Disclaimers?

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This is nonsense. They're not even comparable. Like I said, every interaction is different. Treating them as if they were all the same causes more problems than it could possibly solve.

This has been proven to be untrue in my peer group. I hope it proves untrue in other peer groups. It may be true in yours, however.

Okay, but the example you give of "Cheeseburgers are terrible," is a bit simplistic. I realize you've used simplicity for a reason, in that simplicity can often get the point across better than clouding the issue with more complex examples. In this case, it's fairly easy to understand, even as an aspie, that if I like cheeseburgers, but you just said that, that what you really mean is "I don't like cheeseburgers."

In other words, sometimes it's not that hard to fill in the blanks. When the topic is changed however, things can get far more complicated. For example:

"Autistics can't read body language."

What do I mean by that?

I'm not going to answer it for you yet, because I want to know how you interpret that without any further input from me. I know what I meant by it, and I promise I'm not going to change what I meant just to mess with you.

I dont like dealing with them either. The entire population of earth has become enthrawlled with them and it is completely unessesary.
I'm convinced that people like creating more problems than actually fixing them

If we use the prior example, we can use the preface of "In my experience, most". You can often replace the word "can't" with "have a hard time" since "have a hard time" is a disclaimer. So when we read or hear "Autistics can't read body language" we can assume they meant to say "In my experience, most Autistics have a hard time reading body language".

By assuming disclaimers in this example, we have a high probability of arriving at the intended statement and avoiding semantic arguments.

Nope. Actually, what you did was read so much into the statement that it's way off and now requires me to clarify. But the problem is, if you were to post a lengthy reply to that statement, interpreted as you interpreted it, you'd be wasting a lot of time. Also I may not realize that you've completely misinterpreted me, take your response as rebuttal or attack on my statements, defend them not knowing you didn't understand them, and a vicious cycle begins that could end in disaster.

I promise you, I remembered exactly what I meant, and haven't changed it one iota.

Here is the actual statement. It was only missing one word:

"Some autistics can't read body language."

Technically, both statements are accurate renditions of my meaning. "Autistics can't read body language" doesn't include the word "all" so if someone were to assume that's what I meant, they'd be wrong too. Since I didn't quantify "Autistics" it can also mean "some autistics."

Okay, so you filled in three blanks. You've added "In my experience," "most," and changed "can't," to "have difficulty with." So now you have a totally different statement from my true meaning.

"In my experience" is wrong, because it's not from my experience. It's from studies. Some Autistics really can't read body language.

"Most" is wrong, because I wasn't talking about most autistics, but only the few who really can't read body language at all.

"Have difficulty" is wrong, because I'm not talking about difficulties at all. I'm talking about a complete absence of the ability.

If I had simply included one more word, the entire sentence would have been far clearer, and I wouldn't have wasted my time having to write an entire paragraph explaining it.

Your interpretation puts far more ambiguity into it than I intended, which requires me to be more explicit. "Some Autistics can't read body language." is precisely what I meant, and it would have been far simpler to just include one more word and avoid all this.

I do get what you mean. I understand that what you're talking about is learning to read things into statements because most people won't fill the blanks in for us. I get that.

But rather than filling in the blanks, I think it's far better to ask "Is this or that what you mean?"

Filling in blanks inaccurately causes misunderstandings up the wazzoo. It causes long replies based on inaccurately interpreted messages, only to find out later that one party is taking about one thing, and the other is talking about something completely different. We see this all the time on the forums here. It happens constantly. Either some don't write precisely and long rebuttals follow that are a complete waste of the poster's time because the whole post is based on a misinterpretation, and those can be followed by defensive rebuttals from the original poster, not even knowing they've been misinterpreted, and things get messy right quick.

You see, what you did there was explain to me how you would interpret the statement. But that wasn't the goal. The goal was for you to understand what I meant by it. I didn't ask how you would go about interpreting my statement. I asked you what I meant. And that's the real goal your after isn't it? (I'm not trying to pick on you, I really do have a great deal of experience doing this. Not that I'm always very good at it mind you. ).

There is a much better way, that's always accurate.

A better way to do this is to just ask me, "Did you mean...?" And, when you do ask, don't add so much into such a short statement. Add one thing at a time.

"Did you mean, 'In my experience autistics can't read body language?'"

"No. I'm getting this from my own studying."

"Oh. Then did you mean, "Most autistics can't read body language?'"

"No. I only meant some."

"Oh, okay, then did you mean, "have difficulty with?"

"No. I meant some autistics can't read body language at all."

