Garbled transmission corrupts the signal
Feb. 25th, 2010 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseI know that I’ve already commented on the bizarre problem of key words triggering entirely irrelevant info dumps but there’s another point that ties in with it that I’ve been reminded off recently. This secondary issue being the combination of key word triggers and a sort of raging incomprehensibility. This seems to be the new fashionable idiocy of late where there’s a hefty dose of rage but no really articulation to it so that anybody faced with it is prey to the feeling that the person raging is desperately trying to tell them something pertinent but without doing it in so many words. It’s a confusing issue and doubtless produces a positive feedback loop for the inarticulate party much to their dismay.
Whatever happened to trying to articulate your point and be understood when it comes to debate? I wonder if this is an academic fallback, that the first presumption is that you haven’t managed to get your point across clearly enough to be understood rather than that if you shout louder then you’ll ‘win’? There’s always a sense that you need to be on the same starting page if you’re going to debate anything and until you are, and are expressly clear about this, any discussion is going nowhere. There is a difference after all between venting steam in a likeminded environment amongst those who already understand your point and trying to make your point to an outsider. There’s much to be said for venting but it doesn’t serve the same purpose as debate. The language I use when I’m trying to articulate a point diplomatically is radically different to the way I’ll phrase things when I’m venting spleen about the same issue.
There is a very odd notion in society that if you can get the other person to shut up then you’ve proven your point. This can in some cases be an accurate assessment of the situation but only when they’ve fallen silent because they either accept your argument or are seriously considering it due to your clear and careful rebuttal of their counterargument. In this sort of scenario a debate ends amiably with both parties agreeing or one at least acknowledging that the other’s position bears further consideration. I’ve found the latter scenario rarer personally but I’ve definitely encountered the first frequently enough. There is after all no shame in unravelling your argument and discovering that actually the other person’s point makes an awful lot more sense. When I’m proven wrong then it’s not an issue of damaged pride but rather one of education. I’ve absorbed some new and useful information which will stand me in good stead in the future: this is obviously a benefit to me rather than a detriment. It means that I can apply this new information to other situations and even, should I encounter someone else who’s not factored in the points that I too had previously overlooked, I can explain this alternative view point from the perspective of someone who understands where their argument is coming from.
Unfortunately, while the above is the ideal scenario there’s still the superficial belief that it doesn’t matter how the other person’s silence is achieved only that it is established. And in the case where one person shouts down the other nobody learns anything. The inarticulate party just learns that volume and anger makes others stop communicating with them and the victim of such treatment just walks away, shaking their head at the misfortune of so much rage and incomprehensibility rolled into one. If you cannot articulate your point clearly then nobody will know what you’re trying to say and while increasing volume will eventually encourage everybody else to leave you alone it won’t encourage them to understand you. In the midst of such inarticulate fury many a good point can easily be lost because the transmission of the message is a complete disaster designed to make it incomprehensible.
From a very basic point of view I was always taught that successful communication involves a message, the transmission of that message and the reception of it. If any of the three stages is lacking then you won’t achieve sufficiently clear communication. Thus if you amplify the volume of the message this will most likely distort it, likewise if you don’t transmit the message but transmit data about the message there will be a similar effect. I rather dislike the latter in particular because I always end up feeling like I’m missing part of the puzzle but when I go back over what’s already been stated I find that the focus of the entire conversation was never actually stated. There’s actually a very good example of this in Brideshead Revisited where Charles Ryder’s father pretends that one of Charles’ friends is American and so structures his entire conversation around that point without ever mentioning it outright so that while the friend is well aware that something isn’t quite right he can never entirely put his finger on it. It works as a demonstration of the father’s character in the novel and in the TV adaptation comes off as quite amusing but I really don’t enjoy that sort of thing occurring in real life.
