To put it another way, communicating through speech is much higher bandwidth.
Agreed that speech has higher bandwidth; but (to me at least) it seems to also have a much lower signal to noise ratio.
But I’m surprised you take anything else as an affront.
I don’t, in general. Circumstances matter and I don’t find people talking to me offensive in itself, even though it’s not my preferred form.
I do take it as an affront when I go to considerable effort to be clear about something important, to answer possible questions, to describe alternative options, and the recipient says, in essence: “tl;dr.” This forces me to pay the mental cost of articulation twice, for a worse result, and interrupts whatever else I was doing at the time. The effect is especially bad in my profession because many computer tools do not lend themselves to precise verbal description, and a misheard command can be the difference between getting the expected outcome and ending up with a completely hosed system. This sort of thing is why I say IT folks should know better. I think doctors write down prescription instructions for about the same reason. Small mistakes matter. Heading them off is often the explicit reason I’m communicating in writing in the first place.
Agreed that speech has higher bandwidth; but (to me at least) it seems to also have a much lower signal to noise ratio.
I don’t, in general. Circumstances matter and I don’t find people talking to me offensive in itself, even though it’s not my preferred form.
I do take it as an affront when I go to considerable effort to be clear about something important, to answer possible questions, to describe alternative options, and the recipient says, in essence: “tl;dr.” This forces me to pay the mental cost of articulation twice, for a worse result, and interrupts whatever else I was doing at the time. The effect is especially bad in my profession because many computer tools do not lend themselves to precise verbal description, and a misheard command can be the difference between getting the expected outcome and ending up with a completely hosed system. This sort of thing is why I say IT folks should know better. I think doctors write down prescription instructions for about the same reason. Small mistakes matter. Heading them off is often the explicit reason I’m communicating in writing in the first place.
Looks to be a subtype of the general observation that whoever can establish her authority in an argument wins.