I understand, but people also have very different standards of communication clarity. There are a lot of hidden assumptions, even when you’re trying to be 100% clear. Sometimes people can’t put their thoughts into words, or they don’t have the capacity for what you think is clarity. And in this case it’s just a very minor mistake. The person might not be native, or they may have been failed by their education system, or they might just be tired or stressed. There are lots of valid reasons why communication can degrade. I’m a bit autistic and struggle with ambiguous meaning or communication that doesn’t fit patterns I’m used to, sometimes to a truly irrational degree, and I’d like for others to speak my language more so I can understand them better, and I’d like to be able to speak their language more, to make them understand me better, but it’s just sort of the way of life. People are very fluid beings, not at all tied to rigid logic. People are also all very different, and their efforts all come in different forms. They emphasize different things, focus on different things, not just communication efficiency. What I’ve learned too with other autistic people is that everyone’s standards for communication clarity are different. I don’t think you can speak a universal language that everybody understands perfectly 100% of the time. What does happen is that people who talk to each other often learn each other’s language, able to talk more concisely and efficiently, but you can’t really expect that of strangers on the internet. Of course “birds of a feather flock together” as they say. People in the same internet communities might have the same interests, consume the same media, have the same discussions with the same people. But there’s no getting around communication degrading. In the worst case you just have to ask someone what they mean, maybe clearly explain your issue with the ambiguities, and wait for disambiguation. Learning to ask precise questions so as to elicit the best response from someone, to immediately get the answer you seek, is also a lifelong challenge. It’s not worth getting upset about a single instance of degraded communication, if you can even call it that. I’d be more upset with the universe for making us all so very different.
Corrections are how we reduce lingual entropy. Being corrected shouldn’t be embarrassing or shameful, we should welcome corrections so we can be better understood.
Language is collaborative, we’re always working to be better understood and to help each other be better understood.
If no one was ever corrected about anything, language will drift so badly we’d lose the ability to communicate. Try reading Olde English, before standardization people would just do whatever they wanted. It ranges from barely legible to gibberish.
This seems like such a strange take. You make it sound like it’s cost you effort to translate the error, but how are you quantifying that effort? If effort efficiency is something you’re striving for, it doesn’t feel like it makes sense to correct the mistake (which costs effort to do)
The gap between the two - what they said and what they meant - seems so small it probably took more “work” to correct them.
I’d go as far as to say that the work to correct them will never be repaid by the saved effort of not having to encounter this particular mistakes from this particular person ever again.
I didn’t correct anyone, by the way. I’m just a different person griping about how much it sucks to have to communicate with people who don’t care about being understood.
And you’re right, correcting people is even more work! So on top of the work of translating their stupid post we now have to tell them they were wrong so they don’t do this to us again. If they aren’t ever corrected they’ll just keep being wrong and we’ll have to keep translating their posts.
The alternative is to block them so we never see their posts ever again, which honestly is a better idea. It not like we’re missing out.
But you don’t have to say anything - the mistake is so easily corrected in your own head that the effort expended in correcting/defending corrections massively outweighs any additional effort it took to “translate”
You try to make it sound like you’re being rational about the effort expended here, but without quantifying the effort to translate and the effort to correct, you’ve got no way of knowing whether it’s the right course of action. To me, it’s clear it isn’t.
Also, is there really a need to call the post stupid? Seems like unnecessary effort to me
The mistakes compound. It starts with one, but if no mistakes are ever corrected then it won’t just be this one. I’d rather we don’t create a new dialect. So, let’s just nip it in the bud, correct all simple mistakes and ensure communications remain clear for everyone. It’s not even a big deal, someone just pointed out a minor mistake.
I called it stupid because you made a big deal about this, and I got emotional. It really isn’t! It’s just a small correction and we could have all moved on, but no, you had to die on this molehill and now I’m going to ruin my day being mad at this stupid fucking bullshit.
We should all work together to be understood. It’s good that people help each other communicate more clearly.
It’s frustrating to translate from what they said to what they mean. It’s more effort on my part and this is my free time, I don’t want to work.
