Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I’m rarely certain enough to claim that I’m right. Oftentimes I’ll acknowledge that uncertainty by stating where/when I heard something so the other person can judge the validity of that source themself.
That said, if I am confident in something and I’m told that I’m wrong, I’ll usually look it up there or just say something like “that’s not my understanding but I can’t dive into it now.” Then when I do have time I’ll do a bit of research, or if the topic comes up again I’ll assert what I was confident in with the caveat that so-and-so told me this other thing.
If I do the research and find that I was wrong, I’ll try to remember that the next time I see the other person and let them know I confirmed they were right.
This reminded me of a person I used to know. She adamantly refused to look things up. We were having some casual conversation about work, and I was like "I think that's not what that word means." She just refused to look at the dictionary or engage with trying to find out the answer. I don't know if it was pride, or an insane commitment to a bit, but it was frustrating to deal with.
Incidentally, she was the worst D&D player I ever had, and was deeply dysfunctional in her romantic relationships. I can only imagine what madness she's up to now.
Do you remember what word it was and what she thought it meant?
Unfortunately, no. I think it was a semi-obscure but not terribly so word like "esoteric". We were all native speakers from the same region. From what else I remember from the conversation, her general practice was to avoid looking things up. If she couldn't figure it out from context, it wasn't worth doing more.
I felt this. I use qualifiers so damn much. The moment you say something like "X is a result of Y 100% of the time" some pedantic little shit is gonna "ackshualllllly! In this ultra rare and never considered case it can be a result of Z".