Recurring thoughts on language, remixed mostly from my Twitter page.
In daily language, "I think..." refers to habit, expectation, intuition, politeness, or peer pressure FAR MORE OFTEN than it does to reasoning, consideration of second-order consequences, measurement, or rational troubleshooting.
"I think it might rain."
That's because 1) the engine of human decision-making is fundamentally extra-rational, both by design and by necessity:
and 2) the fuzziness of daily language is no defect, but a direct downstream consequence of how that engine works.
Shall we explore?
Language HAS to be fuzzy for general use, or we couldn’t get anything done. If you still doubt this, try writing down exact instructions for making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, and then watch what happens when you follow them to the letter.
"I think it might rain."
Precision language is useless without shared context. You cannot get anywhere in life, linguistically speaking, if you are being forced to stop and define each new word in every sentence you utter. No one can!
If you want to make yourself understood, developing that shared context is your best communicative bet. Don’t be the yuppie accountant who walks into a biker bar and starts talking to everyone. Instant deep suspicion, right?
Read the room. Establish broad accuracy. Only then, start mixing in rational arguments.
People should be more rational is a WRONG SIMPLIFICATION, a cry of futile insistence, because it misses the broader context of how people get things done in the real world.
Want a better simplification?
Get enough people to agree with you FIRST, or it won't work.
And that takes broad accuracy, not precision.
When I say it this way, most people give up.
Don't.
(at least, not yet)
By now, we've all been conditioned to believe that rationally solving our divisions is impossible, right?
(habit, expectation, intuition, peer pressure)
What if that is just a propaganda-imposed failure of imagination? Agreement is absurdly easy to find, if you just look for it with broad accuracy in mind:
"You and I agree THAT we disagree."
(Not to be confused with " we agree TO disagree," that’s entirely different)
Notice, in this framing, that we don't need our divisions to go away! We just need to agree on how to handle them.
By agreeing, we are not taking any options off the table. We can still agree to fight, or to surrender, or do anything in between!
What we are doing is ADDING options. Is there an overlooked possibility of cooperation? Has the propaganda obscured a de-escalatory escape path?
The only way to tell, is to look.
And the only way to do that, is to pursue a RADICAL consensus. Not majority. 100 percent. Radical.
To create space for rational argument, solve existing objections by widening the frame until you agree completely on what the big-picture objections ARE. Establish a full-throated radical consensus FIRST, frame your impending argument within that consensus, and only then, work toward solving the original problem together.
In other words, go for broad accuracy.
Simple, right?
Why does that sound so impossible?
Because most people don't know how!
Most people believe they DO know how, but OTHER people don't, which works out to the same thing.
(habit, expectation, intuition, peer pressure)
People should be more rational is a WRONG SIMPLIFICATION, a cry of futile insistence, because it misses the broader context of how people get things done in the real world.
Do you see it? Propaganda has conditioned most people into starting their conversations with automatic deal-breakers, and then getting mad when no one listens:
blah blah blah Trump
blah blah blah Biden
blah blah blah anti-mask
blah blah blah vaccines
Enough repetition of this, and war looks inevitable. But that impression too might just be a propaganda-induced failure of imagination.
So what do we do?
The hidden, obvious trick to establishing a radical consensus is that you have to go back a LOT further than you expect.
(habit, expectation, intuition, peer pressure)
Cut through convention. Blow right past habit, expectation, intuition, and peer pressure. Don't stop to attack, mock, or judge. Just keep zooming out until you've reached a point of enthusiastic endorsement! ONLY THEN, reason inward together to solve the original problem.
Broad accuracy is the key.
Play for broad accuracy in your consensus-seeking, and you'll be astonished at the space you can create.
Go and try it.