Jumping to conclusions vs. asking for clarification

It seems to me that all internet discussions seem to have a similar flaw. Since there are only a finite number of words within a post, people will tend to put words in them that are not there. I'm finding a bit of an epidemic recently in both bulletin boards as well as email conversations.

I'm not talking of any particular moments, people, or situations. It just seems that people are more interested in throwing knockout punches than understanding who or what they're fighting.

People tend to react emotionally (as is being discussed in Ben's thread) but also, people are reacting to nonexistent assumptions.

It seems that all too often, a statement like:
"I like apples."

Is being met with:
"What's wrong with oranges?"
or
"You have no proof that apples are any better than any other fruit unless you can site proven research posted elsewhere on the internet."
or
"My grandmother died 13 months after eating an apple you [censored]."
or
"Since apples are the only thing you like you must live in a very lonely hollow world."
or
"You are brainwashed by the apple industry and I pity your ignorance of the way things really work."
or
"Your constant fascist anti-pear propaganda makes you worse than Hitler."
{OK, I'm exaggerating a bit... but I think some of these may sound more familiar than we'd like to admit. wink

}

Rather than:
"How do you feel about oranges?"
"What makes you like apples?"
"I've never really liked apples, can you explain what context you've enjoyed apples the most so that I may understand?"

If there is a grey area, people tend to fill it in with whatever fills their personal or political agenda rather than asking followup questions to clarify the grey. It's way easier to ask a simple clarifying question than spending pages attacking only to find that you never really understood the person's point in the first place.

The most dangerous and irresponsible words to add to someone ELSE'S argument are words like "always" "never" "worst" "best" if they were not originally there. It's not only annoying, it's unethical.

And it's certainly rude and infuriating to purposely change someone else's argument just to prove your own. Obviously, misunderstandings will occur, but when they do, it's best to clarify first rather than just punch your way out. If I find someone's argument interesting but unclear in the future, I'll try to get clarification from them before jumping to conclusions.

I hope that others will do the same.

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