im a ghost!

The BBQ Pit
61

alphagene: that excuse is rather pathetic the moment someone understands what i or any other “incoherent” person is saying.

of course one can not expect everyone to understand everything the first time it is mentioned to them, not even the second time or the third.

people deal with what they understand, and of course how they understand it in very different ways. this is where the problem is, no matter how the original speaker provided the understander with the given subject, the real ignorance starts with the reciever of the information, he is the one who processes it and interpets it with his knowledge and understanding.

this is so very true, but i belive you blame the speaker if you deem his words incoherent. you have to assume the speaker knows and understands what he is trying to communicate and know that you are the one that are supposed to comprehend it. therefore if you do not understand or misunderstand a given subject you are the one that generates the incoherency.

true that people are not all equally gifted in communicating their understanding on a given subject to the masses for if we were we propably would all be equally proficient in comprehending the given subject. hence there would be no such thing as a misunderstanding.

this is what i belive one of the reasons ignorance reigns and getting rid of it is near impossible. it is possible, but not through enlightenment of knowledge, but rather an understanding of subject.

bj0rn … hope that last bit made any sense

62

Alphagene - based on this thread, I must respectfully disagree with you.

Admittedly the thread title is not the most transparent of titles I have ever seen. OTOH it does at least relate to bjOrn’s opening statement (that he is glad to see that he has been missed). This is more relevance than some I have seen and it is no less transparent than “Fuck this” or other such titles that we regularly see in the pit.

That aside, the OP itself followed a more than acceptable logical construct. It suggested a postulate, offered an argument and appealed for a solution. You just had to use a little intelligence and mentally filter the sentences into correct English. I managed it - do you think that I have a special bjOrnese translator?

Anyway - I’m trying not to step into an argument here. Anyone got any references to the OP itself?

pan

63

bjOrn - I disagree that lack of comprehension is the fault of the listener rather than the talker. In fact I find it difficult to use the word “fault” in this case at all.

One of the secrets of good communication is to make your statements as transparent as possible. It is incumbent on the speaker to do this to the best of their ability.

Don’t be shrugging off misunderstandings with “well I knew what I was trying to say”. We could all do with reviewing our communication skills every time we write.

pan

64

I’m not so sure about that, bj0rn.

65

kabbes: true, “fault” is perhaps not the best word…but bear with me here.

true of course, but no matter how transparent you make your statments there is always the POSSIBILITY of the listener to fail to comprehend them.

thank you for that addition, a needed one. of course the speaker can not just throw the statement out in the open and expect everybody to understand it, you have to back up your statment…which i am trying to do at the best of my ability.

bj0rn - enjoy

66

Yes - and I’d hate to suggest otherwise.

Communication is a two-way street and responsibility for understanding lies with both parties.

pan - love eachother

67

Well like you kab, I’m not terribly interested in getting into a heated debate about bjOrn’s writing style.
I have no hostility at all towards bjOrn, but I don’t feel sorry for the guy because he’s not easily understood.

I just think that bjOrn could afford to be clearer, that his mastery of the English language need not be improved to do so, and that he shouldn’t get all snippy and/or condescending when other posters merely request clarification or specifics from him.

Other than that, the subject of the OP (which can be summarized as “ignorance sucks”) is probably not going to get too much argument around these parts.

68

bad examples coldfire, theese “attacks” are based only on the statements made in the single thread, i have never attacked another poster in a thread because of what he said in another thread. a big difference if you ask me.

bj0rn …

69

i get all snippy if people dont ask for clarification.

the problem is that they either consider my text incoherent or misunderstand it. (with exceptions of course)

bj0rn - how can i be clearer than this?

70

There’s nothing wrong with Bj0rn’s english – the occasional gap in vocabulary that he could easily look up nothwithstanding. Read his posts on this page again and you’ll find his syntax is as opaque or as transparent as necessary for his purpose. His OP on face value suggests a sophisticated reading and judgement on the state of debate on these boards relevant as a comment presumably on the conduct of a few threads in the last few days. To craft a nebulous-sounding thread which would pique the interest of Dopers takes substantial skill in English. Don’t be fooled, he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Had he intervened with his general point in a relevant thread or had he posted this very thread in IMHO that would have been fine. Had he made a contribution to understanding rather than the parrotting of received wisdom, fine. But posted here it takes on a snide tone designed to roil the waters and draw attention to himself. That of late has been the sum of his contribution. Personally I don’t mind, but I’m not taken in by his performance art.

