I would have written the headline as "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Could Be a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation" but maybe that's only because I'm in a good mood.
That's a better title than my submission but sadly over the limit for HN titles.
I started with the original title of "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation" and cut words until it fit.
I wonder what it says about me that I when I read "Absolutist" my brain replaced it with "Absurdist" and I got excited and depressed. I even got to the point where I was wondering what some examples of absurdist words were. And then I read it again with a higher font size.
I would also guess number 1 based on personal observations. It looks like their conclusion highlights that cognitive therapy already tries to treat this kind of thinking, so I'd guess that means they agree with you?
I think another way of saying it is that nuanced thinking is a luxury that can only be afforded when there is no imminent crisis.
This corresponds pretty well to the whole System 1/2 framework most people have heard about via Daniel Kahneman.
Calm considered thinking takes time and resources, so it's not employed when people are in a real, perceived, or chemically or physically induced state of crisis.
Lack of self-esteem and perception of your value in others eyes can lead to both.
If you think you're not valued and your opinions not valued you will tend to add expletives (very, extremely) and absolutes to your language.
Of course this can have the opposite effect on the listener. They know to dismiss the speaker (consciously or unconsciously).
Similarly I've heard "arguments" from people on particular controversial topics and they have failed to put forward their view. The language is full of absolutely that and idiotic this but I'm still don't know which side of the argument they're on!
John Lennon had a quote about this tendency. I've so far failed to find it.
Or both could be the result of a common root cause, for example, a perceived deeper or better understanding of a subject.
- To convey the subject to those of perceived lesser understanding, absolute words are employed to underline the understanding of the speaker and the importance of their insight.
At the same time:
- the unwillingness or incapacity of those of perceived lesser understanding to understand the subject can lead to isolation, anxiety, depression, etc. of the speaker, independent of their use of absolutist language.
For example, take someone who believes the world will end. They will likely speak in absolute words about the event. Other people might shy away from such a person, causing isolation. Absolutism and isolation might interact and reinforce each other, but neither would strictly cause the other.
The cognitive behavioral model would say that our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions all affect each other; changes in one will change the other. So we can effect our anxiety and depression by by fighting against our absolutist tendencies that are being reinforced by our anxiety and depression.
That seems a bit simplistic. Consider the situation where my absolutism is a cause of your anxiety and depression, and this in turn modifies your language to reflect the unpleasant circumstances in which you find yourself. As an an example, just picture (or recall) yourself as a member of a disfavored group that's being targeted by a political leader or tendency.
People who are anxious/depressed can feel that there are very few options available to them with the trapped sensation increasing the urgency of the choice, so the limited paths that they do see could be presented with more certainty than someone who feels like there's a wealth of alternatives.
Another article was posted on Hacker News talking about Woebot. It's easy enough to see a pattern in Woebot's discourse and it can help people get out of really tough spots.
Fascinating. I'm regularly coaching individuals to avoid absolutist words more as a means so they don't stir the pot with team members. This study points out a correlation that makes me rethink how I approach that advice.
It seems like there's a lot of room for understanding how language can impact behavior. There's the colloqualism "Perception is reality" and I guess with CBT the true mechanism is to change the language of a persons internal dialogue thus changing the way someone perceives the world.
I ask because I would much rather work with someone who is decisive than with someone who avoids judgements and "absolutist words." I see the latter as "wishy-washy." I'm sure that says more about me than them, but I find those who always seek a middle ground to be uninspiring and low-energy.
In can correlate with lack of ability to think in terms of trade-offs and nuance.
"Wishy-washy" seems like a proxy for a better defined characteristic, but I'm not sure what. Indecisive? Ambivalent? You tell me!
It is a false dichotomy to portray communication as either absolutist or wishy-washy. You can communicate precisely and confidently without falling back on inaccurate hyperbole, which is often what absolutism is.
Real examples "We've never done that." or "That's never a problem for us.", "In my entire career I've never done it that way". At which point there are almost always examples, but really all its doing is shutting down the conversation.
These statements generally come from an emotional reaction (or gut-feel) which are fine since we are humans after all... but really do nothing to help have a rational conversation and make a smart decision.
