Writing mathematical proofs has greatly improved my life

Jamin2112

After 1-2 years of writing formal math proofs in undergraduate school, I now speak and write much more eloquently than I used to. Now, before uttering or writing a statement, I take a quick pause to ask myself whether

it's logically valid;
it's unambiguous;
it's relevant and sequentially fluid, if it's in the context of other statements I've made;
it's concise, using the absolute fewest words possible.


I'm not exaggerating the least bit. And this why talking to women (which I rarely do) is so annoying: they use 5 times as many words as necessary, without logical coherence, relevance, or anything that makes a math proof "elegant."

Jimmy Snyder

You're right. The last time I spoke to a woman she said "Go jump in the lake", when a simple "no" would have sufficed.

bugatti79

Are you still hunting women jimmy?

:-)

20Tauri

Wow. That's kind of an awful thing to say. I am a woman who is perfectly capable of writing math proofs and making logical arguments, and no, I don't hold my speech to the same standards as my mathematics. It's not that I am illogical or incapable of appreciating elegance. It's just that not everything I say is calculated to be amazing. I can write poetry, too, but I don't speak in sonnet form all the time.

Matterwave

Nice misogynist twist at the end there buddy.

Office_Shredder

I see

Jack21222

There's a little bit of truth in what he says in American culture. At least from what I learned in my "teaching in a diverse society" class. Women in American society are taught from a very young age to not be direct. They're taught to be more subtle with their requests. One example given in the textbook used in the class was a couple on a road trip. The wife in the passenger seat says to her husband "would you like to stop and eat?" The husband responds "nah, I'm not hungry" and keeps driving. The wife then gets angry at the husband, because she was hungry and wanted to stop.

It's not a matter of women speaking in "sonnet form" as you say, but rather generally being indirect. Perhaps this indirectness is what causes the women in the OP's life to use more words than necessary.

Moonbear

Okay, I never needed textbook to figure out that approach never works (not with other women either). But, it isn't just women who do that. My boyfriend asks the exact same way. I've just learned the best answer to something like, "are you hungry for lunch yet," if I'm not, is "not yet, but how hungry are you? Can you wait or do you want something now?" Sometimes the answer is he's starving and we get something like deli sandwiches that I can get wrapped to go and eat later, and sometimes he can wait and is just noticing the time and actually checking if I'm hungry.

Though, the OP's view is dysfunctional at best. If your primary thought when meeting someone of the opposite sex is that they aren't efficiently using words, and you aren't gay, it's time to seek professional help, because that's not just being a shy or awkward geeky guy, which experience can cure, but seems more into the range of social disorders.

zoobyshoe

What are you saying about gay people here, though? They pay attention to efficiency of communication because they aren't attracted to the opposite sex?

Office_Shredder

The difference between something being a quirk or a disorder is the effect that it has on somebody's life. If you're gay, the fact that over-analyze how women speak doesn't really have a large effect on you... sure maybe you aren't great friends with these people, but no big deal. If you're not gay, it ruins your ability to form relationships, which is a significantly larger impact on quality of life

chiro

I agree with what you are saying but it is a pretty tough thing to thoroughly quantify and qualify something like this because we all have different ideas about what is 'disorderly' vs 'orderly'.

zoobyshoe

I think the trouble with this line of reasoning would be that it seems to suggest it's OK to have a dysfunctional relationship any class of people you don't intend to be romantically involved with.

The interjection struck me as weird for the additional reason that, from what I've seen, most gay men really, really like women, and can automatically participate with them in the sort of "girl talk" that baffles the average non-gay guy. You don't actually see any of the sort of critical dismissal of women by gay men that's suggested by the interjection, "unless you're gay." Therefore it seems a counter-productive remark to throw in to make the point trying to be made.

My own reaction to Jamin2112's report is that he's finding out that the more you pursue expertise in a limited field the more alienated you become from people outside that field in general, and that, if he actually paid attention, he'd see that a large percentage of guys don't communicate efficiently at all either.

Moonbear

I said absolutely nothing about being gay other than to exclude them from my discussion of attraction to the opposite sex. You read the rest of that into the words but it was not said.

dipole

All the beauty and elegance of the world is worthless if you have no one to share it with. You'd better lighten up if you don't want to spend the rest of your life alone.

zoobyshoe

So, you're saying that if he weren't attracted to the opposite sex, then he wouldn't need professional help for having the primary thought in question. In other words, if he were gay, then that primary thought would be somehow OK.

jim hardy

I kinda echo zooby's previous point...

does OP notice that men do any better in everyday converstaion? Really ?

We guys are at a biological and cultural disadvantage - many of us find women so devastatingly, disarmingly attractive that we get tongue-tied and that makes conversation awkward. Women sense this and it puts them on edge too.

I suspect there's some projection afoot.
It's the barriers we put up for self defense that are our undoing.

As to subtlety in requests:
i learned early in my marriage the value of a good natured " That's a big ten- Yes, Dear ! " in bringing them to surface.

old jim

Office_Shredder

People have thoughts all the time which we wouldn't deem OK. The question is how does it impact your life that determines whether you need help in ridding yourself of these thoughts.