Can you see how, if the right guesses are arrived at earlier, the whole process can be even quicker? More importantly, you're not going to base a response on the wrong information, wasting your time and mine. When the process is done this way, you're not challenging me or assuming anything, showing you care what i really mean, and I'm cooperative, because I want you to know exactly what I mean.

Guilty, at least over the past few days. In that case I was responding to a logical fallacy (false dichotomy) that is also called black and white thinking. I don't think black and white thinking is always wrong, but in that case it was.

I don't just interact with my "peer group" (I'm not sure that I have a peer group currently) but I do interact with a lot of people in different contexts online, and those assumptions are not appropriate in each of those contexts, nor are they always applicable in contexts where they can be applicable. They're not even universally applicable when involved in a discussion with a group of people in which they might be applicable in some cases.

The main thing is I just do not see how it is possible to treat every single interaction as if it is the same as every other interaction. You seem to want that, but it strikes me as completely illogical.

You personally have not read all studies, or probably even most studies on the subject of Autism, even if you make a habit of reading many studies. The studies you have read would be biased by your experienced in the way you relate to them and/or process the information you read. In this case "In my experience" is accurate.
This is a reasonable objection. The difference between "most" and "some" is the conceptual difference between "majority" and "minority" which can lead to misunderstandings. I was still able to put myself into the general range of your meaning regardless.
I literally worked every day with people who do not believe this is true. While their efforts may be proven or disproven in the future, I cannot in good conscience agree to the idea that there is a complete absence of the ability. So (in my experiences) "have difficulty" would be the correct assumption to make.
The primary goal is to increase reading/listening comprehension by assuming disclaimers based on probability of intended meaning. The sub goal is to reduce the amount of semantic arguments and sub conversations spent debating those disclaimers.
I can see how in a setting of academia that method of questioning would be the superior course of action. I can also see how in a large majority of settings that method of questioning would be met by frustration, resistance, and eventual distancing from NTs.

Last edited by Incendax on 19 Dec 2012, 6:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is probably something you do every day of your life already. Let me give you an example of treating every single interaction as if it was the same as every other interaction as a baseline.

You see someone directly approaching you and making eye contact. You should assume that this person intends to talk to you in a reasonable manner. This is your baseline. If you react to the person approaching you as if they were going to rob you, or as if they were going to verbally harass you, or if they were going to just bump into you then you would have much greater difficulty with social interaction.

The probability of them doing any of those latter things is extremely low, so you assume they are not going to do them until presented with evidence to the contrary. Does this still seem illogical to you?

You've missed the real point of communication.

The point of communication is understanding. I never said the statement I gave you was true. It's an example of the sorts of statements one might hear or read.

What you're doing here is correcting what you perceive as a misconception on my part, but what you're not doing is trying to understand what I really mean.

My point has been that filling in the blanks isn't the best way to understand what someone else means by what they've said.

This isn't about accurate knowledge of "truth." It's about accurate knowledge of what the person your'e communicating with thinks.

You have to first understand exactly what another person is actually saying, and meaning before you can reason with them. You've jumped straight over understanding what I meant, to correcting me.

Whether or not I believe that some autistics really cannot read body language wasn't even relevant to the point I was making.

Thus, there has occurred a breakdown in communication, even between you and I, because you've missed the point. And you've missed it because you're too wrapped up in your method of filling in the blanks yourself, instead of asking the source (in this case me) what I really mean by what I've said.

Your OP isn't about autism itself. It's about communication methods. Even if you and I were not autistic, you're method failed to determine the accurate intention behind what I said. At this point in the communication process, it doesn't matter whether what I mean is right or wrong. What matters is understanding what I mean accurately. Filling in your own blanks failed to do that.

Asking questions to get to the root of meaning doesn't just work in academic settings. It works literally everywhere, under all circumstances. If I think to do this myself (and I admit, I often do forget to), it works, whether I'm in a class, at home with my kids, talking to my father on the phone, or some stranger I just met on the street. It doesn't matter what the setting is, when I use it, it works. It's a tried and true method that is taught in communication classes. It's better than trying to fill in all the blanks with educated guessing, because there is no guessing involved at all.

Asking questions of a person creates a rapport. It demonstrates that you care what they really think enough to want to know precisely what they think, and don't want to chance continuing a conversation based on a misunderstanding. I've met very few people that object to being asked for clarification.

We cannot know whether we agree or disagree with each other until we are absolutely certain of each other's meaning.

I genuinely do perceive a misconception on your part. The repeated references to accuracy of speech seem to confirm that this misconception exists. This is not about accurate knowledge of what the person you're communicating with thinks, this is about using probability in assuming disclaimers to determine the most likely thing that is being said.

