A lot of people automatically form images in their mind if you tell them something to process the thought.
...oh.
recalls times he has told single female friends he was going to take a shower of vice versa; lots of times
considers searching Facebook chat log for words for ‘shower’
Fuck that. A photo of me half naked was my profile picture for a long time, and there are videos of me performing strip teases on there, so what people picture when I tell them I'm going to wash myself shouldn't be among my top concerns.
(Anyway, how do I recognize that kind of people? Feynman figured that out about (IIRC) Bethe because the latter could count in his head while talking but not while reading, but that kind of situations don't come up that often.)
...oh.
recalls times he has told single female friends he was going to take a shower of vice versa; lots of times
Communication has many levels. If I tell you not to think of a pink elephant, on one hand I do tell you that you should try not to think of a pink elephant. On the other hand I give you a suggestion to think of a pink elephant and most people follow that suggestion and do think of a pink elephant.
Different people do that to different extends. There are people who easily form very detailed pictures in their mind and other people who don't follo...
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.