there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work

November 15th, 2024

• vibes with there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work

NNTD

• there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work

May 29th, 2023

• there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work
  • from a friend:
    • > oh i have a funny story i wanted to write up but didnt
      so a husband tells his wife "fuck you, cry more"
      sounds horrible, right?!?
      but she laughs and they both laugh together about it for days
      
      context:
      she was crying for some unrelated thing that had
      and she felt bad about it
      and i ask her oh no what's up?
      and she says "nothing, its silly, i dont wanna bother you"
      fuck you, cry more!!! 😂
      the amazing thing is in context when that phrase came to me i was smiling and laughing when i said it because it was so obviously proof-of-shared-intimacy in the moment
      like only someone you've loved for a long time could say that to you with confidence and good cheer

Podcast summaries

• Conversation As Medium solutions are way harder than problems the importance of being able to say that you don't yet know how to solve a problem what does it mean to understand each other compromise is not what everyone wants Everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation & old emotional meanings Dialectic Higher Dimensional Thinking, the End of Paradox, and a More Adequate Understanding of Realitywith any misunderstanding, it's possible (& usually worthwhile) to come to a place of profoundly mutually satisfying shared understanding just because someone has an articulation of a problem, doesn't mean their proposed solution is any good solutions are way harder than problems SimPol John Bunzl omniwin perspective-taking Coherence Therapy Questions Are Not Just For Asking the point of friendliness is not to avoid conflict, but to actually create contexts that allow for deeper, more intense, prolonged conflict over the long term the importance of being able to say that you don't yet know how to solve a problem double bind contradiction there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work meaning John Vervaeke

• Keywords: NNTD, Home, everyone will constantly point out ways in which things are incomplete, Learning how to trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too, community, what might a healthy community look like?, complaints are sacred: how we affirm our values, protectiveness is damage control, defensiveness = protectiveness, Everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation & old emotional meanings, sometimes things need to be said even though they feel like they really really should go without saying, What is Blame?, everything makes sense, there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work, apologize in the other person's frame; forgive in your own frame, power dynamics

• 1:09:37 - A powerful tip for enhancing conversation there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work

• 40:04 - 56:41 - Forgiveness and blame in relation to re-establishing trust. Examples from personal situations. What is Blame?, everything makes sense, there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work, apologize in the other person's frame; forgive in your own frame, building trust out of distrust, blindspot feedback is hard (but possible!)
  • 44:41 - M > I don't even know if this is what I was gonna say, but it's relevant enough and it fits a slot. So, there's a thing where, you know, when people ask each other when... when one person says to another, "Hey, you did a thing that hurt me," it's very easy to feel like your only responses in that moment are to say, "Oh, shit. I'm so sorry, I won't do it again," or "I'll try really hard not to do it again." Or, alternatively, you might say, "No, I didn't." You might say, either, "You're not actually hurting the way you think you were" or, "Like, I didn't actually do the thing you think I did," or, "Yes, I did the thing, but you shouldn't feel hurt about it because of reasons X, Y, Z". Or you might say, "Look, yeah, you got hurt, but I couldn't do anything other than what I did, given what you did." Or you might say something like... I mean, there's various other soft, more subtle ways of deflecting, like saying something like, "Whoa, why are you blaming me?" Right? Which, on its own, is like, well, yeah, maybe the person's engaging in blame as a structure. But if you don't actually address that, like separate from the blame element of what they're saying -they're trying to tell you about, about something that's not working- so if you don't actually address that, structurally, then that will also produce a sense of their concern of not feeling heard. It turns out, I think, in most cases, except for anything really simple, in most cases, the thing that is actually most mature to say in that situation is, "I hear that I hurt you. I don't fully understand why my behavior hurt you in the way that I did." Although maybe I mostly understand that, like, often that part's pretty clear. "But then, I also don't understand why I did what I did. Like, I actually genuinely don't know what generated that behavior in me. And until I understand it, I'm probably going to keep doing this thing. So I want to learn to do something different, but I actually don't know what that's going to take. And in the meantime, how do we design our interactions to minimize that damage? Or is this a kind of thing that's an issue but is not like a big issue, and you're willing to sort of be with me in my learning process through that?" We have no idea how to say that, like, that's the whole level under the taboo, you pointed out of being able to say, "I don't trust you."

September 27th, 2021

• there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work

NNTD pith instructions discussion

• Most immediately, there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work.
  • This in itself could be considered a pith instruction for NNTD, since it points at the flaw with any technique or process or mindset that claims that if you do it correctly and someone doesn't vibe with it, then there's sort of nothing you can do and they need to change. This flaw is what makes a protocol not a meta-protocol.
  • With this in mind, one might say: try to establish and build trust as best you can, and whereever that breaks down, no matter how frustrating or annoying or unnecessary the obstacle seems to be, find a way to see the breakdown as necessary for the trust you're building to be non-naive. ie that obstacle is letting you know that something is missing

post-blame apology

• You might get some mileage out if it in other contexts, but I make no guarantees about those contexts. I mean, I can't make guarantees in any case, since there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work, so if you try this and it doesn't work for someone, it doesn't work for them.

June 14th, 2021

• and it relates to this there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work
  • ah yeah, and that page title sentence is almost wiser than it knows - it's not "what works and doesn't work, in context", it's "what works in context, and what doesn't work [ever]"
  • the "ever" bit is interesting, like obviously someone could disprove that with a single example, but part of what's going on here is that if I saw something purporting to be such an example, I'd have a high prior that what's going on is actually some kind of compartmentalization/layering/naive trust
  • could of course be wrong about that but yeah
  • and some things are more thoroughly written off as "not gonna work" by NNTD than others
    • improbable and impossible-[according to this model] are different

Sequence on NNTD

• there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work