Stating your point clearly is something that I thought schools still taught but I may well be wrong if the lack of it in general conversation is anything to go by. The rule I was always taught was that I needed to express myself clearly and state my point even if it was obvious to me. “Always pretend that the examiners don’t know what you’re talking about” was the maxim or less politely: “Pretend that the examiners are stupid”. And funnily enough stating things clearly even if they’re obvious to me has stood me in good stead when it comes to general interaction. Just because something is obvious to me doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s obvious to someone else and visa versa. It’s certainly allowed me to sidestep plenty of potential aggravation that could easily have stemmed from confusion over certain points.
Of course if this were the only issue then while it might be a hugely tedious way to communicate with anyone, eventually the inarticulate party would run out of steam and be forced to communicate like a rational human being or flounce off into the sunset, or, their opposition would finally figure out what it was that they were inexpertly trying to say. Eventually the issue of clear communication would be achieved. It’s not a very efficient way to go about it but it does have the potential for resolution. The further issue that complicates this sort of situation then is, pilled up on top of the inability of one party to convey their point in human language, the creative reinterpretation of what the other party is saying. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that individuals who can’t speak clearly themselves and have some sort of aversion to stating their case in a succinct fashion then find themselves unable to comprehend anybody else. Particularly online where the main medium of communication is text the most obvious choice in attempting to comprehend what somebody else is saying is to read what they’ve actually said. If someone types out that they can’t believe that you’ve tried to derail the conversation by bringing up the Nazis because their username is German then it’s a fair bet that they’re expressing their incredulousness at the fact that you’ve tried to derail the conversation by bringing up Nazis because their username is German. This is by the by a real example but since, as my username states, I’m a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire I have no idea what this National Socialist Workers’ Party business was about because it was a good century or so after my time. Of course since I didn’t realise till a little later that somebody could be that stupid I missed the opportunity to point and laugh directly at them so I’ll reserve that for now, though admittedly I do feel a little bad about it because I know individuals who fall into the same category who aren’t as dumb as rocks and I’m well aware that this particular example really is a good demonstration of why the grandparental generation above me aren’t tempted to give up plenty of the lessons they learnt during the war.
The irrational behaviour exemplified above is of course the online equivalent of trying to shout someone else down. The theory being that as a German I would be so offended by the mere mention of Nazism that I would immediately fall silent in shock thus allowing the other party to ‘win’ the argument. Not that offending someone is really ‘winning’ anything. If the tactic had worked to secure my silence I’d hardly have walked away feeling properly chastised about anything, instead I would have doubtless turned my back on a pointless conversation with someone who had just proven that they had no gasp of civil conversation, was at least subconsciously aware that they didn’t really have a point and was just a poor example of humanity. Of course I do think all those things with an added helping of noting that this deliberate derailing came in the midst of not actually reading the words I’d typed. This person was evidently responding to a conversation, just not the conversation I was a part of. It’s the online equivalent of someone stating that all Germans for all time are evil and citing WWII as proof, to which I respond by citing The Economic Consequences of the Peace with the suggestion that this would have had some bearing on the matter, only for them to shout that my surname was probably ‘Schicklgruber’.
It’s that disproportionate response issue again which I saw demonstrated aptly on tv a little while ago. I did wonder at first if I’d phrased something less than sensitively or if I’d simply dropped a clunky, confusing sentence or two that didn’t properly articulate my point but as it turned out this wasn’t the case. I had in fact adopted the same mild, fairly dispassionate tone that I usually adopt when I’m making a suggestion in a venue where any number of suggestions may be correct and mine might very easily not be one of them. The issue then wasn’t that I’d said something in an unwieldy fashion but rather that I’d voiced anything but absolute agreement, and anything that wasn’t an absolute agreement was then taken to be a horrific attack, perhaps even an underhanded one since I didn’t just throw out an derailing comment, cite WWII and then stride off with my nose in the air. The magnitude of the response leads me to believe that my comment was taken to be a despicable attack which could only be answered by similar dishonourable tactics but that’s a huge leap from someone offering an alternative possibility that they acknowledge is only a possibility to viewing it as my saying: “You filthy [epithet], you’re just the sort of monster my grandmother warned me about. There’s a reason my grandfather fought you filth, you’re not even human. You deserved [event 1 and event 2] anyway. I hope all your people die of [result of events 1 and 2]. The world doesn’t need vermin like your kind.” If I’d said that I’d certainly hope that somebody would smack some sense into me and possibly tie me down until the crazy could be exorcised so that I wouldn’t be able to harm anybody else with it but seeing as I didn’t, throwing out national socialist worker aspirations in an effort to shock was a little uncalled for and makes the person doing it look fairly illiterate, if not outright deranged.
