Ambiguity is especially difficult for me. No, not “just for Josh.” Ambiguity is difficult for all humans; it’s not restricted to me, and it’s not merely and only my personal problem. But, yes, I am especially sensitive to ambiguity. Unspoken assumptions, undisclosed prior assumptions and knowledge, and undisclosed expectations from another party; I have a very hard time with these.
I prefer clarity in all interactions that aren’t with people I know really well, and I often ask them for clarification, too. I think it’s great. So many issues can be boiled down to people not agreeing on their terms and definitions.
I’m also very sensitive to this. ESPECIALLY when it’s inflicted on my kids. Like, going to story time at the library is an example that comes to mind. There aren’t clear rules but all of the sudden there’s some feminine “tisk tisking” or some “let’s not do that” etc... one minor example of many. I just leave if it’s too much of that
My experience exactly. What I most often find out is that my conversation partner uses these terms like “uncalled for” without definition and sometimes as a way to emotionally control where the conversation is going... and sometimes uses these words as filler words without true purpose.
Sep 30, 2023·edited Sep 30, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
We swim in oceans of ambiguity.
The mental gymnastics of maintaining the permutations of ambiguity in the workplace takes up the largest percentage of time and energy, I think for most people even if they don't realize it.
It seems that more often than not, people do not even realize they are using language and terms differently, and therefore are not even truly communicating. Not even aware that they are not understanding each other, and often reaching different conclusions. This is actually a feature of Sales of Marketing.
Working to define concepts in order to narrow the scope and get on the same page seems impossible with many people, and can actually be threatening to some.
I've developed the habit of watching people converse, and witnessing in real-time how they are both in their own worlds completely unaware of it.
It's a dangerous world out there. I wish there was a better way.
Frankly, that's one of the things I like about your substack posts and notes. The fact that you clarify and allow clarification.
I also have problems with ambiguity, but in my case, it is because I don't naturally pick up subtext well. Since I don't come from your background of abuse, this didn't used to be as much of a problem for me, because I just asked my "stupid questions". At home, it was fine: I was never punished or shamed. At school, I was isolated but not attacked or bullied (back in the seventies - I know things have gotten worse since then). In public, people just thought I was weird or "masculine." I don't care if people think I'm weird or "masculine."
But over the past few years, people have started to get mad at other people just for not "automatically knowing" stuff. Or for recognizing obvious facts. And they attack you, verbally or otherwise, in a way that didn't seem to happen when I was growing up.
Oct 1, 2023·edited Oct 4, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
It’s quite something, isn’t it? I have powerfully, embarrassingly strong reactive emotions, and it was a burden a lot of the time, growing up. I pushed people away because I was scared of losing control. I worked HARD for many years to reprogram myself to be less reactive and argumentative. I knew if I didn’t get my shit together, no one owed me shit, and I’d wind up alone.
Apparently if i had been a young person today, I could have just not bothered. Rage and embarrassing displays are totally cool.
I hate ambiguity. My users sending me an email, telling me they want this or that. And they spell a word or two wrong, making it possible that they could be needing two different things. There's doubt there, and if I am executing a script on a database and the result could be the wrong record being deleted, well, that makes me nervous.
What's worse is when the customer gets bent out of shape, thinking I am being schoolteacher about misspelled words. "Oh hollyfromdallas, just [delete/cancel/close/mark-archived] that record, and do it however you think is best."
Well, customer....I have no opinion or wishes about your silly record. Deep breath. Explain the reason I need them to be specific, and wait for an answer. Since 90% of my customers/users are really quite nice, they often apologize and take a nicer tone. Others just get quiet. Probably tell their office mates "that hollyfromdallas is a right bitch, is she not. "
You're 100% right. There are many ways to do things, especially within a database. People don't need to be programmers, but they do need to know whether or not they might want to be able to access the data at a later time. Deleting data, and making it no longer visible, are two drastically different things.
You're also right about people being short all the time now. Like, "You know what I mean...!" No the fuck I don't! 😂🤣
When something requires precision. There is no room for, "I hope they knew what I meant." Also, keep in mind, ambiguity is also a way for people to pass the blame. That might be why they get pissed when you try to pin them down. If they are specific, they have little to no wiggle room.
Right? And to make it worse with the example I gave: there is no "cancel" status. People say "cancel" this or that, and they might be using "cancel" interchangeably with "close" or they might be using it interchangeably with "delete". But if I close the record, it can be retrieved if needed. If I delete it, that record's gone to be with jesus, it cannot be resurrected. You delete a record if it is a mistake to begin with. I could go complaining to the customers/users, and some would actually sympathize, others would just stare at me like livestock.