Just communicate as clearly as you can.
I understand, but people also have very different standards of communication clarity. There are a lot of hidden assumptions, even when you’re trying to be 100% clear. Sometimes people can’t put their thoughts into words, or they don’t have the capacity for what you think is clarity. And in this case it’s just a very minor mistake. The person might not be native, or they may have been failed by their education system, or they might just be tired or stressed. There are lots of valid reasons why communication can degrade. I’m a bit autistic and struggle with ambiguous meaning or communication that doesn’t fit patterns I’m used to, sometimes to a truly irrational degree, and I’d like for others to speak my language more so I can understand them better, and I’d like to be able to speak their language more, to make them understand me better, but it’s just sort of the way of life. People are very fluid beings, not at all tied to rigid logic. People are also all very different, and their efforts all come in different forms. They emphasize different things, focus on different things, not just communication efficiency. What I’ve learned too with other autistic people is that everyone’s standards for communication clarity are different. I don’t think you can speak a universal language that everybody understands perfectly 100% of the time. What does happen is that people who talk to each other often learn each other’s language, able to talk more concisely and efficiently, but you can’t really expect that of strangers on the internet. Of course “birds of a feather flock together” as they say. People in the same internet communities might have the same interests, consume the same media, have the same discussions with the same people. But there’s no getting around communication degrading. In the worst case you just have to ask someone what they mean, maybe clearly explain your issue with the ambiguities, and wait for disambiguation. Learning to ask precise questions so as to elicit the best response from someone, to immediately get the answer you seek, is also a lifelong challenge. It’s not worth getting upset about a single instance of degraded communication, if you can even call it that. I’d be more upset with the universe for making us all so very different.
Corrections are how we reduce lingual entropy. Being corrected shouldn’t be embarrassing or shameful, we should welcome corrections so we can be better understood.
Language is collaborative, we’re always working to be better understood and to help each other be better understood.
If no one was ever corrected about anything, language will drift so badly we’d lose the ability to communicate. Try reading Olde English, before standardization people would just do whatever they wanted. It ranges from barely legible to gibberish.
This seems like such a strange take. You make it sound like it’s cost you effort to translate the error, but how are you quantifying that effort? If effort efficiency is something you’re striving for, it doesn’t feel like it makes sense to correct the mistake (which costs effort to do)
The gap between the two - what they said and what they meant - seems so small it probably took more “work” to correct them.
I’d go as far as to say that the work to correct them will never be repaid by the saved effort of not having to encounter this particular mistakes from this particular person ever again.
It’s more effort than a straight read.
I didn’t correct anyone, by the way. I’m just a different person griping about how much it sucks to have to communicate with people who don’t care about being understood.
And you’re right, correcting people is even more work! So on top of the work of translating their stupid post we now have to tell them they were wrong so they don’t do this to us again. If they aren’t ever corrected they’ll just keep being wrong and we’ll have to keep translating their posts.
The alternative is to block them so we never see their posts ever again, which honestly is a better idea. It not like we’re missing out.
But you don’t have to say anything - the mistake is so easily corrected in your own head that the effort expended in correcting/defending corrections massively outweighs any additional effort it took to “translate”
You try to make it sound like you’re being rational about the effort expended here, but without quantifying the effort to translate and the effort to correct, you’ve got no way of knowing whether it’s the right course of action. To me, it’s clear it isn’t.
Also, is there really a need to call the post stupid? Seems like unnecessary effort to me
The mistakes compound. It starts with one, but if no mistakes are ever corrected then it won’t just be this one. I’d rather we don’t create a new dialect. So, let’s just nip it in the bud, correct all simple mistakes and ensure communications remain clear for everyone. It’s not even a big deal, someone just pointed out a minor mistake.
I called it stupid because you made a big deal about this, and I got emotional. It really isn’t! It’s just a small correction and we could have all moved on, but no, you had to die on this molehill and now I’m going to ruin my day being mad at this stupid fucking bullshit.
We should all work together to be understood. It’s good that people help each other communicate more clearly.