Wishy-washiness is certainly another problem, but that's a whole different topic.
A good friend of mine killed himself about 15 years ago. The day before, he used absolutist words like I had never heard him use. So, this idea resonates with me.
Not OP, but this isn’t always true. Might be true for slow brewing depression, but not for biologically triggered mental changes (triggered by some diseases, some drugs, etc). There’s also the chance that it was a gradual uptick that wasn’t noticed until it was too late.
Sorry for your loss OP.
I'm not sure. Drugs and alcohol related things remains drugs and alcohol related. It's not about depression, but altered consciousness. Even diseases doesn't came immidiately, they slowly developing in years, or at least months.
"To construct these dictionaries, we initially brainstormed
more than 300 absolutist words and 200 nonabsolutist
words (including extreme words). Testing on
pilot data (control and test groups) revealed that many
of the words on these original lists were too obscure
to register with sufficient frequency for analysis. Consequently,
the original dictionaries were reduced to the
most prevalent 22 absolutist words and 43 nonabsolutist
words (including 21 extreme words). Although this was
based on a mostly arbitrary cutoff, it was intended that
the lists be large enough to produce representative
dictionary percentages, but small enough to facilitate
independent validation by experts. The 22 absolutist
words and 43 nonabsolutist words were combined into
a single list of 65 words. Five independent expert
judges were asked to categorize them as absolute, nonabsolute,
and/or extreme. Two of the judges are clinical
psychologists from the University of Reading Charlie
Waller Institute and three are linguists from the University
of Reading School of Clinical Language Sciences.
Judges were permitted to place words into more than
one category (i.e., extreme and absolute). The agreement
between our original categorization of the words
(absolutist/nonabsolutist) and that of the judges ranged
between 83% and 94%, whereas the interjudge agreement
was 96%. Words were considered absolute,
extreme, or nonabsolute on the basis of a majority
decision by the judges. Three words, anything, need,
and needed, were moved from the absolutist dictionary
to the nonabsolutist dictionary as they were not categorized
as absolute by the majority of judges. All the
words on our nonabsolutist dictionary were judged
nonabsolute. Judges showed almost no agreement on
extreme words, this category was consequently
removed from the analysis (collapsed into the nonabsolutist
category)."
They describe the methods for making this set. No, it’s not all. They used their team to brainstorm absolute and non, whittled it down to 65, then these 19.
Is it just me, or has "definitely" become sort of subtly indefinite in modern language? Consider:
A) We should throw a party for him.
B) We should definitely throw a party for him.
A) We should get together soon.
B) We should definitely get together soon.
In each case, it seems like A is a call to action, whereas B is (for lack of a better term) more of a social expression which doesn't necessitate actually planning something right this moment. Or maybe I'm overthinking it.
they used a panel of judges to determine whether a word counted as "absolutist" or not, the results of which look at least partly arbitrary to me. Apparently "really" and "anything" did not count as absolutist but "definitely" did.
Words which indicate that the author strongly feels that the topic is a black and white issue, and they are on the correct side of the debate. A list of sample words is linked in the top comment. In this context, absolutism basically means the strength of ones convictions as seen in their use of language. The use of absolutes conveys that the author believes their viewpoint applies in all cases.
It’s included in the supplemental material. I was wondering why it wasn’t in the paper itself as I found this the most interesting part and also wanted to read it to see what words to judge the paper’s findings. Glad that vague words weren’t in there.
The actual title of the linked article is "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation".
Unfortunately this is well over the 80 character limit for HN titles.
Hi, do you happen to have the list of absolutist and non-absolutists words you have used? I couldn't find it in the publication and the comment below (by slig, which lists the absolutist ones) does not give its source.
Someone should check for the prevalence in these words in the lyrics that people with suicidal ideas listen to the most. Or the music that suicidal people compose.
For example Chester of Linkin Park was open and public about his battle with depression / suicidal ideas. Talked about it in interviews, etc. Now I want to know how often these words come up in his music, compared to a control.
This is helpful. When I hear "always", "never", "all", etc. I tend to tune out or take the remainder of the conversation less seriously as I attribute the absolute language to an issue the speaker hasn't quite fully processed or understood yet.
