Warning Label

If I had a warning label, it might read: "Warning! Means well, but doesn't know when to shut up."

Comments

[Neil]

So what has led you to walk right into your own mouth this time? ;-)

[Chris]

A short while back, I tried to engage Thomas at Mile Zero in a discussion about a post he put up denigrating the Creationism museum. I tried to understand what it was that he thought he was achieving by doing so, but in the process of doing so I rather inadvertently antagonised him.

Thomas accused me of "concerns trolling"; although I'm not entirely familiar with this term, as far as I can tell it requires one to misrepresent one's position, which I certainly didn't do. I wonder therefore if he misunderstands my position.

I was also told that it wasn't an appropriate discussion for his comments, which I found odd since he certainly opened the door by posting on the topic in the first place! One should surely not put up a post that one is not willing to discuss.

Basically, I should have detected that I was winding him up sooner and backed off, but that wasn't how it played out. It's certainly not the first time that I haven't been able to let go of a discussion.

My intense drive to understand often creates problems when the area I'm probing causes discomfort or cognitive dissonance in the other party: I arguably need to spot this earlier and back off.

[Neil]

Heh. Well, I have known this particular personality trait bite you on the ass before.

It's hard to point at something and say - see this, this is the line. Well I find it hard - I can just tell (or at least am happy to be cautious and pull out early :-D )when someone is being grumpy or angry.

Obviously it's loads easier to tell when you can see their face, or even just from hearing their voice. On the other hand, this is something I get with you occasionally; me thinking you are, for instance, hating a game we are playing (due to grumbling and general feelings of un-joy coming from you in waves), only to find afterwards you *had* enjoyed it.

So perhaps it is just you haven't got this "bit" wired-in? I know you have several other optional upgrades that I come without, so it's all swings and roundabouts. :-)

The main thing is not to sweat it, and in future if this sort of thing arises on a list or online discussion forum/blog etc, maybe just excuse yourself saying you had trouble reading the emotions in the other person's posts and hadn't meant to upset anyone. Then either wait for them to respond to that before continuing, or simply walk away.

Anyway - hope this isn't too personal for the blog ;-)

I guess you wouldn't have posted it if you weren't up for discussing it ;-)

[Chris]

Indeed - if I wasn't happy to discuss it, I wouldn't have posted it. :)

There are many things that are not wired up in my brain the way other people have it, but I am compensated with many weird and wonderful things that no-one else seems to benefit from. :)

I'm actually quite sanguine about this. I posted this partly because I thought publicly admitting that "I have a problem" might help me think twice before biting down in future. ;)