Sometimes I wish we had Walter Sobchak pulling a firearm and shouting "This is not Vietnam! There are RULES!".
I definitely agree with you that ambiguity can be deliberate. It can be a way to hide incompetence. It can indicate complete indifference. When you get a member or two like this on your team, they're just a dead weight. Their documentation is shit. They give zero fucks.
"...others would just stare at me like livestock."
Haha! That's brilliant!
It's like telling the truth. I'm not sure why people think it's sometimes better to lie. Lying is a "just get it out the door" technique.
I've only ever seen one work motivational poster that I actually liked. It was that Salvador Dali painting with the melting clocks, and it said, "How is it that there's never enough time to do it right the first time, but there's ALWAYS enough time to fix it later?"
Damn right! Ambiguity necessarily leads to revisiting the issue.
Josh, just chiming in to say that this demand for clarity is a must for all of us, not just those with CPTSD, in the world of narcissistic gaslighting in private and in public, as well as a basic gesture of self-respect. You are a role model of personal growth for me and for many other disaffectants, I'm sure. Thanks, Helena
Having the privilege of getting to talk to you a lot more than most people get to talk to you, I'll just add that you're a very positive influence in this regard. The process of finding clarity in language is by necessity an extension of the process of finding clarity in thought. Thank you.
This was my mother too. She broke 5 children. I hated the mind games. It creates massive hyper vigilance, distress, pain and you spend the rest of your life untwisting yourself.
I no longer have conversations about culture war topics with people I've known for years without defining terms before continuing the interaction because there's been way, way too many instances of us talking past each other even when face-to-face. Online? People better forget about me "picking up hints", either we speak directly to each other about a conflict or not at all. Few things will drive me up a wall like "passive" aggression no matter the social setting. Direct aggression is equally unpleasant but at least it is more honest.
Ambiguity precedes Douchbaggery. I don't know if "Douchbaggery" is an official term, but it is now. It's been documented right here, as of now. 😉👉
Ambiguity is what people use to create a "club" a space where only those "in the know" are able to effectively communicate. It's exclusive by design -- but not for legitimate reasons.
Take Starbucks for instance. Why the hell did they name their drinks, in order of size, Demi, Short, Tall, Grande, Venti, and Trenta? Because it sounds fancy. You have to be "in the club" to know what they really mean. I always ask them, "How many ounces is that? I speak English." If they can remember those names, they can remember the volumetric measurements as well.
The world of finance is the same way. There are tons of hyper specific terms for various financial maneuvers. Of course, there are generic terms for all of them as well, but then, the people you're trying to impress would know what you're talking about, and you wouldn't command much respect.
The legal world is the best example. Many legal terms are Latin. The excuse was always, "Well Latin is a dead language, so anyone can learn it, and it's not evolving/developing slang." Except that nearly all western schools stopped teaching Latin as a requirement as soon as they realized that people started to understand their rights.
Ambiguity is a passive form of gatekeeping. It's a way to stop people from influencing "the club" or benefitting from it, without "paying their dues."
"Ambiguity is what people use to create a "club" a space where only those "in the know" are able to effectively communicate. It's exclusive by design -- but not for legitimate reasons."
Yes this how people with Gnostic inclinations maneuver to make themselves feel superior to others.
Just listened to you podcast Mommie Issues. Having married, divorced and raised 2 kids w a borderline, I get it. But now, studying evil as a central reality of the human condition, I’m trying to tease out the murky boundaries between psychological trauma and what may be a supernatural dimension.
Clarity on this huge question seems near impossible. And there is a place for intuitive even artistic thinking on the subject. But perhaps grounded in the hard facts we can know. My 2 cents..
Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm not a believer in the supernatural or God (though that might change, can't rule anything out), but what we call "Cluster B" is, I believe, the same thing as "the devil," "Satan," and "possession."
Religious or secular, we're seeing the same real, true thing: evil.
Ambiguity, allows those who use it to switch up on us, change the rules and deny that they did so. And they know this....because they know we cant read minds.
This! It's why I enjoy reading your posts Josh. I see what you've described with so many who have a history of abuse as children.
You don't make assumptions about what people know or should know, and you're explicit about your beliefs and why. As a small group facilitator, the approach you described is our 'normal' approach to exploring ideas that includes all parties in the discussion. Seeking to understand the other's perspective is central to ensure all parties remain on the same page of a conversation, preventing misunderstanding and most important, prevents anyone from dominating the conversation & narrative to feed their narcissism (need for control).