On one hand this sort of issue could be avoided by actually reading and responding to the text presented instead of whatever the responder thinks is being said. If something makes you too angry to see straight then either you leave it alone just for the sake of your sanity or you walk away for a little while until you can come back and read over it calmly to make sure that it’s stating whatever abhorrent notion first disgusted you. If it is then you can deal with it accordingly but if it isn’t then that brief pause from growing more and more irate about it has saved you the embarrassment of looking like an utter tool over the issue. The second option is especially important when it comes to two way communication and you are trying to counter with your own point. It is in fact basic ‘answer the question’ territory all over again. Of course on the other hand there’s the issue where anything other than absolute agreement is taken as a heinous attack which doesn’t bode well for communication or learning. If that’s the case then I can only imagine that the person in question is going to have a miserable time of it in the age-mandated education system where teachers are actually paid to point out when you get things wrong. Eventually, for the most part at least, they should grow out of it but if they don’t then theirs is going to be a slightly more aggravating existence than it necessarily needs to be for the simple lack of listening to what anybody else is saying.
What it really all comes down to is basic communication ability. Things like making sure that you understand the message you receive, responding to it articulately and not pretending that discussion is a zero sum game. If I am proven wrong in debate then all that means is that my point is disproved in a debate: this allows me ample opportunity to further refine my position either by focusing my argument more adroitly or by abandoning a since disproved line of reasoning. It doesn’t in any way negatively impact on my sense of personhood and in fact provides a positive scenario in which I can continue my own personal improvement which is, so I’ll optimistically maintain, the whole point of the human experience.
Whatever happened to trying to articulate your point and be understood when it comes to debate? I wonder if this is an academic fallback, that the first presumption is that you haven’t managed to get your point across clearly enough to be understood rather than that if you shout louder then you’ll ‘win’? There’s always a sense that you need to be on the same starting page if you’re going to debate anything and until you are, and are expressly clear about this, any discussion is going nowhere. There is a difference after all between venting steam in a likeminded environment amongst those who already understand your point and trying to make your point to an outsider. There’s much to be said for venting but it doesn’t serve the same purpose as debate. The language I use when I’m trying to articulate a point diplomatically is radically different to the way I’ll phrase things when I’m venting spleen about the same issue.
There is a very odd notion in society that if you can get the other person to shut up then you’ve proven your point. This can in some cases be an accurate assessment of the situation but only when they’ve fallen silent because they either accept your argument or are seriously considering it due to your clear and careful rebuttal of their counterargument. In this sort of scenario a debate ends amiably with both parties agreeing or one at least acknowledging that the other’s position bears further consideration. I’ve found the latter scenario rarer personally but I’ve definitely encountered the first frequently enough. There is after all no shame in unravelling your argument and discovering that actually the other person’s point makes an awful lot more sense. When I’m proven wrong then it’s not an issue of damaged pride but rather one of education. I’ve absorbed some new and useful information which will stand me in good stead in the future: this is obviously a benefit to me rather than a detriment. It means that I can apply this new information to other situations and even, should I encounter someone else who’s not factored in the points that I too had previously overlooked, I can explain this alternative view point from the perspective of someone who understands where their argument is coming from.
