nominalizations and 'hand-waving'

[Guest guest]

On Apr 8, 2005 11:55 AM, docresults <docresults wrote:

>

> On the fairness issue, my map right now says fairness is giving choices,

> spelling it out simply says do it this way, which from my POV doesn't give

> choice.

>

 

What if I already have choices?

 

If I'm driving down the street, and my passenger says, " you could go

that way, " and that's it, I'm going to think, " whatever. The way I'm

going works, and I know it, so I'm sticking with it. "

 

On the other hand, if the passenger says, " you're taking Main Street,

right? It's usually so crowded this time of day, I find that if I cut

over to Back Street and then cut back, it's actually faster " ... I'm

much more likely to respond with " sounds interesting, let's check it

out. "

 

Presenting me with a choice, how-to-do-it, and WIIFM gives me the

information I need to compare it to my current set of choices.

 

Presenting a choice without WIIFM requires either that I drop what I'm

doing to figure out how I benefit from it, or that I accept some

implied value system that prefers that choice. And I would respond to

either of those with hostility and resentment.

 

And presenting a choice without the how-to-do-it would require even

more work on my part, before I could even determine whether it's of

use to me. I usually respond to that by assuming that the person

doing the recommending doesn't even know how-to-do-it, so the

recommendation can be safely ignored as groundless.

 

For me, that's fair.

 

--David Brandt