It has never been in question whether or not filling in the blanks is the best way to understand what someone else means, it is not. However, it is a fast way to arrive at the most likely meaning.

I have jumped to correcting you because your replies seem to indicate a misconception regarding the subject matter despite repeated attempts to explain it to you. I do not know if that is because I am explaining poorly, if you are arriving at conclusions I am not, or if you genuinely do not understand the subject matter.

It seems like you are focusing on the importance of not filling in the blanks instead of why it would be important to fill in the blanks. I am having trouble understanding your replies. It seems like you are saying that blanks should never be filled, because it is always better to ask numerous probing questions. But this does not seem to address the majority situations where numerous probing questions cannot/should not be asked for various reasons.

Perhaps you think those situations are not a majority, and asking numerous probing questions should be done in almost every instance?

Not at all. Not in almost every instance. Usually only those in which at first glance one disagrees with what one perceives. but there can be other circumstances in which it is appropriate as well. The rest of your replies can be summed up rather briefly.

Your perception is wrong. Can I prove that to you? No. All I can do is tell you I do not think any autistics can't read body language at all. You can either believe that or not. That choice is up to you. Nothing I can do about that but tell you it was nothing more than example, to which I assigned an imaginary meaning, based on people I've spoken with who actually do believe that some autistics can't read body language.

The discussion we're having is all about communication, is it not? Communication is all about accurate understanding. Your position, that using probability in assuming is your position on the topic. It's not the topic. My position that asking questions is a better and more efficient way of arriving at more accurate conclusions is my position, not the topic.

I do not disagree that assuming frequently does lead to the most likely meaning. The problem is when they don't. When they are incorrect, the result can be a major waste of time, end in no understanding of each other, and worse, hard feelings. That alone is reason enough for me to disagree whole heartedly that this is not the best method when a more accurate one is available, creates better relationships, and avoids far more wasted time and trouble.

I should clarify one thing, because I see that we are both incorrectly identifying what I mean by "filling in the blanks" in my previous posts. I'm against filling in the blanks through assumptions. I am all for filling them in by getting to know people we communicate with better through questioning.

It's a little ironic that an example of failure of your method is occurring right within our conversation, but you don't seem to see it.



IMHO, you are having trouble because you are assuming far too much, and not asking me any questions at all, other than the one at the top of this post.

I would not go so far as to say that this is an example of failure of my method. You have certainly aggravated and alienated me, and I have possibly done the same to you, but I am resolved to stick with it until something either 'clicks' for you, 'clicks' for me, or we agree to disagree.
Then let me ask you a question, because I think I have realized what is going on. We are not in agreement about the basic premises of this issue, so let me try and break this down even further than I already did previously.

Premise 1) Misunderstandings lead to aggravation, and alienation of your peers.
Premise 2) Asking too many probing questions leads to aggravation, and alienation of your peers.
Premise 3) Due to lack of social skills, you may ask probing questions that lead to aggravation, and alienation of your peers.

Theory: Assuming disclaimers increases the chance of arriving at the intended meaning, reducing the negative consequences of Premise 2 & 3 at the risk of increases negative consequences of Premise 1.

I state that the reduction in Premise 2 & 3 is greater than the increase in Premise 1. Net benefit. You seem to be stating that the reduction in Premise 2 & 3 is less than the increase in Premise 1. Net loss.

Is the latter assumption correct?

Truly, this thread is great challenge for reading comprehension, but I vow to persevere to the end.

I'm neither aggravated nor alienated. You have my apologies for aggravating and alienating you. It was not my intention. As I said, I do not always follow my own advice, which has led to the very misunderstandings I've mentioned due to my own assumptions of others meanings. Because the proponent of a method doesn't use the method, doesn't mean the method doesn't work.

This ended up being a long reply, but I think it's well worth it if you're willing to read it. I'm deducing (partly through some assumptions drawn from several things you've written), that we are both fascinated with communication processes. I've enjoyed this debate. It's interesting to me to hear about other's ideas about communication, whether or not I think I agree with them.

I agree with premise one obviously.

I agree with premise two as well, as you worded it, however the way you worded it is not what I meant by questioning. Probing questions are good, but too many are not good, and that is not what I'm talking about. "Too many" implies questions that are unnecessary to ask. Questions that dig into a person's background can be taken as intrusive. Questions structured for the sole purpose of clarification however, are not intrusive since all they are about is what the other person has already shared. Since all you are asking about is what they've already given to you, it's not intrusive. It's just a restructuring of what they've said, in question form, indicating that we as listeners admit that we don't understand exactly what they have just said. Doing so, in effect, creates a "teacher-student" atmosphere, in which we are the students, and we're asking them to teach us, about them.

