Gah fine long post. #1 I think this is a pointless arguement that will go in circles. If this degrades into point counter post over and over, I quit.
Anyways. Facts that matter. #1 Freds time is worth 150 an hour. If he gives it to you for free it's a gift and you should be thankful. #2 Freds time is worth 150 an hour because it's valuable. As such, using it for anything besides its intended use (such as a semantics debate) is a stupid inefficient usage. #3 Freds personality is such that rather than putting up with "bullshit" or politely trying to assage it, he just breaks it down as quickly as possible so you can get beyond it and start learning (he likes to break it down). It seemed to me in this instance that was what he was doing. He called thomas a pussy because he wasnt doing the form correctly. Result? Thomas got pissed off, swallowed his pride and then learned the thing 5x faster. I think fred's method is the most reliable for getting tangible results in a realistic time frame, but I'm somewhat of a pussy so I never use it. #4 I have noticed that when proles are put into something that's way over their heads (ie a lot of things), they feel bad they are worthless and can't contribute anything. As a result, they pick some trivial detail they can "grasp" and go on and on about it and try to force it into the debate. This is basically why the peer grading in speech class pissed me off. They couldnt' understand most of the speech, or the art of it, and just zoned out, but then to sound smart, went on and on about one minor point (that I didn't restate my conclusion the 3rd time like the sheet said). Hopefully this concept makes sense to you anyways, my observation of the entire incident was that you felt bad you were "being useless" and couldn't really contribute anything to what fred was doing (and worse so because a girl you wanted to look cool to was there). As a result, when you finally found something you could do something with you went for it. At first me and thomas were like wtf is he even bringing it up, and trying to frame the debate around...uh...something that really doesn't fucking matter. You said something along the lines "I can see your point, but it's wrong because of a semantics issue, which you don't understand". A good student would go "oh I understand what he means, and he worded it in a way that doesn't convey it that well to me. Oh well, let's see how I should apply this." Instead, you basically chose to challenge him, and mention that fred doesnt understand semantics. Fred's response: don't challenge me, I'm giving you an opportunity to drop it. Elliotts response: Rawr I'm gonna push it and cause conflict. Conflict insues. Me and thomas watch and think "we don't fucking care if it's a semantics thing, we want to continue learning."
Your entire arguement is "I dont like being misunderstood." Me and thomas argued you from that standpoint, but having thought about it more, that point is irrelevant, because you weren't "being misunderstood" when it started, and chose to provoke it. In was only after fred didn't back down and "let the random person he's never met before (and giving a free lesson to) lecture him on how to teach."
If I had of been in freds place I would have handled it differently, but I really don't feel anything he did was wrong. The other big point you are probably missing is that Fred isn't mad at you. He simply adressed the situation in the fashion he did since he felt it would be the best way to get your shit in order. He actually left me a message telling me that you really need to study with Lee and you have no idea what you're passing up. That's only something he'd do if he cared.
ok. now that i have more time to articulate my answer, i can actually realistically argue with you about this. before, you were simply pushing me into a corner where i didn't know how to word my responses.
keep in mind. you are the one who brought up this argument. and this LJ post wasn't intended to further the argument. and it is definitely a pointless argument. but, i feel like if i back down i will be insulting both you and i, so i won't back down until you ask me to.
1) irrelevant. the argument between fred and i had nothing to do with being thankful.
2) how about using it to build a relationship? how about for both of us to figure out how we work? you should know by now that i don't ever care about the monetary value of things.
3) thomas' situation is irrelevant, and unrelated to mine. and i agree that his method is very useful and reliable.
4a) i didn't understand what he was teaching, as i am not on that level yet, but that had nothing to do with me "picking" some trivial thing to argue about. i did not feel bad that i was useless, and i was not trying to look cool for a girl. if you are to look at it from this perspective, the only relation i can make is that i was curious as to why he said my observation was wrong. if you understand that, then you can think of it as trying to increase my understanding of the debate, or trying to temporarily bring it down to my level so that i can understand a little bit of it. but in the beginning, all i was doing was responding to him.
4b) i didn't mention that fred doesn't understand semantics. i was offering to explain my view from a semantics perspective. fred turned that around on me and said "i have a degree in semantics. i know more about semantics than you. you can't win against me on a semantics issue" at which point, i decided to take a direction away from semantics because i knew that he wouldn't listen to anything i had to say on the matter. i should also not that it's not really possible to "not understand semantics", and i would never say that. i did, however, imply "you don't understand the semantic difference between your understanding of 'move' and my understanding of 'move'; or if you do understand, you're not letting me explain myself" and "i want to use this opporotunity to come to an exact definition of 'move', and find or create another word that fits the opposing view".
if you and thomas had said, or even hinted, something along the lines of "stop, i want to learn more", i would have backed down. instead, you hinted at me: "it's not worth it, you won't accomplish anything, he's better than you, just don't." which all mean nothing to me.
you and thomas did not argue with me from the standpoint of "you say you want to be understood", you argued with me from the standpoint of "you have an ego, and you don't know it".
actually, i WAS misunderstood from the start. and fred provoked the argument by directly saying i was wrong, and nothing else, as opposed to saying any of: 'it's irrelevant', 'don't worry about it', 'you'll figure it out later', 'you're wrong and here's why'. in the very beginning, i was curious. i was very quickly, however, forced into being defensive.
