Thanks for the thorough reply! I’m often in the position of making comments like “where do you get these beliefs” (at least, judging by the responses I get) and (honestly) responding that the offended party was reading too much into an innocent remark meant in good humor. I usually try to dissect the thing after to figure out what went wrong.
It didn’t occur to me that ‘belief’ might have weird connotations since I usually mean it in the purely epistemic sense; a different phrasing might be ‘putative knowledge’ which sounds much less nice to me. It seems someone dubious about your assertion’s value might even have to call it ‘putative information’ rather than ‘information’, so I’m not sure that helps much.
Also, ‘you’ didn’t strike me as odd since it was directed at you, and the question certainly wasn’t about where some other person got their beliefs. That said, my wife complains about my use of pronouns like that regularly. For example, I might say “your car”, “my car”, or “our car” interchangeably with no particular intent since they unambiguously refer to the same car, but she will read something into particularly “your car” so I’ve been on my guard about the pronoun “you” lately. On even more of a tangent, I wonder if this relates to uncomfortableness about the various pronouns for ‘you’ in Japanese language.
Did you study how to unpack these things, or is this one of those things that goes with being neurotypical?
Reminds me of the constant teasing my wife and I trade about “your kids” and “my kids”. Denotationally the same, but the connotations of the possessive are quite strong.
Study—no, at least no more than you could say I’ve studied language in general and how we do things with words. Maybe more sensitive to “these things” than is typical.
It didn’t occur to me that ‘belief’ might have weird connotations since I usually mean it in the purely epistemic sense; a different phrasing might be ‘putative knowledge’ which sounds much less nice to me. It seems someone dubious about your assertion’s value might even have to call it ‘putative information’ rather than ‘information’, so I’m not sure that helps much.
One of my mentors once suggested “So, what led you to that conclusion?” as a relatively neutral way to probe the origin of a belief, without connoting disbelief or disagreement.
Thanks for the thorough reply! I’m often in the position of making comments like “where do you get these beliefs” (at least, judging by the responses I get) and (honestly) responding that the offended party was reading too much into an innocent remark meant in good humor. I usually try to dissect the thing after to figure out what went wrong.
It didn’t occur to me that ‘belief’ might have weird connotations since I usually mean it in the purely epistemic sense; a different phrasing might be ‘putative knowledge’ which sounds much less nice to me. It seems someone dubious about your assertion’s value might even have to call it ‘putative information’ rather than ‘information’, so I’m not sure that helps much.
Also, ‘you’ didn’t strike me as odd since it was directed at you, and the question certainly wasn’t about where some other person got their beliefs. That said, my wife complains about my use of pronouns like that regularly. For example, I might say “your car”, “my car”, or “our car” interchangeably with no particular intent since they unambiguously refer to the same car, but she will read something into particularly “your car” so I’ve been on my guard about the pronoun “you” lately. On even more of a tangent, I wonder if this relates to uncomfortableness about the various pronouns for ‘you’ in Japanese language.
Did you study how to unpack these things, or is this one of those things that goes with being neurotypical?
Reminds me of the constant teasing my wife and I trade about “your kids” and “my kids”. Denotationally the same, but the connotations of the possessive are quite strong.
Study—no, at least no more than you could say I’ve studied language in general and how we do things with words. Maybe more sensitive to “these things” than is typical.
One of my mentors once suggested “So, what led you to that conclusion?” as a relatively neutral way to probe the origin of a belief, without connoting disbelief or disagreement.
[citation needed]