Of course there are exceptions when absolute words are appropriate but they feel like red flags to me.
It seems like you're taking an absolutist position towards absolutists.
I'm not sure how exactly the simple use of the words "always", "never" and "all" indicate to you that a speaker hasn't fully understood their subject. I'd bet that you hear these words all the time without them even registering. There must be something more to it - Is there a certain setting where you hear these words or a certain type of conversation?
Surely, you're not talking about simple phrases such as "When I dropped the bag of groceries, all of the eggs fell out and broke." Likewise, I doubt that you're nit-picking on the fact that "always" and "never" are not technically observable by any human.
My best guess is that you're using some other unstated conversational cues that have gone unmentioned here.
The definition of "tend to" is regularly or frequently behave in a particular way or have a certain characteristic, which is why I said "it seems like..." instead of "you are".
Anyway, it was kind of tongue in cheek and the main bit of my comment is the set of questions about how these conversational cues actually work.
I understood you were trying to be wry, but you were still incorrect. OP avoided absolute terms in their statement.
The example of “I broke all the eggs” is best used to describe when they all broke and had to be thrown away. I think it’s harder to understand than “I broke most of the eggs.” Etc etc
If it’s any consolation, I thought your expansion of the comment was interesting and your curiosity helps me better understand the overall thread.
I tend to tune out or take the remainder of the conversation less seriously
Wise if someone is attempting to influence your life choices, not so wise if they're having a problem and you're studiously ignoring their requests for help, however clumsily articulated.
I have always though a complete analysis of the entire list of absolutist words would be beneficial to everyone.
People are constantly using these words without totally understanding how they sound to others. This paper is full of interesting statistics that all people must be made aware of. Now that there is a link to suicide and depression nothing could be more important than sharing this with your whole network, every person.
I absolutely recommend reading the paper in full. It will definitely change everything about the way you speak. I’ll completely change the way I speak and never ever use these words again.
Well, except “constant” which I have to use to refer to software constants.
After reading this, also checked my writing for Absolutist words, and also will try to consciously avoid them, would be very annoying to see someone replying with "Please seek professional help as soon as possible!" ;-)
In any case the meaning of "full" in "I'm full" is colloquial and not absolutist. It's more like "I'm satisfied" and not "I'm stuffed" (which also isn't used literally).
The original comment is very tongue in check, it contains many absolutist words itself: "always", "complete", "constantly", "totally", "all", "nothing could be more", "absolutely", "definitely", "completely", "never".
You jest but absolutely every fractious argument I have starts with the words, “You always […]”, every such argument quickly turns sours, and inevitably without fail leads to me becoming depressed.
For the love of God is it so difficult to say, “You nearly always […]” or “You almost always “…”] or some non-absolutist variant? Are all the people I argue with mentally unwell?
Huge fan of “too often” myself, along with “not always <get that out of the way up front>, but many times...”
I like your suggestion at the end of speaking from the speaker’s POV. I dunno, I first heard this pointed out in a 100 level psych class, a lot of folks here have been to college/uni. Hopefully this isn’t news to many. But we can be a forgetful lot.
vs "I often feel like I'm the only one doing the dishes"
vs "I have gotten the impression you like helping out, but I also noticed that sometimes you don't do the dishes even when you have good opportunities to. Is something wrong? Can I help you get started with that in some way?"
I strongly prefer the latter. More verbose, yes, but it also acknowledges the other person does help, it does not assume malice, and it anchors a strong desire to help out. Which is ehat we want!
That's a very interesting observation. You're possibly right. A few others here have recommended "often" instead or totally different constructions.
Point in fact, I have never had so many replies to a comment on HN in all my many years here. I've hit on something obviously. I can't reply to everyone but I do want to say that I've read all the responses and they're super interesting and food for thought. :)
You can't control what other people do and say but you can control your reaction to it (obviously easier said than done and in some cases impossible without help). So many arguments in life are made because you've inadvertently gone against an expectation another person had based on their own experiences.
say anything to another person starting with "you .... " will immediately bring up defenses and come off as argumentative and passive aggressive and all kinds of boundary violations going on there. There is no harm in saying what you feel:
"I feel bad about the way we talked last time"
Unless I read this the wrong way, are you being addressed like this by someone?