Unfortunately, while the above is the ideal scenario there’s still the superficial belief that it doesn’t matter how the other person’s silence is achieved only that it is established. And in the case where one person shouts down the other nobody learns anything. The inarticulate party just learns that volume and anger makes others stop communicating with them and the victim of such treatment just walks away, shaking their head at the misfortune of so much rage and incomprehensibility rolled into one. If you cannot articulate your point clearly then nobody will know what you’re trying to say and while increasing volume will eventually encourage everybody else to leave you alone it won’t encourage them to understand you. In the midst of such inarticulate fury many a good point can easily be lost because the transmission of the message is a complete disaster designed to make it incomprehensible.
From a very basic point of view I was always taught that successful communication involves a message, the transmission of that message and the reception of it. If any of the three stages is lacking then you won’t achieve sufficiently clear communication. Thus if you amplify the volume of the message this will most likely distort it, likewise if you don’t transmit the message but transmit data about the message there will be a similar effect. I rather dislike the latter in particular because I always end up feeling like I’m missing part of the puzzle but when I go back over what’s already been stated I find that the focus of the entire conversation was never actually stated. There’s actually a very good example of this in Brideshead Revisited where Charles Ryder’s father pretends that one of Charles’ friends is American and so structures his entire conversation around that point without ever mentioning it outright so that while the friend is well aware that something isn’t quite right he can never entirely put his finger on it. It works as a demonstration of the father’s character in the novel and in the TV adaptation comes off as quite amusing but I really don’t enjoy that sort of thing occurring in real life.
Stating your point clearly is something that I thought schools still taught but I may well be wrong if the lack of it in general conversation is anything to go by. The rule I was always taught was that I needed to express myself clearly and state my point even if it was obvious to me. “Always pretend that the examiners don’t know what you’re talking about” was the maxim or less politely: “Pretend that the examiners are stupid”. And funnily enough stating things clearly even if they’re obvious to me has stood me in good stead when it comes to general interaction. Just because something is obvious to me doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s obvious to someone else and visa versa. It’s certainly allowed me to sidestep plenty of potential aggravation that could easily have stemmed from confusion over certain points.
Of course if this were the only issue then while it might be a hugely tedious way to communicate with anyone, eventually the inarticulate party would run out of steam and be forced to communicate like a rational human being or flounce off into the sunset, or, their opposition would finally figure out what it was that they were inexpertly trying to say. Eventually the issue of clear communication would be achieved. It’s not a very efficient way to go about it but it does have the potential for resolution. The further issue that complicates this sort of situation then is, pilled up on top of the inability of one party to convey their point in human language, the creative reinterpretation of what the other party is saying. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that individuals who can’t speak clearly themselves and have some sort of aversion to stating their case in a succinct fashion then find themselves unable to comprehend anybody else. Particularly online where the main medium of communication is text the most obvious choice in attempting to comprehend what somebody else is saying is to read what they’ve actually said. If someone types out that they can’t believe that you’ve tried to derail the conversation by bringing up the Nazis because their username is German then it’s a fair bet that they’re expressing their incredulousness at the fact that you’ve tried to derail the conversation by bringing up Nazis because their username is German. This is by the by a real example but since, as my username states, I’m a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire I have no idea what this National Socialist Workers’ Party business was about because it was a good century or so after my time. Of course since I didn’t realise till a little later that somebody could be that stupid I missed the opportunity to point and laugh directly at them so I’ll reserve that for now, though admittedly I do feel a little bad about it because I know individuals who fall into the same category who aren’t as dumb as rocks and I’m well aware that this particular example really is a good demonstration of why the grandparental generation above me aren’t tempted to give up plenty of the lessons they learnt during the war.
