the limits of knowing

[jlh]

But first: Does anyone want the three special EW True Blood covers? I got them free at work and am happy to ship out to someone who'd want all three. It's Anna Paquin with Moyer, Skarsgard and Manganiello in poses like American Gothic

Comments

[imaginarycircus]

Definitely does NOT mean you are an idiot. I actually think it's kind of entitled of people to expect you can read their mind based on very little information. It bugs me when people expect me to know what or whom they're talking about based on a hint. Which is why I am always 100% OK with people asking me what the hell I am talking about. :D I think people often assume that everyone else is thinking about the same thing he or she is and that is just ridiculous.

The nice thing about the digital age is that you can google Bradley Manning and put the pieces together for yourself.

[jlh]

I actually think it's kind of entitled of people to expect you can read their mind based on very little information.

That's a really good point about entitlement! I hadn't thought about it that way before. I've gotten so used to people yammering away on tumblr without any kind of context that I've just put the onus on myself (or just judged myself as an Unfortunate Outsider). But I don't actually have an obligation to know what other people are talking about, even if they're in a chummy Inner Circle of Knowing (or assume they are). I tried not to be like that even when I was in a chummy Inner Circle of Knowing

[evil_erato]

Does the fact that "Clarence" made me think of Clemons first have more to do with the fact that he was in the hospital that week, or does it say something larger about being generally unknowledgeable and thinking about saxophone players more often than the US Supreme Court?

The former, definitely.

Does it mean that there's just too much to know, and I can only know some of it (sort of a corollary to Linda Holmes's article about how we can never, ever, see/read/hear everythingThis. I end up Googling a lot of stuff I see referenced on Twitter. I try to be fairly well informed of things, but there is Just. So. Much. Stuff. I try to be fairly well informed, but I know I miss stuff all the time that my friends/acquaintances think is important. I think it is completely normal to have those moments of misunderstanding/confusion, because we're not actually machines and we cannot possibly compute everything we see/hear at the speeds the internet have made routine. We're human, humans make errors, and the people who can't recognize that

[jlh]

There really is so much stuff! And however judgy or "I have elevated standards" or snooty or whatever people are, it's not like my priorities are wrong just because they aren't that person's. I don't think the NBA draft is a dumb thing to care about just because I personally don't care about it. But when people present like that I admit I tend to get confused.

I totally expect myself to be a machine. You know me well enough to know how seriously I mean that statement.

[annearchy]

I think I would have had the same reactions to Clarence, Manning and Rachel Nichols that you did. (Reading about Nichols belatedly, I wondered, "Why are they tweeting about faux-JJ on Criminal Minds?"

[jlh]

For me she's Gaila but I totally had the same thought!

[sistermagpie]

Not at all does it make you an idiot! Someone is delusional to think it makes the other person an idiot

[jlh]

Usually when people usually use it as a put down they're trying to say one context is better than the other.

And usually, "my context is better than yours" in some kind of snobby/purist way. It's funny how I can totally ignore that in some matters but I'm really sensitive to it in others. Or from people who seem to project that they only care about Truly Important Things.

Oh god, a thought: I think I'm just easily bowled over by people who don't have a sense of humor, or are never funny or silly. Like, I feel lightweight in comparison, I think! When actually I find laughing with people to be the best way to have a friendship, like, ever!

[amyamy]

Definitely not an idiot for conflating names. Hell, when we killed Bin Laden and news reporters kept screwing up his name and saying Obama instead, there were several articles discussing the issue with linguistics experts and speech pathologists about how brains store information and how easy it is to make mistakes, particularly if a brain is already "primed" to retrieve certain information, as when one has recently heard a news store about someone with a different but similar name.

I also don't think it's at all your responsibility to know every context for every possible statement ever, not the least because it wouldn't be possible. It's also not necessarily got anything to do with age - I have a good friend at law school who I've known for two years and worked quite closely with on several projects whose name, to my chagrin and her annoyance, I regularly mistake for another mutual friend's. The problem for me is not about being forgetful or getting old or anything, it's just that my brain doesn't really store information about

[jlh]

The priming makes a lot of sense. Like, I don't really think about the Manning brothers all that often because I don't follow football, but I had just seen a little article about them five minutes beforehand.

It's that whole some contexts are more important than other contexts thing, I think! I'm easily swayed.

Maybe you need to make up an entirely different name for her. People give me nicknames all the time because my given name is so common.