{"id":1742,"date":"2016-05-23T11:54:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T11:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/?p=1742"},"modified":"2016-05-15T00:36:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T00:36:22","slug":"how-do-you-think-before-you-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/2016\/05\/23\/how-do-you-think-before-you-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"How do You Think Before You Speak?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve talked a lot about the speed involved and possibly required for retorts and humour<\/a>, but not all conversation is retorts and counter-retorts[1].<\/p>\n

For example, you’re giving a speech or lesson, and someone asks you a question. Many of the same tactics are helpful. It’s helpful to know your audience, to have an idea of their background(s), which types of words will work best for explaining things, and to have an idea of what they perceive the relative level of hierarchy is between you and them.<\/p>\n

But once you have an idea of these things, what do you do?<\/p>\n

This trigger for this post was an article reporting on Jon Stewart talking about how Hillary Clinton pauses for a few seconds between a question and when she answers[2]:<\/p>\n

”
\n…\u201cIt\u2019s \u2014 look, there are politicians who are either rendering their inauthenticity in real enough time to appear authentic, and then their are politicians who render their inauthenticity through \u2014 it\u2019s like, when your computer \u2026 if you have a Mac and you want to play a Microsoft game on it \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

AXELROD: Yes, yes.<\/p>\n

STEWART: \u2026 and there\u2019s that weird lag.<\/p>\n

AXELROD: Yes. No, I mean \u2026<\/p>\n

STEWART: That\u2019s Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

AXELROD: \u2026 that\u2019s a big problem. There\u2019s like a seven-second delay and all the words come out in a perfectly \u2026<\/p>\n

STEWART: Right.<\/p>\n

AXELROD: \u2026 politically calibrated sentence.<\/p>\n

STEWART: Right. Now, what gives me hope in that is that there\u2019s a delay, which means she\u2019s somehow fighting something. I\u2019ve seen politicians who don\u2019t have that delay and render their inauthenticity in real time, and that\u2019s when you go, \u2018That\u2019s a sociopath.\u2019
\n”<\/p>\n

So, when you’re answering a difficult question, do you pause? Why? For how long?<\/p>\n

For me, it depends on the type of question. For emotionally difficult questions, some of it is finding a neutral[3] perspective from which to address the question, to speak to the person(s) asking the question in a positive and useful way. Sometimes it’s choosing the appropriate emotional outlet[4] for whatever I’m feeling at the time.<\/p>\n

For technically difficult questions, it feels much more like assembling a mental model in my head, or choosing between different visualizations\/places to start. Parts of this can feel similar to emotionally difficult questions (perspectives vs. visualizations), but to me they feel quite different[5].<\/p>\n

So, how does this work for you?<\/p>\n

[1]No matter how much bash.org would want you to think so<\/a>. (Note that outside that page, bash.org is quite unfiltered internet. You have been warned.)<\/p>\n

[2] Article is here<\/a>. In a footnote because the editorializing in the article is outside the scope of this post.<\/p>\n

[3]In the emotional perspective sense.<\/p>\n

[4]This is often laughter for later when I’m alone. I mean, really, we’re just ape-like creatures who don’t know the first thing about ourselves. Why are we getting all angry about minutiae? This can only be funny.<\/p>\n

[5]Now that I say this, I’ll have to watch next time. But something getting my back[6] up really feels different from trying to focus and assemble a visualization. Maybe being able to relax for all types of questions would make them more similar.<\/p>\n

[6]Back hackles?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve talked a lot about the speed involved and possibly required for retorts and humour, but not all conversation is retorts and counter-retorts[1]. For example, you’re giving a speech or lesson, and someone asks you a question. Many of the same tactics are helpful. It’s helpful to know your audience, to have an idea of … Continue reading How do You Think Before You Speak?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,17,7,29,13,31,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1743,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/1743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}