And that’s a zer0, not an O at his centre.

picmr… look 'em up yourself

71

Wait, bj0rn has started another thread about being misunderstood?

Gee, and they call me a One Trick Pony™… :rolleyes:

Esprix

72

BJ0RN says:

Absolutely true. Where I disagree with you is in your implicit assumption that this is the readers’ fault and not yours.

If people misunderstand you or find you incoherent, the most obvious and likely reason is that you have been insufficiently clear. You should therefore back up the truck and try again, instead of getting all pissy that you have been misunderstood. This seems to me to be self-evident.

Only the truly brilliant should bury their profundities in parables and koans that have to be translated with a Magic Deecoder Ring to make sense. Very, very few pearls of wisdom are worth that much effort. Certainly nothing I write is, and – meaning no disrespect – nothing you write appears to be, either.

73

So, do y’all think The Netherlands could take Iceland? Full scale total war, no quarter asked or given?

74

Maybe he thinks if he keeps repeating the same topic, we’ll eventually understand him?

75

Coldy, watch out or he’ll start humping your leg again.

76

I, too, wish to apologize to this thread, and to bj0rn. I recognize that speaking in a second language is tough, and writing tougher.

Substitute, then, “language” for “English” in my preceding posts. Like Alphagene, I find that bj0rn’s OP read quite like a longwinded, pointless fortune cookie. I struggled with the OP not because the English was less than perfect but because of the extreme conceptual garbling. I felt I needed a lie down after the first couple of sentences.

As for Kabbes’s request for direct quotes to the OP in this regard (from a while back),

Pardon?

And then, when Astro posted what I read to be a genuine request for further information, bj0rn responded with a very I-am-one-with-the-SDMB recursive link that confused more or less everybody.

And why? Had Astro violated the OP? I don’t think so. Even as I understand it now, with the continued assistance of Kabbes, Astro didn’t violate any principles. Bj0rn suggested that facts are usless in the hands of people mentally incapable of using them. Astro, in my limited experience, has never fit into that description. Does an honest request for information make one a fool? Does the simple fact that I lack a certain fact mean I am incapable of comprehending that fact? Does the fact that [AFGM]I want the truth mean that I can’t handle the truth?[/AFGM]

So when Astro asked for clarification, in a genuine attempt to better his understanding and the understanding of others, he was ridiculed for violating principles he didn’t violate, and therein is my problem with the beginning of this thread.

Finally, I don’t speak German. I’m learning German. I can talk a bit. I can follow a conversation, if it’s slow or written out. But I’m not fluent. I’m not even functional. As a result, I do not put myself in situations wherein my success is entirely contingent upon my ability to speak German. I don’t know. Makes sense to me.

77

picmr: thank you

Esprix: accually theese threads you are referring to deal with different aspects of misunderstanding in written language; sarcasm, proper protocol, fact value etc…

jodi: the problem with your logic is that you can not compare a spoken statement to a truck.
you, for example write a message, hand it over to the reader and then you recieve a feedback. if you run the reader over with your truck you are not very likely to recieve any feedback at all.

its not proper protocol to start whining and bitching about the statement given if you dont understand it for that is not an understandable or constructive feedback. generally you ignore replies to your posts that go: “fuck off!”…right?
this isnt any different.

Triskadecamus: undoubtably.

Mysphyt:

no, not at all. astro just happened to “misunderstand” the OP in the worst way possible. true that he might have misread it or something like that. the fact that, even though spelled out in the OP that i would NOT provide names or further details, he did ask for it.
a classic example of not listening to the speaker…that, doubled with the fact that i was opening a discussion on exacly the subject astro gave an example of, made astros first post, strangely, a very appropriate one…this thread wouldnt have been the same without it.

i consider myself fluent enough in the written english language to communicate among native english speakers and other non-natives on an international message board…

bj0rn - one in a crowd

78

No - I think it’s more like

“bj0rn - one in a million”

Y’all can read into that as you wish :smiley:

79

Well, we don’t have any nukes like youse guys. But I suppose a tulip bulb precision bombardement carried out by three 1967 Cessnas ought to do the trick. When do we fly out?

80

kabbes: i take that as a compliment :wink:

at least that is how i understand it, you could have meant it differently, although considering your later remark you intended it to be a multi option statement for understandment…