"In was only after fred didn't back down and "let the random person he's never met before (and giving a free lesson to) lecture him on how to teach."" that didn't happen. my argument with him had absolutely nothing to do with his way of teaching.
let me reiterate the first few exchanges (as close as i can remember) between him and i: "here, put your hand on my elbow. is my elbow moving?" "yes." "no, it's not." "yes it is, it moved about a centimeter in a few directions." "no, it's not moving. look, is my finger moving?" "yes." "no, it's not. it's moving spacially but it's not moving." "oh, so then your elbow was just moving spacially." "no, it wasn't." "but, i felt it move." "it wasn't moving."
as far as i can tell, he assumed i didn't understand what he meant by "spacially moving, but not moving", and thought i was still talking about his elbow moving in general, when i was actually talking about his elbow moving spacially. i know you assumed that i didn't understand him about that. so i imagine it's possible, maybe likely, that he assumed the same thing.
"The other big point you are probably missing is that Fred isn't mad at you." i have told you multiple times that i am very aware that he is in no way mad or upset at me. i also told you to stop assuming that i think he is. i should also note that i am in no way mad or upset at him. so stop assuming that i am. the only reason i have even a hint of anger or dehumanization against fred is because you keep assuming i do, and you keep bringing it up. this forces me to think about it from that perspective, which distorts my memory of it. it never would have even crossed my mind that fred could be mad at me for that if you hadn't brought it up. you actually make me mad at you for continuously bringing this up, because it proves that you're not listening to me.
so there you have it. the only argument you made that has ANY relation to my argument with fred is the part of #4 where i understood that i couldn't relate to what he was teaching thomas, and chose to stay out of it, because it wasn't for me. and even then, it's only really correlated, not causally related (at least, not to an extent that matters).
#1 I think this is a pointless arguement that will go in circles. If this degrades into point counter post over and over, I quit.
Anyways.
Facts that matter.
#1 Freds time is worth 150 an hour. If he gives it to you for free it's a gift and you should be thankful.
#2 Freds time is worth 150 an hour because it's valuable. As such, using it for anything besides its intended use (such as a semantics debate) is a stupid inefficient usage.
#3 Freds personality is such that rather than putting up with "bullshit" or politely trying to assage it, he just breaks it down as quickly as possible so you can get beyond it and start learning (he likes to break it down). It seemed to me in this instance that was what he was doing.
He called thomas a pussy because he wasnt doing the form correctly. Result? Thomas got pissed off, swallowed his pride and then learned the thing 5x faster. I think fred's method is the most reliable for getting tangible results in a realistic time frame, but I'm somewhat of a pussy so I never use it.
#4 I have noticed that when proles are put into something that's way over their heads (ie a lot of things), they feel bad they are worthless and can't contribute anything. As a result, they pick some trivial detail they can "grasp" and go on and on about it and try to force it into the debate. This is basically why the peer grading in speech class pissed me off. They couldnt' understand most of the speech, or the art of it, and just zoned out, but then to sound smart, went on and on about one minor point (that I didn't restate my conclusion the 3rd time like the sheet said). Hopefully this concept makes sense to you
anyways, my observation of the entire incident was that you felt bad you were "being useless" and couldn't really contribute anything to what fred was doing (and worse so because a girl you wanted to look cool to was there). As a result, when you finally found something you could do something with you went for it. At first me and thomas were like wtf is he even bringing it up, and trying to frame the debate around...uh...something that really doesn't fucking matter. You said something along the lines "I can see your point, but it's wrong because of a semantics issue, which you don't understand".
A good student would go "oh I understand what he means, and he worded it in a way that doesn't convey it that well to me. Oh well, let's see how I should apply this."
Instead, you basically chose to challenge him, and mention that fred doesnt understand semantics.
Fred's response: don't challenge me, I'm giving you an opportunity to drop it.
Elliotts response: Rawr I'm gonna push it and cause conflict.
Conflict insues.
Me and thomas watch and think "we don't fucking care if it's a semantics thing, we want to continue learning."
Your entire arguement is "I dont like being misunderstood."
