Open Thread, June 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

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

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?

It's not a problem for me, in that I enjoy it. Communication is a complex puzzle, and I succeed at it regularly enough to find it rewarding. But I acknowledge that that approach isn't available to everyone.

That said, I think it's a skill worth mastering.

As for how to master it... yeah, that's a great question. The best technique I know of is to make explicit predictions (typically private ones) of other people's reactions, and when they are wrong, pay a lot of attention to exactly how they were wrong... what that tells me about what I thought was true about that person that turns out not to be true.