Flailing about words.
Jun. 28th, 2013 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseThe silly one:
I was asking myself, Self, is the word ouroboros too culturally laden or specific to use in a setting that isn't this world?
This of a story where the "local" language is pretty blatantly based on French and the nearest foreign one on Swedish (and these facts are not, as it happens, exclusively laziness. There's still only one world in my worldbuilding where humans *evolved*...).
But it still seems a pretty specific concept to include.
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The frustrating one:
I really shouldn't get into debates with people in person.
I am not a facts at her fingertips type girl. I'll have read three or four articles on a subject, including a dissenting opinion to check my own assumptions, and skimmed some others for tidbits that weren't in the first ones. Or I'll have taken a course at some point where it came up. I'll have seen charts, and graphs, and analyses and critiques thereof. I can surprise people with knowing a weird bit of trivia, and thereby convince at least some of them that I might know what I'm talking about.
Until i get into an off the cuff debate. Then it always feels like I often can't remember a single one of them extemporaneously. Not one damn telling point. When i do, i remember half of one so it sounds like nonsense. I'll feel like I'm standing there waving my arms crying "There are facts! They exist! They're out there .... somewhere. Dammit!" Which is... unconvincing.
I should also remember about identifying when something is a point of faith for the person I'm debating with (or for myself) and know to leave it alone, because then the facts are in service to something not factual at all.
Just... argh.
(If anyone's wondering, the topic was climate change.)
I was asking myself, Self, is the word ouroboros too culturally laden or specific to use in a setting that isn't this world?
This of a story where the "local" language is pretty blatantly based on French and the nearest foreign one on Swedish (and these facts are not, as it happens, exclusively laziness. There's still only one world in my worldbuilding where humans *evolved*...).
But it still seems a pretty specific concept to include.
__________________
The frustrating one:
I really shouldn't get into debates with people in person.
I am not a facts at her fingertips type girl. I'll have read three or four articles on a subject, including a dissenting opinion to check my own assumptions, and skimmed some others for tidbits that weren't in the first ones. Or I'll have taken a course at some point where it came up. I'll have seen charts, and graphs, and analyses and critiques thereof. I can surprise people with knowing a weird bit of trivia, and thereby convince at least some of them that I might know what I'm talking about.
Until i get into an off the cuff debate. Then it always feels like I often can't remember a single one of them extemporaneously. Not one damn telling point. When i do, i remember half of one so it sounds like nonsense. I'll feel like I'm standing there waving my arms crying "There are facts! They exist! They're out there .... somewhere. Dammit!" Which is... unconvincing.
I should also remember about identifying when something is a point of faith for the person I'm debating with (or for myself) and know to leave it alone, because then the facts are in service to something not factual at all.
Just... argh.
(If anyone's wondering, the topic was climate change.)