"You need to..." is one of my favorites. I'm often guilty of it myself when offering advice to others, but recently I've realized how off-putting it can be and have made an attempt to stop phrasing things in that way.
According to the theory of Non-Violent Communication (NVC), it's better to identify a specific instance of the behavior rather than generalize.
1. Agree that a particular thing happened
2. Express how you felt about that thing happening
3. Explain what your needs are
4. Request the person to do it differently next time
Realize these arguments should really be about getting your own needs met, rather than proving that the other person is objectively wrong because of how they "always" or "almost always" do something.
NVC changed my life! It's helped me gracefully navigate little relationship difficulties that could have otherwise ballooned into moments of sabotage.
Here's how I've internalized the NVC formula:
1. Identify what has happened in an objective way, e.g. "we got in a car accident" or "my partner said I don't care". Be honest, and don't inject any judgement. Just lay out the situation.
2. Describe how you felt and how you feel. Use actual feeling words: stating "I felt manipulated" is actually a judgement, not a feeling. Saying "I feel unheard" is a judgement. Avoid these kinds of judgements guised as feelings at all costs. Learn to catch them in your sleep. The NVC book has two pages of true feeling words, like "anxious", "uncertain" and "joyful". There are times when I've sat there with a notebook looking at these pages and been brought to tears. In the heat of a difficult moment, having a page full of feeling words is really helpful.
3. Use your feelings to discover your basic needs that are or are not being met. The idea is that a difficult feeling springs from a basic need going unfulfilled, whereas positive feelings arise when basic needs are met. Connect the dots.
4. Make your request(s). If you've discovered some unfulfilled needs, figure out what could be done to meet them. Now you're ready to make a specific request, rather than a vague one wrapped up in unexpressed emotion and judgement! This step is about helping yourself and/or someone else understand how to support your needs in understandable, concrete ways.
If you're having that many arguments, maybe it's you. Not being snarky, it can be difficult to assess your social interactions int he aggregate and conflict may sometimes be drive n by a desire for emotional activation (and maybe dopamine or other neural reward) that isn't satisfied by shallow/bland interactions.
Of course, not all arguments are bad. I prefer to be around someone that argues (in a constructive lets-compete-for-a-good-solution way) than someone who is just habitually agreeable; in the latter case, you might want someone to test out the strength of your ideas but you end up feeling like you're pushing a string, which is demotivating.
The brain is binary. Neurons fire or they do not. Holding more complex notions in mind that go beyond a simple binary relationship requires more energy (this is not as direct as my statements make it sound, but it generally captures the situation). Because civilization is profoundly safe, there is no substantial benefit to expending that larger amount of energy. Even the worst mistake generally will not result in serious injury or death, so most people will not bother to exert themselves so.
This is wrong on so many levels... Just to point out the physiological misunderstanding: The word "binary" is quite misleading when applied to neurons.
While neurons do work in concrete impulses, these impulses encode continuous values in the frequency domain.
The evolutionary mechanism is also wrong: Starvation is also largely absent today, so any evolutionary pressure to preserve energy would be equally unimportant as other causes of death. In fact, obesity far outstrips starvation as cause for mortality. So if evolution had had the time to adjust, we'd all wallow in ambiguities.
As a rule of thumb: attributing human behaviour that is more complex than basic emotions (fear, hunger, arousal,...) to evolution is almost always wrong. Overcoming evolutionary instincts is, after all, one of humanity's proudest achievements.
It's also not entirely settled if thinking hard actually increases the brain's energy usage. It appears that the brain has a relatively high caseload, with minimal variability.
Interesting to contrast this with certain religious and political leaders who see "equivalencey" as a character weakness and that good and just people will not be conflicted and you can draw a sharp line between the good and evil people in the world.
Definitely. "Never say never. Always give it your all. It's all or nothing." Everyone constantly says these things all of the time, but it's totally untenable. Besides being harmful, it's completely cliche. It's time everyone comes to terms with it. It's the subtle things that kill ya. Everything must be reexamined and reworked -- a complete and full examination of our entire vocabulary -- every jot and tittle. A massive undertaking yes, but we must. Let's face it, we need whole-scale change. Change is the only constant, and it's now or never. We must all pledge to absolutely never ever say these things again. Ever.
