social.noyu.me

redundancy is not the same thing as waste!

high-context vs low-context communicative style is probably what someone would call it. i just made those terms up but i am certain there are a bunch of essays about it if i looked for them

the optimal number of things i tell someone that they already know and agree with me on is not zero

https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01HJ0Z0XVTCWMTFDF6BA0XCA08

related: i have what might be considered a deficit in my theory of mind, where if i try to interrogate “does the person i'm talking to already know this”, i generally find this question hard to answer, so i tend to assume little shared knowledge and just ask. it's not arrogance!!

a few years ago i gave a talk at a conference (the video has vanished from youtube and i don't have it archived, sadly) where i referred to a very well-known figure in that space and then said “…who some of you might have heard of?”, genuinely uncertain. the audience laughed

as far as i can tell, people thought i was joking, which is good, because i wasn't joking and it's actually mildly embarrassing. that guy? he was the keynote speaker for next year's conference (which i also attended), if i recall correctly. anyway, i don't regret it at all :)

anyway if you ever talk to me and i ask some question about what you already know that makes you think i think you're stupid, i don't think that, and i refuse to think about anyone in those terms in any case. see it more like https://xkcd.com/1053/. i love curiosity

@hikari plus it's a great way to begin _any_ story or explanation, and quickly negotiate context

"have you ever fried an egg?" (perhaps somebody hasn't!)
"you know the hold-open latch at the gas pump?" (apparently New York doesn't! did you know _that_?)
"have you ever threaded a 35mm movie projector?" (crap, i'm showing my age)

@hikari True! Error-correction mechanisms exist for a reason!

@hikari I've been enjoying these threads of yours which seem to play into this tendency -- they give me an opportunity to observe another person's thought processes and see them attempt to describe the ideas that govern their thinking in an otherwise uncommonly explicit way(which my autistic self appreciates), presenting ideas and thoughts I may or may not want to internalise. (I mean this in a "getting to isolate and choose what fits me personally" way, not in a judgemental way.)
It's a neat opt-in reflection exercise, aside from just a way to understand this random internet person better.

Also, looking at the length of this reply, maybe it makes me feel less alone in my tendency towards what would be generally seen as "awkward" verbosity, lol