The irrational behaviour exemplified above is of course the online equivalent of trying to shout someone else down. The theory being that as a German I would be so offended by the mere mention of Nazism that I would immediately fall silent in shock thus allowing the other party to ‘win’ the argument. Not that offending someone is really ‘winning’ anything. If the tactic had worked to secure my silence I’d hardly have walked away feeling properly chastised about anything, instead I would have doubtless turned my back on a pointless conversation with someone who had just proven that they had no gasp of civil conversation, was at least subconsciously aware that they didn’t really have a point and was just a poor example of humanity. Of course I do think all those things with an added helping of noting that this deliberate derailing came in the midst of not actually reading the words I’d typed. This person was evidently responding to a conversation, just not the conversation I was a part of. It’s the online equivalent of someone stating that all Germans for all time are evil and citing WWII as proof, to which I respond by citing The Economic Consequences of the Peace with the suggestion that this would have had some bearing on the matter, only for them to shout that my surname was probably ‘Schicklgruber’.
It’s that disproportionate response issue again which I saw demonstrated aptly on tv a little while ago. I did wonder at first if I’d phrased something less than sensitively or if I’d simply dropped a clunky, confusing sentence or two that didn’t properly articulate my point but as it turned out this wasn’t the case. I had in fact adopted the same mild, fairly dispassionate tone that I usually adopt when I’m making a suggestion in a venue where any number of suggestions may be correct and mine might very easily not be one of them. The issue then wasn’t that I’d said something in an unwieldy fashion but rather that I’d voiced anything but absolute agreement, and anything that wasn’t an absolute agreement was then taken to be a horrific attack, perhaps even an underhanded one since I didn’t just throw out an derailing comment, cite WWII and then stride off with my nose in the air. The magnitude of the response leads me to believe that my comment was taken to be a despicable attack which could only be answered by similar dishonourable tactics but that’s a huge leap from someone offering an alternative possibility that they acknowledge is only a possibility to viewing it as my saying: “You filthy [epithet], you’re just the sort of monster my grandmother warned me about. There’s a reason my grandfather fought you filth, you’re not even human. You deserved [event 1 and event 2] anyway. I hope all your people die of [result of events 1 and 2]. The world doesn’t need vermin like your kind.” If I’d said that I’d certainly hope that somebody would smack some sense into me and possibly tie me down until the crazy could be exorcised so that I wouldn’t be able to harm anybody else with it but seeing as I didn’t, throwing out national socialist worker aspirations in an effort to shock was a little uncalled for and makes the person doing it look fairly illiterate, if not outright deranged.
On one hand this sort of issue could be avoided by actually reading and responding to the text presented instead of whatever the responder thinks is being said. If something makes you too angry to see straight then either you leave it alone just for the sake of your sanity or you walk away for a little while until you can come back and read over it calmly to make sure that it’s stating whatever abhorrent notion first disgusted you. If it is then you can deal with it accordingly but if it isn’t then that brief pause from growing more and more irate about it has saved you the embarrassment of looking like an utter tool over the issue. The second option is especially important when it comes to two way communication and you are trying to counter with your own point. It is in fact basic ‘answer the question’ territory all over again. Of course on the other hand there’s the issue where anything other than absolute agreement is taken as a heinous attack which doesn’t bode well for communication or learning. If that’s the case then I can only imagine that the person in question is going to have a miserable time of it in the age-mandated education system where teachers are actually paid to point out when you get things wrong. Eventually, for the most part at least, they should grow out of it but if they don’t then theirs is going to be a slightly more aggravating existence than it necessarily needs to be for the simple lack of listening to what anybody else is saying.
What it really all comes down to is basic communication ability. Things like making sure that you understand the message you receive, responding to it articulately and not pretending that discussion is a zero sum game. If I am proven wrong in debate then all that means is that my point is disproved in a debate: this allows me ample opportunity to further refine my position either by focusing my argument more adroitly or by abandoning a since disproved line of reasoning. It doesn’t in any way negatively impact on my sense of personhood and in fact provides a positive scenario in which I can continue my own personal improvement which is, so I’ll optimistically maintain, the whole point of the human experience.