I prefer clarity in all interactions that aren’t with people I know really well, and I often ask them for clarification, too. I think it’s great. So many issues can be boiled down to people not agreeing on their terms and definitions.
I’m also very sensitive to this. ESPECIALLY when it’s inflicted on my kids. Like, going to story time at the library is an example that comes to mind. There aren’t clear rules but all of the sudden there’s some feminine “tisk tisking” or some “let’s not do that” etc... one minor example of many. I just leave if it’s too much of that
My experience exactly. What I most often find out is that my conversation partner uses these terms like “uncalled for” without definition and sometimes as a way to emotionally control where the conversation is going... and sometimes uses these words as filler words without true purpose.
This drives me crazy. Literally.
We swim in oceans of ambiguity.
The mental gymnastics of maintaining the permutations of ambiguity in the workplace takes up the largest percentage of time and energy, I think for most people even if they don't realize it.
It seems that more often than not, people do not even realize they are using language and terms differently, and therefore are not even truly communicating. Not even aware that they are not understanding each other, and often reaching different conclusions. This is actually a feature of Sales of Marketing.
Working to define concepts in order to narrow the scope and get on the same page seems impossible with many people, and can actually be threatening to some.
I've developed the habit of watching people converse, and witnessing in real-time how they are both in their own worlds completely unaware of it.
It's a dangerous world out there. I wish there was a better way.
Frankly, that's one of the things I like about your substack posts and notes. The fact that you clarify and allow clarification.
I also have problems with ambiguity, but in my case, it is because I don't naturally pick up subtext well. Since I don't come from your background of abuse, this didn't used to be as much of a problem for me, because I just asked my "stupid questions". At home, it was fine: I was never punished or shamed. At school, I was isolated but not attacked or bullied (back in the seventies - I know things have gotten worse since then). In public, people just thought I was weird or "masculine." I don't care if people think I'm weird or "masculine."
But over the past few years, people have started to get mad at other people just for not "automatically knowing" stuff. Or for recognizing obvious facts. And they attack you, verbally or otherwise, in a way that didn't seem to happen when I was growing up.
Yes. This is real. It has changed. Your last paragraph is so accurate.
It’s quite something, isn’t it? I have powerfully, embarrassingly strong reactive emotions, and it was a burden a lot of the time, growing up. I pushed people away because I was scared of losing control. I worked HARD for many years to reprogram myself to be less reactive and argumentative. I knew if I didn’t get my shit together, no one owed me shit, and I’d wind up alone.
Apparently if i had been a young person today, I could have just not bothered. Rage and embarrassing displays are totally cool.
I hate ambiguity. My users sending me an email, telling me they want this or that. And they spell a word or two wrong, making it possible that they could be needing two different things. There's doubt there, and if I am executing a script on a database and the result could be the wrong record being deleted, well, that makes me nervous.
What's worse is when the customer gets bent out of shape, thinking I am being schoolteacher about misspelled words. "Oh hollyfromdallas, just [delete/cancel/close/mark-archived] that record, and do it however you think is best."
Well, customer....I have no opinion or wishes about your silly record. Deep breath. Explain the reason I need them to be specific, and wait for an answer. Since 90% of my customers/users are really quite nice, they often apologize and take a nicer tone. Others just get quiet. Probably tell their office mates "that hollyfromdallas is a right bitch, is she not. "
Oh, you're definitely a bitch!
J/K!
You're 100% right. There are many ways to do things, especially within a database. People don't need to be programmers, but they do need to know whether or not they might want to be able to access the data at a later time. Deleting data, and making it no longer visible, are two drastically different things.
You're also right about people being short all the time now. Like, "You know what I mean...!" No the fuck I don't! 😂🤣
When something requires precision. There is no room for, "I hope they knew what I meant." Also, keep in mind, ambiguity is also a way for people to pass the blame. That might be why they get pissed when you try to pin them down. If they are specific, they have little to no wiggle room.
Right? And to make it worse with the example I gave: there is no "cancel" status. People say "cancel" this or that, and they might be using "cancel" interchangeably with "close" or they might be using it interchangeably with "delete". But if I close the record, it can be retrieved if needed. If I delete it, that record's gone to be with jesus, it cannot be resurrected. You delete a record if it is a mistake to begin with. I could go complaining to the customers/users, and some would actually sympathize, others would just stare at me like livestock.
Sometimes I wish we had Walter Sobchak pulling a firearm and shouting "This is not Vietnam! There are RULES!".