I can't agree with this. I don't think scraping specific forums for a small dictionary list of words can be an accurate marker of depression, especially when those forums overlap with your control ones; asthma, cancer, and ptsd sufferers would also suffer depression and anxiety as well, and it's hard to say those would be linked to word usage. It feels more like they had an idea and constructed an experiment to bolster it, considering they have no way to verify what the actual rates of depression and anxiety are apart from posting in that forum, nor any way to take into account lurkers and non-posting participants, who make the majority of a forum's inhabitants.
I can't find the dictionaries they used. It's hard to develop any intuition about the utility of research like this, without the actual dictionaries they applied analysis to.
Are the word lists public information? Why or why not?
175 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] thread[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOhZ5wD6u7A
(I kid...sort of, but more poking fun at myself here)
I started with the original title of "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation" and cut words until it fit.
1. Absolutism led to anxiety/depression and was signaled in speech.
2. Anxiety/Depression led people to think absolutely giving rise to absolutist speech.
3. Absolutist speech created anxiety/depression circumstances.
I go with number 1.
I'm happy you made that list.
4. Absolutism and anxiety/depression have some other common cause, but don't cause each other.
I think another way of saying it is that nuanced thinking is a luxury that can only be afforded when there is no imminent crisis.
This corresponds pretty well to the whole System 1/2 framework most people have heard about via Daniel Kahneman.
Calm considered thinking takes time and resources, so it's not employed when people are in a real, perceived, or chemically or physically induced state of crisis.
If you think you're not valued and your opinions not valued you will tend to add expletives (very, extremely) and absolutes to your language.
Of course this can have the opposite effect on the listener. They know to dismiss the speaker (consciously or unconsciously).
Similarly I've heard "arguments" from people on particular controversial topics and they have failed to put forward their view. The language is full of absolutely that and idiotic this but I'm still don't know which side of the argument they're on!
John Lennon had a quote about this tendency. I've so far failed to find it.
- To convey the subject to those of perceived lesser understanding, absolute words are employed to underline the understanding of the speaker and the importance of their insight.
At the same time:
- the unwillingness or incapacity of those of perceived lesser understanding to understand the subject can lead to isolation, anxiety, depression, etc. of the speaker, independent of their use of absolutist language.
For example, take someone who believes the world will end. They will likely speak in absolute words about the event. Other people might shy away from such a person, causing isolation. Absolutism and isolation might interact and reinforce each other, but neither would strictly cause the other.
The cognitive behavioral model would say that our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions all affect each other; changes in one will change the other. So we can effect our anxiety and depression by by fighting against our absolutist tendencies that are being reinforced by our anxiety and depression.
People who are anxious/depressed can feel that there are very few options available to them with the trapped sensation increasing the urgency of the choice, so the limited paths that they do see could be presented with more certainty than someone who feels like there's a wealth of alternatives.
Another article was posted on Hacker News talking about Woebot. It's easy enough to see a pattern in Woebot's discourse and it can help people get out of really tough spots.
It seems like there's a lot of room for understanding how language can impact behavior. There's the colloqualism "Perception is reality" and I guess with CBT the true mechanism is to change the language of a persons internal dialogue thus changing the way someone perceives the world.
I ask because I would much rather work with someone who is decisive than with someone who avoids judgements and "absolutist words." I see the latter as "wishy-washy." I'm sure that says more about me than them, but I find those who always seek a middle ground to be uninspiring and low-energy.
"Wishy-washy" seems like a proxy for a better defined characteristic, but I'm not sure what. Indecisive? Ambivalent? You tell me!
It is a false dichotomy to portray communication as either absolutist or wishy-washy. You can communicate precisely and confidently without falling back on inaccurate hyperbole, which is often what absolutism is.
These statements generally come from an emotional reaction (or gut-feel) which are fine since we are humans after all... but really do nothing to help have a rational conversation and make a smart decision.
