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Well, the one I'm actually proposing doesn't, but I guess you mean the others do. I'm not sure they exactly do, though I certainly didn't make any effort to frame them in tactfully respect-maximizing terms; in any case, it's certainly not far off to say they all imply disrespect. I agree that there are situations in which you can't explain something without preparation without any disrespect to the other guy being called for; but that's because what happened was
rather than, say,
When what happens is that you begin by making your argument and then start saying: nope, you didn't understand it -- and when your reaction to a good-faith attempt at dealing with the alleged misunderstanding is anything other than "oh, OK, let me try to explain more clearly" -- I think it does imply something like disrespect; at least, as much like disrespect as those options I listed above. Because what you're saying is: you had something to say that you thought was appropriate for your audience, and not the sort of thing that needed advance warning that it was extra-subtle; but now you've found that I don't understand it and (you at least suspect) I'm not likely to understand it even if you explain it.
That is, it means that something about me renders me unlikely -- even when this is locally the sole goal of the discussion, and I have made it clear that I am prepared to go to substantial lengths to seem mutual understanding -- to be able to understand this thing that you want to say, and that you earlier thought was a reasonable thing to say without laying a load of preparatory groundwork.
See above for why I haven't considered it likely; the reason I haven't (given that) addressed it is that there's never time to address everything.
If there is a specific hypothesis in this class that you would like us to entertain, perhaps you should consider saying what it is.
No, it presupposes that it could be wrong. (I would say it carries less presumption that it's wrong than your last several comments in this thread carry presumption that it's right.) The idea is: It could be wrong, in which case giving it a go will bring immediate benefit; it could be wrong but we could be (mutually) reasonable enough to see that it's right when we give it a go and that doesn't work, in which case giving it a go will get us past the meta-level stuff about whether I'm likely to be unable to understand. Or, of course, it could go the other way.
When one is suspected, look at it up close and see whether it really is one. Which, y'know, is what I'm suggesting here.
What I was hoping to know, in the first instance, is what I have allegedly misunderstood in what you wrote before. You know, where you said things of the form "your description doesn't even contain my actual reason for saying X" -- which I took, for reasons that still look solid to me, to indicate that you had already given your actual reason.
If the only way for you to explain all my serious misunderstandings of what you wrote is for you to write an effortful lengthy essay about your general view ... well, I expect it would be interesting. But on the face of it that seems like more effort than it should actually take. And if the reason why it should take all that effort is that, in essence, I have (at least in your opinion) understood so little of your position that there's no point trying to correct me rather than trying again from scratch at much greater length then I honestly don't know why you're still in this discussion.
I am happy to answer questions. I've had it pretty much up to here (you'll have to imagine a suitable gesture) with meta-level discussion about what either of us may or may not be capable of understanding, though, so if the questions you want to ask are about what you think of me or what I think of you or what I think you think I think you think I am capable of understanding, then let's give that a miss.
I suppose I could have said “so I have a rather complicated and subtle argument to make. I would have to begin with some preliminaries and it would end up being kinda long and take a lot of work, so I’m not sure it’s worth it unless you really want to hear it”, and in a lot of ways I expect that would have gone better. I probably will end up doing this next time.
However in a couple key ways, it wouldn’t ha... (read more)