[Off-topic] This has me wondering about something that I’ve been thinking about recently. If the person that’s responding to you shows an inability or at least an unwillingness for reasoned debate, is it right to smash their points? Recently, I’ve seen someone with a clearly superior reasoning force smash someone with clearly less of a reasoned ability. It was uncomfortable for me to watch. . . .like watching an adult beat a 4 year-old in a basketball game. Any thoughts?
If this creates a hijack, I’ll create a new thread, and apologize for hijacking this one, but this has me wondering. [/off-topic]
It’s up to them to abandon the field. Unsupported assertions cannot be allowed to stand. The rules of GD preclude any personal attacks. Arguments rise and fall on their own merits. Usually, someone who is a bit confused will be gently advised to refrain from posting until he can mount a stronger argument. This advice generally falls on deaf ears.
This has been a very interesting thread. And there have been other threads about the same subject.
I’m on time. So is my Wife. That is our nature. And, for myself and my other friends we know that it is important. I do not like to have to worry about my friends unnecessarily.
Should I worry, or become slowly aggravated that someone did not do what they said they would do?
It’s a rather conflicting position to be in. Are you in the ditch, or are you doing a final post on the SDMB?
When you arrive, safe and sound, with no excuse, I will be glad to see you but will wish you had not made me worry about you.
Also, I live in the sticks. There is very little other than bad weather (which we get boat loads of) or accidents or break downs that should prevent a person from being on time.
I suspect, though, it is the same in the city. Break downs occur, violence occurs.
I don’t like to worry. And I avoid it.
I have structured my life so that I can avoid problems like lost keys or a wallet that can’t be found. I discovered when I was in grade school that little things like that can save ME and others a lot of grief.
Chalk me up to one that does not understand why others can’t do this.
For MOST, we really aren’t talking about ADD or brain damage. We are talking about common courtesy.
Inconvenience? That’s an awfully slight word to describe missed flights, damaged reputations with business contacts, losing customers, and so forth.
On a side note, if ADD involves frontal lobe damage causing a lack of ability to keep track of time, why don’t we see a lot of chronically early (and confused about it) people with ADD?
Thanks for your thoughts. I was thinking more of people who don’t know the meaning of unsupported assertions or can’t adequately identify them. Many people don’t have enough perspective to know that they don’t know.
Sorry if you read from my post that I implied that it pertained to this thread. It was a general hypothetical prompted by Dinsdale’s post. Evidently, I should have placed the question in another thread, but I didn’t want to start a new thread for a quick answer.
And unless you can read minds, you have no idea what she thinks.
What she does (being late) is the behavior. Why she’s doing it (_____________ - I don’t have psychic abilities. I can’t fill in that blank) is the motivation. As soon as you enter into the contents of someone’s thoughts - you’ve hit motivation. Thoguhts are not behaviors. Actions are behaviors.
You claim that you know that it’s because “she thinks her time is more important.” You’ve assigned that as the motivation.
I will bold relevant passages throughout; this is my note to that effect:
** StarvingButStrong **
This is my point. You are stating with great certainty that you know what this person thinks and considers. How can you possibly justify this?
**Vinyl Turnip **
You have your own thoughts and opinions. Others have different thoughts and opinions. It is not all that complimentary to you to state that you are incapable of conceiving that others may not think exactly as you do. It only requires a little imagination.
**Stratocaster **
You have created a symbolism that is not shared by everyone. This is your own construct. It is your interpretation that this behaviour construes disrespect. It is not mine. I’m not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that others are required to live by your particular set of rules and symbols.
And, for the third time at least, people who deal with people with executive function deficits all know that the deficits do not manifest exactly the same way every single day.
After that it just becomes a question of whether you’ll apply that discipline in any given instance or conversely decide it’s not worth the effort.
[QUOTE]
Again, your interpretation. Do you acknowledge that your interpretation could be completely wrong?
**So in my mind, when someone makes me wait they have done a similar cost-benefit analysis in their head that told them I am not important enough to pay the price to be punctual. **
And again, this is a thought process which you ascribe to them. You cannot possibly know this and therefore only believe it because - well because you feel like it, I guess.
Sure. Once. In extraordinary circumstances. Proves nothing.
Well the symptomology is ‘chronic lateness’ along with ‘inability to plan’ and ‘inability to foresee consequences’ so perhaps ‘oblivious to time’ is a misspeak. I think ‘chronically understimating’ is a better characterization.
That is really unnecessary.
Stratocaster
Again, it should not be difficult to fathom that not everybody thinks like you. I enjoy figure skating and you may think it’s ridiculous. I hate sushi, which you may adore. Humans are different. Period. This is not a difficult concept.
** Vinyl Turnip **
No, it’s an actual busted brain bit. Accommodations can be learned. Sometimes.
Again, assuming you can know the content of a person’s thoughts is not a valid way to go about living your life.