Wishy-washiness is certainly another problem, but that's a whole different topic.
Uh uh. Bigly.
Methodology for determining words:
"To construct these dictionaries, we initially brainstormed more than 300 absolutist words and 200 nonabsolutist words (including extreme words). Testing on pilot data (control and test groups) revealed that many of the words on these original lists were too obscure to register with sufficient frequency for analysis. Consequently, the original dictionaries were reduced to the most prevalent 22 absolutist words and 43 nonabsolutist words (including 21 extreme words). Although this was based on a mostly arbitrary cutoff, it was intended that the lists be large enough to produce representative dictionary percentages, but small enough to facilitate independent validation by experts. The 22 absolutist words and 43 nonabsolutist words were combined into a single list of 65 words. Five independent expert judges were asked to categorize them as absolute, nonabsolute, and/or extreme. Two of the judges are clinical psychologists from the University of Reading Charlie Waller Institute and three are linguists from the University of Reading School of Clinical Language Sciences. Judges were permitted to place words into more than one category (i.e., extreme and absolute). The agreement between our original categorization of the words (absolutist/nonabsolutist) and that of the judges ranged between 83% and 94%, whereas the interjudge agreement was 96%. Words were considered absolute, extreme, or nonabsolute on the basis of a majority decision by the judges. Three words, anything, need, and needed, were moved from the absolutist dictionary to the nonabsolutist dictionary as they were not categorized as absolute by the majority of judges. All the words on our nonabsolutist dictionary were judged nonabsolute. Judges showed almost no agreement on extreme words, this category was consequently removed from the analysis (collapsed into the nonabsolutist category)."
Can we say politicians therefore exploit the anxiety of the population through absolutism?
So, I'm questioning your assumptions...
BTW this really shows how awful Trump is.
A. It seems very small. B. I'm assuming a lot of research went into choosing that list, I guess I'll have to search for how that works haha.
> Nobody builds walls like I do.
absolutely all always complete completely constant constantly definitely entire ever every everyone everything full must never nothing totally whole
The actual title of the linked article is "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation".
Unfortunately this is well over the 80 character limit for HN titles.
The journal page at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702617747074 has the abstract if you don't want to download a PDF.
Edited for minor wording changes
Here's the list of absolutist words: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470...
absolutely
all
always
complete
completely
constant
constantly
definitely
entire
ever
every
everyone
everything
full
must
never
nothing
totally
whole
For example Chester of Linkin Park was open and public about his battle with depression / suicidal ideas. Talked about it in interviews, etc. Now I want to know how often these words come up in his music, compared to a control.
Of course there are exceptions when absolute words are appropriate but they feel like red flags to me.
I'm not sure how exactly the simple use of the words "always", "never" and "all" indicate to you that a speaker hasn't fully understood their subject. I'd bet that you hear these words all the time without them even registering. There must be something more to it - Is there a certain setting where you hear these words or a certain type of conversation?
Surely, you're not talking about simple phrases such as "When I dropped the bag of groceries, all of the eggs fell out and broke." Likewise, I doubt that you're nit-picking on the fact that "always" and "never" are not technically observable by any human.
My best guess is that you're using some other unstated conversational cues that have gone unmentioned here.
Nope, parent said they "tend to" and "of course there are exceptions".
Anyway, it was kind of tongue in cheek and the main bit of my comment is the set of questions about how these conversational cues actually work.
The example of “I broke all the eggs” is best used to describe when they all broke and had to be thrown away. I think it’s harder to understand than “I broke most of the eggs.” Etc etc
If it’s any consolation, I thought your expansion of the comment was interesting and your curiosity helps me better understand the overall thread.
Wise if someone is attempting to influence your life choices, not so wise if they're having a problem and you're studiously ignoring their requests for help, however clumsily articulated.
People are constantly using these words without totally understanding how they sound to others. This paper is full of interesting statistics that all people must be made aware of. Now that there is a link to suicide and depression nothing could be more important than sharing this with your whole network, every person.
I absolutely recommend reading the paper in full. It will definitely change everything about the way you speak. I’ll completely change the way I speak and never ever use these words again.
Well, except “constant” which I have to use to refer to software constants.
