{"id":12234,"date":"2014-10-18T09:32:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-18T16:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=12234"},"modified":"2014-10-18T09:33:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-18T16:33:45","slug":"how-to-communicate-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/18\/how-to-communicate-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Communicate on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s say you want to communicate an idea X.<\/p>\n<p>You would do well to simply say &#8220;X.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Also acceptable is &#8220;X. Really, just X.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A slightly riskier strategy, in cases where miscomprehension is especially likely, would be something like &#8220;X. This sounds a bit like A, and B, and C, but I&#8217;m not saying those. Honestly, just X.&#8221; Many people will inevitably start arguing against A, B, and C.<\/p>\n<p>Under no circumstances should you say &#8220;You might think Y, but actually X.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Equally bad, perhaps worse: &#8220;Y. Which reminds me of X, which is what I really want to say.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For examples see the comment sections of the last couple of posts, or indeed any comment section anywhere on the internet.<\/p>\n<p>It is possible these ideas may be of wider applicability in communication situations other than the internet.<\/p>\n<p>(You may think this is just grumping but actually it is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skepticalscience.com\/Debunking-Handbook-Part-3-Overkill-Backfire-Effect.html\">science<\/a>!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s say you want to communicate an idea X. You would do well to simply say &#8220;X.&#8221; Also acceptable is &#8220;X. Really, just X.&#8221; A slightly riskier strategy, in cases where miscomprehension is especially likely, would be something like &#8220;X. This sounds a bit like A, and B, and C, but I&#8217;m not saying those. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12234"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12239,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234\/revisions\/12239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}