Me and thomas argued you from that standpoint, but having thought about it more, that point is irrelevant, because you weren't "being misunderstood" when it started, and chose to provoke it. In was only after fred didn't back down and "let the random person he's never met before (and giving a free lesson to) lecture him on how to teach."
If I had of been in freds place I would have handled it differently, but I really don't feel anything he did was wrong.
The other big point you are probably missing is that Fred isn't mad at you. He simply adressed the situation in the fashion he did since he felt it would be the best way to get your shit in order. He actually left me a message telling me that you really need to study with Lee and you have no idea what you're passing up. That's only something he'd do if he cared.
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keep in mind. you are the one who brought up this argument. and this LJ post wasn't intended to further the argument. and it is definitely a pointless argument. but, i feel like if i back down i will be insulting both you and i, so i won't back down until you ask me to.
1) irrelevant. the argument between fred and i had nothing to do with being thankful.
2) how about using it to build a relationship? how about for both of us to figure out how we work? you should know by now that i don't ever care about the monetary value of things.
3) thomas' situation is irrelevant, and unrelated to mine. and i agree that his method is very useful and reliable.
4a) i didn't understand what he was teaching, as i am not on that level yet, but that had nothing to do with me "picking" some trivial thing to argue about. i did not feel bad that i was useless, and i was not trying to look cool for a girl.
if you are to look at it from this perspective, the only relation i can make is that i was curious as to why he said my observation was wrong. if you understand that, then you can think of it as trying to increase my understanding of the debate, or trying to temporarily bring it down to my level so that i can understand a little bit of it. but in the beginning, all i was doing was responding to him.
4b) i didn't mention that fred doesn't understand semantics. i was offering to explain my view from a semantics perspective. fred turned that around on me and said "i have a degree in semantics. i know more about semantics than you. you can't win against me on a semantics issue" at which point, i decided to take a direction away from semantics because i knew that he wouldn't listen to anything i had to say on the matter.
i should also not that it's not really possible to "not understand semantics", and i would never say that.
i did, however, imply "you don't understand the semantic difference between your understanding of 'move' and my understanding of 'move'; or if you do understand, you're not letting me explain myself" and "i want to use this opporotunity to come to an exact definition of 'move', and find or create another word that fits the opposing view".
if you and thomas had said, or even hinted, something along the lines of "stop, i want to learn more", i would have backed down.
instead, you hinted at me: "it's not worth it, you won't accomplish anything, he's better than you, just don't." which all mean nothing to me.
you and thomas did not argue with me from the standpoint of "you say you want to be understood", you argued with me from the standpoint of "you have an ego, and you don't know it".
actually, i WAS misunderstood from the start. and fred provoked the argument by directly saying i was wrong, and nothing else, as opposed to saying any of: 'it's irrelevant', 'don't worry about it', 'you'll figure it out later', 'you're wrong and here's why'. in the very beginning, i was curious. i was very quickly, however, forced into being defensive.
"In was only after fred didn't back down and "let the random person he's never met before (and giving a free lesson to) lecture him on how to teach.""
that didn't happen. my argument with him had absolutely nothing to do with his way of teaching.
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let me reiterate the first few exchanges (as close as i can remember) between him and i:
"here, put your hand on my elbow. is my elbow moving?"
"yes."
"no, it's not."
"yes it is, it moved about a centimeter in a few directions."
"no, it's not moving. look, is my finger moving?"
"yes."
"no, it's not. it's moving spacially but it's not moving."
"oh, so then your elbow was just moving spacially."
"no, it wasn't."
"but, i felt it move."
"it wasn't moving."
as far as i can tell, he assumed i didn't understand what he meant by "spacially moving, but not moving", and thought i was still talking about his elbow moving in general, when i was actually talking about his elbow moving spacially.
i know you assumed that i didn't understand him about that. so i imagine it's possible, maybe likely, that he assumed the same thing.
"The other big point you are probably missing is that Fred isn't mad at you."
i have told you multiple times that i am very aware that he is in no way mad or upset at me. i also told you to stop assuming that i think he is.
i should also note that i am in no way mad or upset at him. so stop assuming that i am.
the only reason i have even a hint of anger or dehumanization against fred is because you keep assuming i do, and you keep bringing it up. this forces me to think about it from that perspective, which distorts my memory of it. it never would have even crossed my mind that fred could be mad at me for that if you hadn't brought it up.
you actually make me mad at you for continuously bringing this up, because it proves that you're not listening to me.
so there you have it. the only argument you made that has ANY relation to my argument with fred is the part of #4 where i understood that i couldn't relate to what he was teaching thomas, and chose to stay out of it, because it wasn't for me.
and even then, it's only really correlated, not causally related (at least, not to an extent that matters).
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