They don’t make the ‘choice’ and you’ll only very rarely see people not agonize about it. You’ve seen just that in this thread.
**Kalhoun **
Nice. You go argue with the brain scans and the experts, then. :rolleyes: Go tell them they are all wrong and you, Kalhoun, are the only correct person.
Here’s who to contact:
Contrapuntal
See, there’s where you’re doing the mind-reading. You assume she ‘chooses to be llate’.
** nashiitashii **
I haven’t been discussing people who don’t even apologize. That’s a whole other issue.
** Contrapuntal **
What is motivation if it’s not what a person thinks? You right there just said ‘she thinks her time is more important’. You are saying you know what she thinks. You do not. You are merely assuming. And you know what that does.
** Renee**
No, that is how you happen to choose to interpret it. I don’t. Other people don’t. People think differently and therefore yours is no more right than anybody else’s.
No, it’s more that all those nifty numbers you came up with simply do not compute.
What people don’t understand about people with ADD is that they don’t get it. And that sucks because they are considered stupid when it’s not stupidity at all. It’s just some things don’t compute the same way. ADD is not correlated with low IQ.
** Stratocaster **
It makes it a logical fallacy if what you deem a similar premise is in fact not.
You understand what a false analogy is, right? :rolleyes:
What is the motto of this whole place but ‘fighting ignorance’. People don’t understand/know about deficits in executive function. That is the classic definition of ignorance - lack of knowledge of.
No it meant I was in a rush and didn’t have time to type it all out. I (mistakenly, I guess) thought you would understand.
The Converse Fallacy of Argument is to argue from a special case to a general rule. I am talking about the case of people who are late and the circumstance that cause it. You extrapolated from that to an irrelevant group.
You have chosen to interpret ‘late’ as ‘disrespectful’. That is your interpretation. IT is not in the dictionary. It is not a rule. It is your own particular idea. It is shared by some other people but by no means all other people. And since, so far as I know, nobody has appointed you the arbiter of the definition of disrespect, you do not get to feel that your interpretation is the valid interpretation for all people.
There are a lot of adults with ADD who don’t know they have it. A few people in this thread have mentioned that they might have it but never thought so before. It’s only in the past ten years that it was realized that ADD persisted into adulthood so people who left school before then weren’t usually diagnosed. All they know is they are late and disorganized and they can’t figure out why.
**Contrapuntal **
No. What she thinks is the content of her thoughts, which are inside her head, where you are not.
You cannot say that she has made this choice. This is assuming you know her thoughts.
If you haven’t actually seen me do so, nor heard that I did so, and you only assume it was done, then you are pretending to know my thoughts.
Presumably I have told you that I prefer it. However in the case of this ‘choice’ to be late, you have no such knowledge, do you? It’s an assumption on your part and only that.
**Contrapuntal **
You have chosen to interpret ‘late’ as ‘disrespectful’. That is your interpretation. IT is not in the dictionary. It is not a rule. It is your own particular idea. It is shared by some other people but by no means all other people. And since, so far as I know, nobody has appointed you the arbiter of the definition of disrespect, you do not get to feel that your interpretation is the valid interpretation for all people.
There are a lot of adults with ADD who don’t know they have it. A few people in this thread have mentioned that they might have it but never thought so before. It’s only in the past ten years that it was realized that ADD persisted into adulthood so people who left school before then weren’t usually diagnosed. All they know is they are late and disorganized and they can’t figure out why.
**Contrapuntal **
No. What she thinks is the content of her thoughts, which are inside her head, where you are not.
You cannot say that she has made this choice. This is assuming you know her thoughts.
If you haven’t actually seen me do so, nor heard that I did so, and you only assume it was done, then you are pretending to know my thoughts.
Presumably I have told you that I prefer it. However in the case of this ‘choice’ to be late, you have no such knowledge, do you? It’s an assumption on your part and only that.
My mother, who by Spanish standards is quite punctual (she arrives to places within 15’ of the official time and calls if she’s going to be more than 15’ late), is right now calling me every two days for… psychological relief. She tells me all the things that everybody has been doing wrong in those two days; I don’t even need to make “hm-mmm” noises.
SHE is the person who taught me it’s not polite to call people’s homes after dinner time. Yesterday I called her as I was cooking dinner. “I’m still at your brother’s, I’ll call you when I get home.”
9pm
10pm
11pm
11:10pm, she calls.
After half an hour she’s saying “well, call you again in two days”
Me: “mk”.
She: “are you asleep?”
Me: “ah, well, I wake up at five, you know.”
She: “? OH! Oh my God!”
This is not usual behavior for her (the monologues are, the hours aren’t)… and it sure is a damn pain. Specially since I know that if I’d switched off the computer and cell, she would have freaked out and called the cops on me.
