further to some of the debates on here recently

[weejie]

I thought this was funny and relevant...

Osmo Wiio is a Finnish researcher of human communication. His laws of communication, Wiio?s laws, are funny and insightful.

• If communication can fail, it will.
• If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.
• There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.
• The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.

And I particularly like his observation that any time there are two people conversing, there are actually six people in the conversation:

1. Who you think you are
2. Who you think the other person is
3. Who you think the other person thinks you are
4. Who the other person thinks he/she is
5. Who the other person thinks you are
6. Who the other person thinks you think he/she is

God, this explains why my husband and I row so much. I am sticking to written communication from now on...at least then it doesn't go on and on, and if he has a question I can just point to the text!

LOL, admit it Osmo, you've been lurking on the breast/bottle forum!

I specially like "There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message."