Text 323, 96 rader
Skriven 2006-05-06 17:46:15 av Ardith Hinton (1:153/716.0)
    Kommentar till text 319 av James Bradley (1:134/77.0)
Ärende: Second Thoughts
=======================
Hi, James!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  in much the same way that 90% of an iceberg is
AH>  below the surface

JB>  I love that reference, did you notice? <G>


          Thankyou....  :-)

          I see you understand & appreciate metaphor.  That tells me there's an
"intuitive" component to your reasoning style.  It involves wholistic thinking,
which is difficult to describe but which for me is often most noticeable by its
absence.  Here are some examples of the latter which you may also find amusing:

 1)  Years ago, just after buying a car, I returned to the dealer to have some
warranty work done & mentioned a problem with a seat adjusting lever.  The guy
who attended to me wiggled the lever & said (rather impatiently) "What's wrong
with that??"  I said "Okay... now try moving the seat."  I could have told him
from the outset that the seat wouldn't budge when I used the lever.  But in my
experience people like him don't understand subordinate clauses.  They process
information on a concrete level one fact at a time ("He shoots!  He scores!").

 2)  More recently, Dallas & I noticed that our clothes dryer often stopped in
mid-cycle.  We didn't know whether the thermostat or the timer was faulty, and
consulted the experts.  They didn't know either.  They took it to the workshop
... and later phoned to tell us they'd kept it running for eight hours with no
problem.  I asked whether they'd tried putting wet laundry in it.  They hadn't
thought of that.  But a clothes dryer which doesn't dry clothes isn't much use
to me, is it?  While I can chuckle over incidents like these, I find it rather
disturbing at times how many people there are who don't seem to notice whether
a thing or idea works as advertised if it looks good on the surface... (sigh).



AH>  ... and the perception component is what enables you
AH>  to reserve judgement until you've collected a fair
AH>  amount of data.  You can & do make snap judgements
AH>  if the situation calls for quick thinking but don't
AH>  necessarily stop there.  You may also enjoy open-
AH>  ended questions where others seem to want immediate
AH>  answers.

JB>   Well, even a perception of a situation has to occur
JB>   after an assessment,


          If you approach something and/or somebody with the attitude that your
initial judgement is a preliminary assessment... an idea which has not yet been
thoroughly tested... you're leaving yourself open to change.  I understand that
because I do the same thing.  A "J" person, however, might find it infuriating.
"J" people enjoy the feeling of closure, and in general they don't reconsider a
judgement which they've already made (or which they think you've already made).
Sometimes they also infuriate folks like us when their attitude comes across as
"My mind's made up... don't confuse me with facts!" or express their opinion as
if it were written in stone, then do a complete 180 later without warning.  :-)



JB>  so I think the interplay between the I and P is where
JB>  most of my conflict comes from.


          Perhaps you meant "J" and "P"?  In this system of analysis the letter
"I" stands for "introversion", which I'll get to later.  A lot of conflict does
arise in "J/P" interplay, however, and not only between individuals.  Sometimes
I wonder whether I did the right thing when I'd noticed something unusual going
on in the neighbourhood & decided not to intervene.  Others say evil flourishes
when good men do nothing but don't want us poking our noses into their affairs.
I think you & I both want to do the right thing, but we don't get a lot of help
from "J" people whose reasoning doesn't go very far below the surface.  If they
apparently say one thing & do another, and you ask them about it, they may tell
you "That's different!"  The issuing of such a pronouncement indicates that the
conversation is over as far as they are concerned.  They can't or won't explain
how & why they think it's "different".  No wonder we're confused!  Their advice
is often loaded with contradictions from our standpoint.  Some of them probably
just don't connect the dots, but one needs intuition to recognize that....  ;-)



JB>  As I wrote about in my neighborhood incidences, the
JB>  interplay between the two, helps us try to make sense
JB>  out of seemingly non-sensible situations.


          For us, I think it does.  Both of us are somewhere near the middle of
the continuum... so we tend to feel a pull from both directions.  Sometimes the
first impression is the one we ultimately go with & sometimes "second thoughts"
turn out to be more accurate.  We are striving for an appropriate balance.  And
the more data we factor in, the longer the processing may take as well....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)