To be fair: What Contrapuntal is saying is that he doesn’t pretend to know why she thinks there is something more important than keeping her appointment with him, but rather, simply notes that she does in fact consistently find something else to be more important than keeping her appointment with him. It follows from the fact that she does not keep her appointment with him (along with an assumption that she was not held up by something beyond her control) that in each individual case, she has put a higher value on something else than on keeping her appointment.
Contrapuntal doesn’t know (and presumably doesn’t care) what motivates her to devalue the keeping of her appointment in these cases. He just knows she does devalue it. (Where by “devalue” I mean neither “assign no value” nor “assign less value than is appropriate” but rather "value to a lesser extent than something else.)
In other words, Contrapuntal doesn’t know (or I presume care) what it is that she has valued more than keeping the appointment. He just notes that she consistently does value something more than keeping the appointment.
I think Contrapuntal is not speaking English correctly (;)) when he says that to ascribe thoughts to people in order to explain their behavior is not to ascribe motivations to them. But I believe the above translates Contrapuntal’s thought into a more standard (if more stilted) form of English.
QG, do you realize that what you said in your “reply” is exactly what I said? I said that “telling someone to meet me half an hour earlier than I actually want them” only works “if that person is always half an hour late”; you said “it doesn’t work for people who are not always half an hour late”. What you said means the same as what I said, yet you’re using it as an argument to rebate itself :smack:
Mods forgive me, I swear this is not intended as an insult… but dangit, QG: can you read? That’s an actual question! You seem to have serious problems with reading comprehension.
Yeah, that was insulting. Kindly cite where I ‘seem to have serious problems with reading comprehension’. It was 8 AM, I was supposed to be getting ready for work. I was trying to reply to a bunch of posts and mistakenly conflated your post with the one just before my reply so thought the ‘trick’ you mentioned was the strategy she spoke about.
So rather than insulting me, you might have pointed out that my reply didn’t make sense, at which point I’d go check (as I now have) and figured out how that happened. But thanks for illustrating my point about being judgmental.
Bottom line: it is to you (vous) to choose to interpret someone’s behaviour towards you as an insult or not. But you and your friends and the people around you will fare much better if you refuse to feel insulted until you are positive that someone meant something as an insult. And that means they say to your face that they are insulting you.
So long as you insist upon believing that malice has been done to you deliberately, you will only upset yourself, particularly when it is simply not the case. See Albert Ellis on this.
Anger is poisonous to the body; it does everyone well to avoid it where possible, and that includes refusing to believe that people are malicious without proof.
Everybody knows this saying:
**Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence **
(forgive if it’s not exactly correct; it’s late).
And most folks aren’t malicious. Especially people who care about you.
If you’re chronically late, it’s hard to imagine that the situation of you having to wait for anyone comes up very often. Perhaps if you had more experience with that situation, you would understand it.
Yes, it is my wacky inference that people who blow off their commitments to me are being disrespectful. Unlike you, I don’t default to an assumption that this common behavior is because the person may have some mental defect.
I don’t know how this couldn’t be willful ignorance on your part at this point, since you’re demonstrating a pattern of completely ignoring a response to some point you’ve made. I already responded to this. I’m not going to bother re-posting it.
It is born out by multiple latesters in this very thread! Are you kidding me? Do you think no one is reading the responses from people other than you?
Funny story: I used to carpool sometimes with a couple of colleages. Guy number 1 was always late to the meeting spot - not a lot, but consistently 5-10 minutes late (which was particularly annoying considering that he only lived 5 minutes away, and therefore was actually leaving his house after the time he was supposed to be arriving at the meeting spot. Guy number 2 and I were grousing about Guy number 1, and I suggested that for the next time, we give him a meeting time 10 minutes earlier than the time we actually intended to meet. So we do this, but Guy number 2 inexplicably chickens out and decides to arrive early, at the “fake” time we gave to Guy number 1. To make matters worse, Guy number 1 strangely decides this will be the one day he’s actually going to arrive on time. So I arrive at the “real” time, and Guy number 1 complains that I am late. :smack:
Again, it should not be difficult to fathom that not everybody thinks like you. I enjoy figure skating and you may think it’s ridiculous. I hate sushi, which you may adore. Humans are different. Period. This is not a difficult concept.[/quote]
Again, I’ll stubbornly maintain my membership in that wacky subset of the population who feels that people who blow off their commitments are being disrespectful, however slight the disrespect.
Yes. In this case the premise was identical–i.e., a mental defect that has in some instances a symptom that could affect behavior; that defect ought to be considered a mitigating factor in assessing that behavior. Try to keep up.
One of us does. Keep rolling those eyes, sister.
You can continue to repeat this and it won’t make it so. If we’re discussing potato chips and I draw a comparison to ice cream, my comparison is either based on a valid premise or it is not; it is an illustrative analogy, or it isn’t. It’s not logical, as you seem to think, to respond, “Nonsense! We’re only talking about potato chips here.”