Keep up the double-talk all you like jimmy. There is no reason for a person to intentionally say something in a way another person might "choose" to interpret uncharitably and then be shocked or dumbfounded when the person indeed interprets it in such a
It is the same as Krystian or Jimmy, believing as long as you say, "I'm not saying you are, but..." then that language is the appropriate way to criticize and if the person takes it the wrong way, then it is on how they chose to interpret the criticism, lol.
That is not the point I'm making. I thought I had been clear enough to lay out the conclusions, but perhaps I was not. I'll clarify.
There is no reason for a person to intentionally say something in a way another person might "choose" to interpret uncharitably and then be shocked or dumbfounded when the person indeed interprets it in such a way.
Yes, you are absolutely correct.
The issue isn't about being "shocked" or "dumbfounded". As you know, "Not to be the man who starts trouble" shows that this (potential) reaction was anticipated, so Krystian obviously is neither shocked nor dumbfounded.
In other words, if you don't want a person to possibly interpret something uncharitably, keep that opinion to yourself. If you are okay with them interpreting it uncharitably, then own it.
This is also good advice to live by, and I try to adhere to it myself. It doesn't make any sense to blame other people for how they respond to you, especially if it's something that you can predict. If someone having a particular response to your message is aversive to you, you have the choice to say something else.To make a predictably bad choice from your own point of view, and then go on to blame someone *else* for how your choice has affected you... Yes, that would be bad. If you were in the middle of criticizing them for doing it, then yes, it would even be hypocritical. I have no argument with this, because, well... it's completely true. We're in agreement here.
The key here is that interpreting motive behind someone else's words is a finicky thing, and it's really really easy to come up with an explanation that *seems* to fit on a superficial level, but is completely off the mark. Because of this, it is important to look at the finer details and context to determine which intention was most likely. Even more importantly, it is crucial to keep in mind that there *is* more than one possibility, that you don't know the answer with certainty, and that the reality might be very very different to the imagined motive that you've chosen to respond to.
This came up earlier in the thread, where you made what appeared to be a very quick knee-jerk interpretation of Krystian which turned out to be incorrect. I happened to be quite confident that your initial interpretation was wrong due to subtle factors that would be difficult to explain, but the point wasn't "trust me I'm right" - heck, the point wasn't even "I "could" be right, and you don't know that I'm not!". The point is that *unless* you have some sort of positive knowledge, you might be responding to something that didn't happen and therefore your responses may be inappropriate and unnecessarily hostile, and that *therefore* it is important to hold more than one hypothesis in mind and respond with all of them in mind so that you don't end up treating people unfairly when it unsurprisingly turns out that you were wrong. Again, if treating people unfairly doesn't bother you, that's fine. That's your choice. I prefer to treat people fairly.
To apply it to the current facet of this conversation, there's a couple distinct questions here. One question is whether Krystian was "owning" the statement that you were being overly aggressive. You are interpreting it as "not owned" and an example of the failure mode you've laid out above. It's seems pretty clear to me that this is not the case, but again take that for whatever it is worth to you, as it is not the point I'm driving at. The point is that it doesn't seem like you have even thought about the question "is there another more likely explanation that makes me look worse?", and that until you show some indication that you have, people are going to reasonably and justifiably see you as someone who ignores the truth when it is unflattering to you. Again, that's fine. That's your choice. It is, however, not the choice I would recommend making, for what that's worth.
On the question of whether *I* am "shocked" or "dumbfounded" by your responses and feel entitled to you "not being aggressive" or whatever, the answer is *of course not*. You're free to be overly aggressive if you want to be overly aggressive, and I am not at all surprised by your responses. They fit my model of you quite well. Applying my own advice to myself, I don't assume that you are the person you appear to be. I take into account the possibility that I have misread and underestimated you. This is the point of all the questions and the general rarity of absolute statements. These questions are picked because they're questions that my (leading) model of you cannot engage with without experiencing cognitive dissonance and therefore working quite hard to avoid answering - and so if you actually answer any of them instead of trying to deflect away, I'll know I have been wrong about you (and since the question's are things like "do you know something I don't", I'd be poised to be humble and learn what I've been missing).
So far though, even though I've been looking, I cannot find any way which you differ from "ego is overly sensitive because he knows he cannot back up his assertions, so he interprets everything as aggression and takes his own faults out on other people while avoiding any perspective that would allow him to see how well this model fits him". Consequently, I'm expecting you to feign laughter ("lol", "hilarious"), to accuse me of believing things that I obviously do not believe ("It is the same as [...] Jimmy, believing as long as you say [...]"), and to otherwise attempt to posture and assert (without argumentation) that I'm wrong about various things in order to distract from the points I'm actually making. I do not expect you to engage with my points beyond a superficial level, if that. This wouldn't necessarily mean that you're wrong, of course, but it would mean you look, walk, and quack like someone who is incapable of engaging with thought that challenges him.
