Saturday, January 3, 2009

Bottoms up, Socrates

Today I learned a little something about myself.
I'm a deductive reasoner.
Today I learned a little something about my fiance.
She's an inductive reasoner.

I say that I learned this. That's not entirely the case. I guess I should say I finally put a label on something which I had known to be true.
This simple difference in communication style leads to quite a few "Get to the point, already"s. The problem is, I don't always know what the point is.

That's a big difference, between she and I. When she says something, she's already done the necessary thinking. Because of this, she can pose a well reasoned, intelligent sentence. Me, on the other hand, I talk while thinking. It's part of the process. I like to think it works for me. I'm very Socratic, in that respect.

Of course, no one would know the name "Socrates" if his incessant questions had annoyed Plato. Socrates might have had a tall, cool glass of hemlock much earlier in his career.

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