I definitely agree with you that ambiguity can be deliberate. It can be a way to hide incompetence. It can indicate complete indifference. When you get a member or two like this on your team, they're just a dead weight. Their documentation is shit. They give zero fucks.
"...others would just stare at me like livestock."
Haha! That's brilliant!
It's like telling the truth. I'm not sure why people think it's sometimes better to lie. Lying is a "just get it out the door" technique.
I've only ever seen one work motivational poster that I actually liked. It was that Salvador Dali painting with the melting clocks, and it said, "How is it that there's never enough time to do it right the first time, but there's ALWAYS enough time to fix it later?"
Damn right! Ambiguity necessarily leads to revisiting the issue.
Down with ambiguity!
Josh, just chiming in to say that this demand for clarity is a must for all of us, not just those with CPTSD, in the world of narcissistic gaslighting in private and in public, as well as a basic gesture of self-respect. You are a role model of personal growth for me and for many other disaffectants, I'm sure. Thanks, Helena
Having the privilege of getting to talk to you a lot more than most people get to talk to you, I'll just add that you're a very positive influence in this regard. The process of finding clarity in language is by necessity an extension of the process of finding clarity in thought. Thank you.
Thank you, friend.
This was my mother too. She broke 5 children. I hated the mind games. It creates massive hyper vigilance, distress, pain and you spend the rest of your life untwisting yourself.
I no longer have conversations about culture war topics with people I've known for years without defining terms before continuing the interaction because there's been way, way too many instances of us talking past each other even when face-to-face. Online? People better forget about me "picking up hints", either we speak directly to each other about a conflict or not at all. Few things will drive me up a wall like "passive" aggression no matter the social setting. Direct aggression is equally unpleasant but at least it is more honest.
In other words? I think I get it 😊
Ambiguity precedes Douchbaggery. I don't know if "Douchbaggery" is an official term, but it is now. It's been documented right here, as of now. 😉👉
Ambiguity is what people use to create a "club" a space where only those "in the know" are able to effectively communicate. It's exclusive by design -- but not for legitimate reasons.
Take Starbucks for instance. Why the hell did they name their drinks, in order of size, Demi, Short, Tall, Grande, Venti, and Trenta? Because it sounds fancy. You have to be "in the club" to know what they really mean. I always ask them, "How many ounces is that? I speak English." If they can remember those names, they can remember the volumetric measurements as well.
The world of finance is the same way. There are tons of hyper specific terms for various financial maneuvers. Of course, there are generic terms for all of them as well, but then, the people you're trying to impress would know what you're talking about, and you wouldn't command much respect.
The legal world is the best example. Many legal terms are Latin. The excuse was always, "Well Latin is a dead language, so anyone can learn it, and it's not evolving/developing slang." Except that nearly all western schools stopped teaching Latin as a requirement as soon as they realized that people started to understand their rights.
Ambiguity is a passive form of gatekeeping. It's a way to stop people from influencing "the club" or benefitting from it, without "paying their dues."
"Ambiguity is what people use to create a "club" a space where only those "in the know" are able to effectively communicate. It's exclusive by design -- but not for legitimate reasons."
Yes this how people with Gnostic inclinations maneuver to make themselves feel superior to others.
Me too
Just listened to you podcast Mommie Issues. Having married, divorced and raised 2 kids w a borderline, I get it. But now, studying evil as a central reality of the human condition, I’m trying to tease out the murky boundaries between psychological trauma and what may be a supernatural dimension.
Clarity on this huge question seems near impossible. And there is a place for intuitive even artistic thinking on the subject. But perhaps grounded in the hard facts we can know. My 2 cents..
Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm not a believer in the supernatural or God (though that might change, can't rule anything out), but what we call "Cluster B" is, I believe, the same thing as "the devil," "Satan," and "possession."
Religious or secular, we're seeing the same real, true thing: evil.
Ambiguity, allows those who use it to switch up on us, change the rules and deny that they did so. And they know this....because they know we cant read minds.
This! It's why I enjoy reading your posts Josh. I see what you've described with so many who have a history of abuse as children.
You don't make assumptions about what people know or should know, and you're explicit about your beliefs and why. As a small group facilitator, the approach you described is our 'normal' approach to exploring ideas that includes all parties in the discussion. Seeking to understand the other's perspective is central to ensure all parties remain on the same page of a conversation, preventing misunderstanding and most important, prevents anyone from dominating the conversation & narrative to feed their narcissism (need for control).
I can’t tell you how often this pops into my head when trying to get someone to clarify what they’re saying.
https://youtu.be/HbvYeLxMKN8?si=kn_qkqMXDTaHX6YD