if I think we agree and you think we disagree, you're right

April 21st, 2024

• if I think we agree and you think we disagree, you're right
  • > going around saying “I agree”
    to people who disagree
    with you
    
    looks to me
    like a kid hoarding his toys
    and being baffled nobody will play with him
    
  • T > You were pointing out that if someone keeps telling me something I already know, then they presumably think I don’t actually understand something about it yet. So “stop telling me things I know” could be, “how do I convey my understanding well enough for them to see it (and potentially in the process I will see it better)”.
  • > that, but also specifically, to see precisely _why_ it didn’t seem like you already understood what they were saying
    
    There's something about taking responsibility for your words not simply meaning "a true thing" but also not meaning or implying things you don't mean to imply
    
    And so when people respond to your A with "no, B"
    And you're like "yeah B!"
    The thing you need to do instead is to be like "ah yeah, A and B"
    You need to find a way to say the thing that is not confused/confusing
    And it's not as simple as just "A and B"
    Like either there's a way of talking about the thing you're trying to get at with good faith, that doesn't produce these disagreements, or _you are actually missing something we're seeing_
  • when I slow down, I don’t really feel like “agree” is a good way to think about things at all. it’s too tempting to focus on propositions, as if we already all know what the words we’re using mean in context
  • I also don’t, in general, see communication as a cycle of “transmit, receive”. defunct communication, shitty communication, is like that, at its best. but good communication is thinking-together. being mind, together. having a shared sense of things, including the aspects that are not yet reconciled, and doing that reconciliation together. there’s no cleanly-separate me or you to “transmit” or “receive” or “agree”.
  • and if you say “totally! that’s how I see it too!” but then you go back to talking about it in a way that does not give me a sense that that’s how you see it, then your words would start to feel very cheap and useless