Asking questions also demonstrates that we care what the other person really thinks, and don't want to assume anything inaccurate about them. The subtle message received is, "I want to be sure I understand you correctly rather than assume anything incorrectly about you and risk offending you.

I do agree with premise three in part. It is true that if we ask too many probing questions, with our lack of social skills we run the risk of asking unnecessary questions and causing offense as well. However, the offense that occurs from asking questions can happen for one of two reasons. The first is that the question isn't necessary, and probes beyond information necessary for accurate communication. Another reason it can happen is due to the other person assuming more than they ought to about why we're asking the questions. If the questions are probing for erroneous information, the problem compounds. If the questions are simply to clarify but the other person assumes bad motivations behind them, offense can occur anyway, however the offense is due to the other person's assumptions, not the questions themselves.

You've said that learning to assume with probability takes time to learn. Asking the right questions also takes time to learn.

All I can tell you is that after many years of doing both, I have found that asking well targeted questions takes less time to learn, produces far more accurate results (because while there is some guess work involved, it's guess work guided by the other person), whereas assuming probably meanings is unguided guess work, that although if it is well learned usually works, when it doesn't work it creates greater misunderstandings more often than simply getting the accurate meaning from the speaker.

We could take all three of your premises and change "asking questions" to "assuming meaning" and they would be just as accurate as you've written them.

Premise 1) Misunderstandings lead to aggravation, and alienation of your peers. (Absolutely true. We're in complete agreement on this.)
Premise 2) Assuming leads to aggravation, and alienation of your peers. (May not be true all of the time, but when it is, this creates communication breakdown.)
Premise 3) Due to lack of social skills, you may assume things that lead to aggravation, and alienation of your peers. (The big difference between this and asking questions is that when questions are asked, at least you both know why the aggravation has occurred (it's the question). If the aggravation stems from assumptions, the assumptions are unspoken, and neither one of you knows why the aggravation is occurring.)

Let's not forget that while we assume things about others, they are assuming things about us. Assumptions are rarely expressed. They are almost always kept to ourselves, but our responses are based on them. If we've made wrong assumptions and don't express them, then structure our responses around those assumptions, our listeners have no way of knowing why we're reacting the way we are. They respond in kind, based on their further assumptions about us, and we don't know why they're reacting the way they are.

Ergo: Assuming makes an ass out of you and me. That expression wasn't written by aspies.

I spent most of my life assuming all sorts of things about people from what they've said. It really wasn't until my early Thirties that I began to learn questioning methods to avoid misunderstandings. Over the past twenty years, every time I think to use questions rather than assuming, I've had far better results than assuming anything. The only problems I've had is when I've forgotten to use questioning rather than assuming. I'm not saying that assuming hasn't worked most of the time, but when things start going wrong that's when I know it's not working, and it's time to question. Time to stop assuming anything, and let the other person educate me about them.

In the two and a half years I've been on Wrong Planet I've seen over and over the results from assuming. I've also seen on less frequent occasions some who think to either start out by questioning, or have gotten into a spat then back off and start asking questions instead of assuming. The latter have consistently avoided problems, or at least have stopped a problem that was beginning to develop. I have never once seen a case where, once a problem has begun to develop, assuming has solved the problem. Never. I've read literally tens of thousands of exchanges here.

Virtually every conversation I've read here (or heard or read anywhere else), that involves assumptions in which a problem has developed, ends in one of two ways. The discussion either quickly degrade into arguments and silly accusations (and if they happen here, they are often locked and/or deleted), or they fizzle because one party just gives up and leaves. The only way I've ever seen a conversation that begins with assumptions and develops problems resolve, is when at least one of the parties starts asking questions of the other demonstrating they really want to understand.

Does questioning always work? No. There are certain circumstances when it doesn't work. One is when the person being questioned is dead set against having to clarify themselves, and reacts negatively to it. Another is when the person being questioned is trying to hide their true motivation. In either of those cases, questioning doesn't work, but neither does assuming (unless the assumptions happen to be correct and the other person isn't trying to hide their motivation).

I can say from experience that the probability of questioning causing communication problems is a lot lower than the probability of assuming causing problems.

Take the statement I gave you to interpret, and how you interpreted it. I preceded that statement with "for example." I clearly denoted it as an example statement you might encounter in conversation, but I never said I believed it. When you interpreted it, you added assumptions.

Original statement: "Autistics can't read body language"

Your interpretation: ""In my experience, most Autistics have a hard time reading body language."

What my intention was: "Some autistics can't read body language."