You can't even say something like: "I'm full because I ate the entire sandwich."
In any case the meaning of "full" in "I'm full" is colloquial and not absolutist. It's more like "I'm satisfied" and not "I'm stuffed" (which also isn't used literally).
For the love of God is it so difficult to say, “You nearly always […]” or “You almost always “…”] or some non-absolutist variant? Are all the people I argue with mentally unwell?
Surely you mean... NEARLY every????
You never do the dishes vs You often don’t help out with the dishes vs It seems like I’m always the one doing the dishes.
I like your suggestion at the end of speaking from the speaker’s POV. I dunno, I first heard this pointed out in a 100 level psych class, a lot of folks here have been to college/uni. Hopefully this isn’t news to many. But we can be a forgetful lot.
vs "I have gotten the impression you like helping out, but I also noticed that sometimes you don't do the dishes even when you have good opportunities to. Is something wrong? Can I help you get started with that in some way?"
I strongly prefer the latter. More verbose, yes, but it also acknowledges the other person does help, it does not assume malice, and it anchors a strong desire to help out. Which is ehat we want!
Point in fact, I have never had so many replies to a comment on HN in all my many years here. I've hit on something obviously. I can't reply to everyone but I do want to say that I've read all the responses and they're super interesting and food for thought. :)
You are bothered. Maybe it happens every week, maybe it’s only happened three times. But it’s happening enough that it’s bothering you.
Unless I read this the wrong way, are you being addressed like this by someone?
1. Agree that a particular thing happened
2. Express how you felt about that thing happening
3. Explain what your needs are
4. Request the person to do it differently next time
Realize these arguments should really be about getting your own needs met, rather than proving that the other person is objectively wrong because of how they "always" or "almost always" do something.
Here's how I've internalized the NVC formula:
1. Identify what has happened in an objective way, e.g. "we got in a car accident" or "my partner said I don't care". Be honest, and don't inject any judgement. Just lay out the situation.
2. Describe how you felt and how you feel. Use actual feeling words: stating "I felt manipulated" is actually a judgement, not a feeling. Saying "I feel unheard" is a judgement. Avoid these kinds of judgements guised as feelings at all costs. Learn to catch them in your sleep. The NVC book has two pages of true feeling words, like "anxious", "uncertain" and "joyful". There are times when I've sat there with a notebook looking at these pages and been brought to tears. In the heat of a difficult moment, having a page full of feeling words is really helpful.
3. Use your feelings to discover your basic needs that are or are not being met. The idea is that a difficult feeling springs from a basic need going unfulfilled, whereas positive feelings arise when basic needs are met. Connect the dots.
4. Make your request(s). If you've discovered some unfulfilled needs, figure out what could be done to meet them. Now you're ready to make a specific request, rather than a vague one wrapped up in unexpressed emotion and judgement! This step is about helping yourself and/or someone else understand how to support your needs in understandable, concrete ways.
Of course, not all arguments are bad. I prefer to be around someone that argues (in a constructive lets-compete-for-a-good-solution way) than someone who is just habitually agreeable; in the latter case, you might want someone to test out the strength of your ideas but you end up feeling like you're pushing a string, which is demotivating.
"When you do X, it makes me feel..."
Which is actually a pretty effective construct when you try it.
Your feelings might be triggered by X, but it's a stretch to say X is the cause, and not productive.
While neurons do work in concrete impulses, these impulses encode continuous values in the frequency domain.
The evolutionary mechanism is also wrong: Starvation is also largely absent today, so any evolutionary pressure to preserve energy would be equally unimportant as other causes of death. In fact, obesity far outstrips starvation as cause for mortality. So if evolution had had the time to adjust, we'd all wallow in ambiguities.
As a rule of thumb: attributing human behaviour that is more complex than basic emotions (fear, hunger, arousal,...) to evolution is almost always wrong. Overcoming evolutionary instincts is, after all, one of humanity's proudest achievements.
It's also not entirely settled if thinking hard actually increases the brain's energy usage. It appears that the brain has a relatively high caseload, with minimal variability.
Hee! Good one.
Are the word lists public information? Why or why not?
Are there links to the word lists?