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Epiphany comments on Preventing discussion from being watered down by an "endless September" user influx. - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: Epiphany 02 September 2012 03:46AM

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Comment author: Epiphany 26 September 2012 06:04:27AM *  0 points [-]

I mean actual thinking, about other peoples' emotions. And changing what you say so that the other person will understand what you're trying to communicate. That part's important! Or to put it another way, in order to communicate as best you can, you must take responsibility for your audience's emotional responses insofar as they affect what happens to your message, which is often a lot.

Yeah, that's worthwhile, and it's an art. I'm not sure how that would even be communicated to people if it were, say, put into the rules or something. It would be nice if that level of quality could be expected but I don't see any way to do that. Do you?

Comment author: Manfred 26 September 2012 06:56:46AM *  0 points [-]

It might be sweet to find some existing experts in teaching people to speak so that they will be understood by people with complicated and relevant internal states.

(Relationship counselors? People who teach autistic people conversation skills? Psychologists who study conversation? Psychologists who study the difference between what the speaker thinks and what the listener thinks?)

Anyhow, maybe teaching people this is a near-solved problem, maybe not (and maaaaybe I'll do some research on this before next time I talk about it :D ). And maybe it's unsolvable. But I'd guess it's solvable - lots of things that seem impossible are really us being bad at the skill that makes it possible.

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