In your justification of your interpretation, you stated the following:

You personally have not read all studies, or probably even most studies on the subject of Autism, even if you make a habit of reading many studies. The studies you have read would be biased by your experienced in the way you relate to them and/or process the information you read. In this case "In my experience" is accurate.





In all three instances above, I explained why they were incorrect assumptions. You explained why you think they are. I'm surprised at myself to tell you the truth, that I did not see the problem with your justifications until now.

The problem is, you are using assumptions to arrive at what you believe the truth to be. You're not using them to arrive at an understand of what I actually meant (whether what I meant is right or wrong is not relevant at this point ~ you can't know whether I am right or wrong if you haven't yet understood what I meant).

One cannot have an effective debate with anyone unless and until both parties in the debate understand exactly what each other is actually saying. If both parties are making incorrect assumptions about the other's meaning, each party is arguing a different issue, and the debate is moot. It's not until both parties clearly understand each other that effective debate can take place.



That may be your goal, and if it is, you're focus is misplaced. If your'e dead set on making assumptions work, you're not focused on the other person's true meaning and intent.

If you want to reduce the amount of semantic arguments, one sure fire way to do that is to agree on the meanings of terms, and the meaning behind each other's statements.

Think about it. This is exactly why, when laws or contracts are written, a list of definitions frequently appears at the very top of the document. That is there to reduce semantic arguments.



If it works in academic, business and legal settings, why would it not work elsewhere?



What method of questioning? The method of questioning I've used for over two decades now has very rarely resulted in any of the three negative outcomes you listed. I am now assuming that you've assumed a particular method of questioning different from what I'm really suggesting, because I hardly ever get those results from what I do. I kind of have to assume now that you're envisioning something completely different from what I mean.

And that right there is another example of why assuming doesn't work as well.

In my experience, and that of many others including some of whom are communications instructors, assumptions have resulted in a great deal of all three negative outcomes you listed and more. Far more frequently than asking pointed questions.

Assumptions cannot be targeted. Questions can.

Most of us who've replied to you made an assumption about your original post:



You asked if we felt the same way, and we answered honestly. But we answered honestly based on an assumption that your post means the same thing, and has the same intent as many others at least some of us have seen many times on these forums. The vast majority of posts like that that I've seen come from people who simply do not want to use disclaimers in their posts, and would prefer that others simply assume accurately what they really mean.

I've answered based on my experience that when others do "fill in the blanks" themselves, they often fill them in inaccurately, resulting in misunderstandings, people correcting them, negative responses from those who'd rather not use disclaimers, and general all around havoc ensuing. I've managed to avoid that by asking questions rather than assuming anything myself. When I do ask questions, people tend to respond favorably. When I don't, misunderstandings occur far more often.

I assumed you were one of those posters. I think it was a reasonable assumption based on your OP. But look what happened because of it. A long drawn out debate over meaning, intent and semantics. The very things you want to avoid.

I am a little tired of going back and forth on all this, so maybe it's time I put my own advice to work and ask you a few questions, some of which do include assumptions I've been operating under, but also include certain insights I think I've gained from reading your posts.

I now think you don't really mean that we should always do nothing but assume in order to fill in missing disclaimers. I'm basing this on the following things you said.



This tells me you do have some fascination with communication processes. Probably not just a hatred for using disclaimers. (But your OP does reflect a certain negative attitude toward them.)



So you do realize that there will be cases of misunderstandings resulting from assumptions.

In essence, this is when I'm suggesting questioning should be used. I can be used as soon as one realized misinterpretation has occurred, or it can also be used preemptively if one spots a situation similar to past experiences, and one assumes that misinterpretation is a higher likelihood than normal and will likely cause a problem.





I don't think we can honestly say that we don't use assumptions. I know darned well I do. It is those times when they fail though, that an alternative ought to be used. And that's what I've been getting at. Sometimes assumption that a problem could be likely can be used to preemptively stop assuming, and move to questioning instead.

One last thought. The main reasoning behind your premise is that people aren't going to constantly use disclaimers anyway, so we ought to learn to assume they are there at least most of the time. So the reason is, "can't change what people do." And I agree with that. I do use assumptions fairly accurately most of the time. It's those pesky times they don't work that I've been addressing.

I do use disclaimers a great deal on these forums, for the simple reason that I know if I don't, I'll get complaints from many who can't stand not seeing them, and will "correct" me.

And I do it for the same reason you feel we should all learn to read them into other people's posts. "I can't change other people."

This is a web site filled with aspies, many of whom need disclaimers in order to read me correctly. It's a whole lot easier to just type them out than to try to help every one of them adjust to assuming they are there.

That would be like playing whack-a-mole where for every mole I whack, two more pop up. It's a losing battle.