering your claim.)
Reading comments like this make me feel far better about my relative lack of social life. The things people who have it must go through… I think would rather be confined to my family (thankfully I am married to an intelligent woman) than to have to bite my tongue and not tell idiots that they are idi… well, at least telling them that they are wrong.
Is it a useful model that the enjoyment of having larger social circles comes at the price of frequent tongue-biting and being polite when you feel like doing a dramatic facepalm?
Kind of. Its possible to cultivate a large network of high quality friends but it requires sifting through a large number of low quality non-friends, sometimes people whose low quality is not apparent until a significant investment has been made or a significant amount of friend entanglement has occurred. And you can’t alienate the people you aren’t sure of or already decided you don’t want to promote to good friend status, because then you lose access to their networks and network affects can no longer continually refresh your friend pool and increase your friend quality. Still, I can easily think of 15 high quality friends off the top of my head because I’ve been continually sifting, and that number continues to grow.
I’ve enlarged my social circles, or the set of circles I can comfortably move in, and didn’t end up on that model. I think I originally felt that way a lot, and I worked on the “feeling like doing a dramatic facepalm” by reflecting on it in light of my values. When dramatic face palms aren’t going to accomplish anything good, I examine why I have that feeling and usually I find out it’s because my political brain is engaged even when this isn’t a situation where I’ll get good outcomes from political-style conversation. You can potentially change your feelings so that other responses that you value become natural.
A warning though, it took me a long time to learn how to do this in a manner that didn’t make me feel conflicted. There’s always the danger of “I was nice to the person even after they said X” priming you in a bad way. You could also do even worse than before in terms of your values, simply because you’re inexperienced with the non-facepalm response and do it badly. I think it was worth it for me, but depending on your situation it might be dangerous to mess with.
I agree, and I think this is probably the most effective method, and is generally what “polite” behavior is supposed to be. In etiquette it is considered poor manners to simply tell people, straight to their face, that they are mistaken unless they specifically asked for an honest opinion.
I suspect politeness is the most effective method to deal with ‘people who are totally wrong’ because it is very rare to actually convince someone else they are wrong. It is much easier for people to change their own minds, then have an outsider change it for them.
Here is my favorite method -
Situation: Someone says something totally cuckoo crazy but they are someone I have to cooperate with in order to complete a task or who I have to maintain a good social relationship because we share friends or because they are otherwise cool. Also, the person is not convincible (I hang with hippies, this happens a lot).
Solution: a conspiratory shrug followed by “ehh… who can say, really” or “eh… the world is a strange place” or, if the statement is totally super crazy, just “ehh...”
Examples:
“I switched to a gluten free diet and I think my energy centers really cleared up!” shrug “ehh… the world is a strange place”
“Why do people say its strange that I named my baby Glutenball? They just don’t understand how gluten symbolizes the glue that holds us all together!” shrug “ehh… who can say really?”
“9/11 was a conspiracy by the gluten lobby!” shrug “ehh...”
Seconded! Another phrase (whose delivery might be hard to convey in text) is “Look, I dunno, but anyways...”
Maybe the big idea is to come across as not expressing much interest in the claim, instead of opposing the claim? I think most people are happy to move on with the conversation when they get a “move on” signal, and we exchange these signals all the time.
I also like that this is an honest way to think about: I really am not interested in what I expect will happen with that conversation (even if I am interested in the details of countering your claim.)
Reading comments like this make me feel far better about my relative lack of social life. The things people who have it must go through… I think would rather be confined to my family (thankfully I am married to an intelligent woman) than to have to bite my tongue and not tell idiots that they are idi… well, at least telling them that they are wrong.
Is it a useful model that the enjoyment of having larger social circles comes at the price of frequent tongue-biting and being polite when you feel like doing a dramatic facepalm?
Kind of. Its possible to cultivate a large network of high quality friends but it requires sifting through a large number of low quality non-friends, sometimes people whose low quality is not apparent until a significant investment has been made or a significant amount of friend entanglement has occurred. And you can’t alienate the people you aren’t sure of or already decided you don’t want to promote to good friend status, because then you lose access to their networks and network affects can no longer continually refresh your friend pool and increase your friend quality. Still, I can easily think of 15 high quality friends off the top of my head because I’ve been continually sifting, and that number continues to grow.
I’ve enlarged my social circles, or the set of circles I can comfortably move in, and didn’t end up on that model. I think I originally felt that way a lot, and I worked on the “feeling like doing a dramatic facepalm” by reflecting on it in light of my values. When dramatic face palms aren’t going to accomplish anything good, I examine why I have that feeling and usually I find out it’s because my political brain is engaged even when this isn’t a situation where I’ll get good outcomes from political-style conversation. You can potentially change your feelings so that other responses that you value become natural.
A warning though, it took me a long time to learn how to do this in a manner that didn’t make me feel conflicted. There’s always the danger of “I was nice to the person even after they said X” priming you in a bad way. You could also do even worse than before in terms of your values, simply because you’re inexperienced with the non-facepalm response and do it badly. I think it was worth it for me, but depending on your situation it might be dangerous to mess with.
I agree, and I think this is probably the most effective method, and is generally what “polite” behavior is supposed to be. In etiquette it is considered poor manners to simply tell people, straight to their face, that they are mistaken unless they specifically asked for an honest opinion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness#Techniques_to_show_politeness
I suspect politeness is the most effective method to deal with ‘people who are totally wrong’ because it is very rare to actually convince someone else they are wrong. It is much easier for people to change their own minds, then have an outsider change it for them.