Kaj_Sotala comments on How my social skills went from horrible to mediocre - Less Wrong

29 Post author: JonahSinick 19 May 2015 11:29PM

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Comment author: 27chaos 20 May 2015 02:35:49AM 1 point [-]

(e) I say something that someone doesn't understand. I think "maybe the person needs more context," and follow up by giving more context. The person still doesn't understand, so I think "ok, I guess I have to give even more context" and so continue in the same direction. In fact, the amount of context that I would need to give for my point to be clear would take ~100 hours to convey, so that what I'm doing is actually not at all productive. The person perceives the situation as

Jonah is totally ignoring the fact that I'm not understanding what I'm saying, and keeps going on and on about the same thing, oblivious to my feelings

because he or she has no way of knowing that I'm explicitly trying to address the fact that the person is uncomfortable about not understanding.

Oh. Well. Oops.

But what alternatives are there? Should I just give up? That seems rude too.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 20 May 2015 05:37:31AM *  1 point [-]

Try to ask questions that probe for the reason they don't understand (rather than assuming you know the reason), see if you can reformulate your point as an analogy that makes sense given their level of knowledge and doesn't require all that context?

(A little hard to answer in general without knowing more specifics of the situation.)

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