I always say: "I don't have enough information to make a definitive statement, but my impression is ____________" Because often, people really do just want your gut reaction. Your fast-processing, in other words.
... problem with that is that it's mostly been trained out of me. Fast processing and gut reaction is... bad. In a
lot of cases. My first reaction these days to gut feeling is "Where am I fucking up?" and/or "What information am I lacking", because it usually means I'm making assumptions without being aware of it and that causes all sorts of
terrible shenanigans. Impressions are to be stopped, hogtied, and buried under a rock until analysis can come check it out. Corollary to the maxim that natural or self-evident are words I should express
extreme skepticism towards, doubly so when they're coming out of
me My gut reaction to people asking for my gut reaction is a strange sort of hostility, ha.
Ask me to evaluate based on insufficient information, will you!? We dual at dawn, ye monger of epistemological perfidy. I will strike you down for this sin of justification!But nah, in this particular case it was a question regarding a short documentary piece, asking to evaluate a person's character based on the (really damn shallow and piss-poor/sensationalist overall) information given by said piece. Gist of the response was, "I can tell you want
happened, insofar as the information you provided for analysis, but I can't tell you what that means re: character." Didn't have enough information or the training to evaluate the limited information to a meaningful degree and the person presenting the question was... not entirely amused when I just kinda', y'know, said that.
S'not actually that big of a deal overall, but the last several hours have been off and on giving me fits trying to figure out a better way of approaching the situation. Maybe worked out a couple better responses during the interim, but it'll probably be a few more back and forth responses before I can tell if they're viable approaches, hum.
Apparently I'm the only one who considers two weeks ago to be recent.
I consider two months to be recent. Sometimes even more, depending on the relationship. I know I'm far from the norm here, though. I don't consider time investment or maintenance to be an essential part of a relationship. For me it's all about what's been shared, and that's it. I can go for years not talking with someone I care about and then pick up again like that span of time never happened, and that feels normal to me.
You too, huh? S'kind of an evaluative thing, f'me. Generally folks I'd be willing to pick up interaction with like that after a period are ones that, well, are fairly unlikely to change in ways to make that not happen. So now, tomorrow, next month, next decade... whatever. Good people's good people. Friend is friend until proven otherwise. Time apart isn't sufficient proof. More immediate actions are the measure.