I am aware that confessing this inability to distinguish you from someone who is merely reacting to a bruised ego makes me look dumb if anyone can point out a discrepancy I missed. I own this, and if it happens I will delve into the reasons for my failure and eat humble pie.
If you can point out what I've missed, *please do*. I will be sincerely grateful, and I will apologize to you for being such an idiot as to have missed it. I am really really serious about this. I am also aware that in asserting my intentions to be charitable to you I necessarily open myself to feedback to anyone who thinks I am treating you unfairly. I would also sincerely appreciate feedback on this front.
Like Joe and Krystian, I do not expect you to appreciate my thoughts nor my questions. I do think you're making a mistake not to, of course, or else I wouldn't share them, but I am not trying to get you to appreciate them. Saying stuff that will predictably fail to help you would be stupid, and I'm not stupid. Claiming that I'm doing this to help you would be disingenuous, and I am being genuine here. I am not trying to help you.
My *goal*, is to offer you perspective so that you can a) show everyone that you already get it by explaining how your response is correct even given this perspective, b) learn better how not to be a jerk to people on this forum and apologize when wrong, or c) make it as clear as possible that you are unable to do a) and unwilling to do b). I do expect it to come to c), but I would prefer to be proven wrong.
The reason it matters to me is that I care about this forum. This forum isn't always active, nor are all of the threads groundbreaking, but it is the single best place I've found to discuss novel and in depth concepts related to hypnosis and the more "far out" implications thereof. I have learned a lot from both reading and commenting here, and I would like to preserve the ability for this forum to function in that role when new and interesting minds come by - both for my own sake and the sake of others. The ability to function like this is predicated on there being enough mutual respect such that novel ideas can be seen and engaged with to help refine them and sort the promising ideas from the chaff. Yes, this forum isn't perfect, and there are squabbles here and there - heck, I squabbled with *Joe* a bit when I was new here. The cool thing is that the people here have been able to make it work anyway. Even though we had disagreements and butted heads a bit, Joe had enough respect for my thinking that he went out of his way to reach out to me anyway, and it's things like this that keeps the forum friendly and useful and don't get enough credit (thanks Joe, btw).
The thing that makes this work is that while everyone has ego and everyone wants to think they're the ones that are right and are the expertiest expert, people here, for whatever reason it may be, have been *very good* at engaging with opposing viewpoints themselves, and nothing is beneath consideration. Even the accusation of "this is beneath consideration" isn't beneath consideration. While there are, on occasion, things that look like "posturing and slapfights", the thing that you're missing is that they're largely *good natured* posturing and slapfights, done with a smile on their faces hugs and beers afterwards. It's done with respect for their opponents. In other words,
it works because people act in such a way that works even when they aren't right and aren't the expertiest expert in the room.
As a nonhypnotist that has no experience with the mind blowing stuff that hypnotists have seen, with no concept of the incredible depth of thought that can go into making hypnotic approaches work, you have barged in here and not only asserted your view as if it were fact, but responded with aggression when challenged. You will be challenged here. Everybody get's challenged here because that's what we do, and that's how this works - but *doubly* so if you walk in here not knowing what you're talking about without seeing how far in over your head you are. If your response to challenge is not to explain how your view makes sense in light of alternate perspectives but instead to "slap" people for hallucinated aggressions and then not even apologize when you're forced to realize you're wrong... Then until you change your behavior you are bad for this forum and a detriment to the quality of discussion which can occur here. If you can't get along with *Joe*, despite his very Postel's law abiding response, then you will not be able to get along with anyone disagrees with you substantially, and as a forum centered around hypnosis that likes to discuss the crazier side which can't get discussed on Hypnothoughts... that's going to be most people here.
Again, I do not expect you to appreciate this or engage with this and give me a detailed response about how you've taken my points into consideration and how you see things, given that. I would be excited if you do, and you would gain a *lot* of respect in my eyes and I'm sure the eyes of others. What I *expect*, though, is posturing of being above engaging with the points I have laid out for you, demonstrating what I said about your inability or unwillingness to engage with people who don't buy into your presuppositions.
This post is for everyone else who reads this and wonders if you can back up your arrogance and aggression, or whether anyone else thinks you're in the right. This post is so that next time you're unnecessarily hostile to our new members, instead of running around the same circles with you to no end, I can just link back to this and simply say "Don't mind him, welcome to the forum".
