My blue puzzle piece

Imagine a picture puzzle.... It comes in a box filled with hundreds of pieces. When assembled, it may depict a landscape, perhaps, with large swatches of blue sea and blue sky. Imagine my mind is like one of those picture puzzles, and so is yours. I take one of those blue puzzle pieces, give it to you, and declare, “Here's a bit of the picture in my mind. I give it to you so you can see the picture I see.”

Two questions

What are the effects of our own behavior?

How should we behave if we care about the answer?

Trinifar has initiated a conversation about these two questions.

Would you like to join us?

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okay, then, another question

How do you put out a fire?

I've noticed some people like to advocate “fighting fire with fire”. Their contribution to conversation is to declare, with absolute confidence,

Ya gotta fight fire with fire!

Thing is, most firefighters I know use water.

Reader MTran commented on the first draft:

What I have noticed about those who claim that they are “fighting fire with fire” is that they are, instead, simply spraying gasoline in all directions.

What have you noticed?

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I take that piece from the sky portion of my mind's picture puzzle, but you find it fits best in the sea portion of yours.

“Thanks!” you say, as you join my sky piece to your sea puzzle. And off we go, cheerfully believing we have accomplished something, that we have communicated.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Sometimes I think of it as the illusion of information. If I hand you a blue puzzle piece from the picture in my mind, but I don't describe the surrounding picture from which it came, I set up both of us to misunderstand each other, to miscommunicate, to see only an illusion of information.

This site offers a collection of puzzle pieces. These are the pieces I find most helpful to create a coherent picture of the world around us.

Some pieces I have yet to assemble or integrate can be found at the companion blog, Another blue puzzle piece.

Contents, pieces, connections ...

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