Open Thread, June 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.

Regarding your most immediate pain point... if there's a way around that, I don't know it. Humans are complicated, understanding natural language requires a huge amount of pre-existing knowledge, and understanding it well enough to carry on a conversation requires building some sort of model of my interlocutor. I recognize that this is a more difficult task for some people than others, and that this is essentially unfair.

Well if there's not a work around, there are coping strategies, surely. Here's what I do {idealization}:

Ignore most of it
Wait until something catches my attention. Something worth thinking about or responding to
Try to think what to say and hope/dream-on that there's a way to fit it into the conversation by the time I figured it out.

(Let's see, how can I reverse what you did to me, on you?)

TheOtherDave, is coping with the complexity of communication a problem for you? If so, how do you deal with it? What would you recognize as a step forward on this point? And where do we go / who do we go to to get help on this?