Acquiring perks & advantages on a realistic setting

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

At least for me. Note, I'm also not a lawyer, politician, or any other sort that relies strongly on clear flowing communication for my work. For those sorts it would certainly be a more significant problem.

It often seems to me that lawyers and politicians base their careers largely on avoidance of clear flowing communication. I would like to offer philosophers as a better example, but I'm remembering Bertrand Russell's definition: "Philosophy is the systematic abuse of a terminology invented for that very purpose."

Robert Heinlein apparently told the story of a class at the Naval Academy where the student had to write orders. Their drafts were then handed out to the rest of the class, who were invited to come up with as many ways as possible of misunderstanding them. Now that sounds like a course based on "clear flowing communication."

[Anders]

Laywers and politicians base their profession on hostile interpretation. When we communicate, we usually give a charitable interpretation of what the other person says, which means taking a lot of things for granted. Legalese shows us what communication would be like if we had to spell everything out and just how much we take for granted.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Anders

Legalese shows us what communication would be like if we had to spell everything out and just how much we take for granted.

So does computer programming...

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Anders

Laywers and politicians base their profession on hostile interpretation. When we communicate, we usually give a charitable interpretation of what the other person says, which means taking a lot of things for granted. Legalese shows us what communication would be like if we had to spell everything out and just how much we take for granted.

Originally Posted by johndallman

So does computer programming...

*waves* Programmer here. Probably what makes me love being a programmer also makes me interested in law, and makes me read all the terms and conditions and fine print.

It's a linguistic version of "To bake an apple pie from scratch, first you must create the universe" - both when programming a computer and writing laws you end up going down this fractal spiral of
"Apple pie" - whats an "apple pie"? "A pie made with apples"
What's a "pie"? What's "apples"? etc. etc. etc.
(repeat going down the parallel problem of "How do you 'bake'?")

Fortunately for many purposes computers don't need to know much about things so you can stop at a rather vague point, and in law there's a point where you stop because you're pretty sure you've scraped enough ambiguity off... even if you've turned it into a 5000 page book on pastry, agriculture, and the history of the cultivation of wheat, sugar cane, and apples.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anders

Laywers and politicians base their profession on hostile interpretation. When we communicate, we usually give a charitable interpretation of what the other person says, which means taking a lot of things for granted. Legalese shows us what communication would be like if we had to spell everything out and just how much we take for granted.

How much and which direction you bend your assumptions depends on how much you like or dislike the person.
"Bad" people always have ulterior motives for saying or doing good things, while "good" people have some unknown but valid reasons for saying or doing bad things.

[Anders]

Whereas the ideal forum post should follow the Cooperative principle and the Politeness Maxims.

Anyhoo, I'm not sure I would allow it. There seems to be a considerable genetic influence in how much sleep we need.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Anders

Laywers and politicians base their profession on hostile interpretation. When we communicate, we usually give a charitable interpretation of what the other person says, which means taking a lot of things for granted. Legalese shows us what communication would be like if we had to spell everything out and just how much we take for granted.

So do philosophers if they are doing their job right. They might give a charitable interpretation of the other person in the sense of chivalrous(in fact mindless trolling is way to common all across the board these days). But the agora like the courtroom needs some degree of adversarial mode.