How To Perform Intelligence

[droqen]

When you perform your intelligence, you're not supposed to explicitly say that you just learned about some narrow term of art that you're now using.

This is a useful observation. My first response was to take up arms, but luckily it was directed at someone else and not me (whose own tone I was already predisposed to dislike) which allowed me to slide into the analytical-learning stance much more easily.

(I need a better term than 'analytical-learning stance', but I don't know what; in the off chance I check this out later, it's the position where you can analyze your own actions from a place 'above' being hooked described by Frank Lantz in that one interview.)

Basically my conclusion is if you're 'performing intelligence' (a useful concept in & of itself) it can be useless to listeners, it can be seen negatively (perhaps because of that*), to use a 'narrow' term that you just learned and to lampshade that you just learned it.

I do this a lot, so I feel I need to do a bit more research into this dynamic in order to understand it.

[droqen]

Wait, that was just the first conclusion. The second temporary conclusion (the one about, and using, the first conclusion, and how to handle it) is to remember to present something digestible; a version of the 'intelligence' which provides utility for the reader, not practice for me in using the new word. (This is often interpreted as pretentious behaviour. "Look at this sMaRt new word I learned!" is a common external interpretation of a person who is just excited that they've learned something new and amazing and wants to practice its use (just: with the wrong people, in the wrong venue). Man, that's sad.)