Communication

Sometimes when people are talking they use ordinary words and they assume the other person knows what they mean. Yeah… How hard can it be to grok “all you really need is a 9mm, a couple of clips, and a box of shells?”

Shamelessly stolen from the intertubes some time ago, and just found in a folder. No idea where exactly I got it.

9mm-couple-of-clips-box-of-shells

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12 thoughts on “Communication

  1. OK then, so what’s the project? Hmm? You’ll have to explain how that stuff works together, the point being that context, including shared experience, culture and background, is crucial to understanding.

    • My vague recollection is that someone had posted a conversation about a news story and self defense. He’d said all a person needed to stay safe were those three items, and a friend had replied with “OK, I got that. Now what do I do with them?” So, yes, context is very import. Proper use of language is essential (that good old idea that “words mean things”). Shared experience and common elements of culture help form context, so the words are easier to understand correctly and clearly. But sometimes, in our shorthand, we forget that to some our ways of talking and thinking are utterly incomprehensible, just as much as theirs is to us.

      The less the overlap in the Venn diagram of culture, the easier misunderstanding is, and the more likely problems will crop up when times get hard.

    • Oh, I’m sure every regular reader of this blog gets the joke, based on three simple pun/ambiguous word usage.
      But for some, they really don’t (e.g., most media talking heads, and many recent immigrants to the nation). They go “huh?”

  2. Damit,
    Now I want to add a 9mm wrench or bolt to my keychain.

  3. The joke: he used “Grok”, which is a geek word not common to the vocabulary.

  4. Grok is from “Stranger in a strange land” by Robert Heinlein
    It means to comprehend fully and deeply.

    • And Leftists can comprehend fully and deeply those who disagree with them on so many fundamental points how, exactly?
      Never mind Grok, I don’t see that Leftists have even a basic awareness that opposing ideas can have factual bases other than derisive pop psychology and fantasies of personal failings.

  5. I have everything in that photo, yet I still don’t feel safe without a Colt 45, a couple of clips and a box of shells.
    (give me a bit and I’ll find a photo). 😉

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