Conversation Deliberately Skirts The Border Of Incomprehensibility

Starts from an autistic-Tumblr observation (a neurotypical's 'what are you doing?' means 'can I join?', and explaining is read as rejection) and builds a sharp account of conversation as plausible-deniability signaling. Bob asks 'what are you reading?' so Alice can either continue OR decline with plausible deniability — which only works if Bob 'operates as close to the border of inscrutable confusingness as possible without crossing it': he wants Alice to know he wants to talk, but not to know that he knows she knows (the deliberate three-'know' common-knowledge-denial). Cues are therefore calibrated to fail a small % of the time — and so fail far more often for people worse at cues (autistics). Ties it to predictive-processing autism theory ('other agents are the hardest thing to predict' — because conversation is designed that way) and his own 'anti-inductive' concept: conversation norms get replaced whenever they're understood too well.

Quality 72 · Strong. 72 — Strong. A sharp, generative social-dynamics insight — conversation as deliberately edge-of-incomprehensibility plausible-deniability — with a precise common-knowledge analysis and a memorable tie to his anti-inductive concept. Short and focused, which places it mid/high-Strong.

Claude’s paradigm shift 54 · Moderate. 54 — Moderate. The 'conversation is calibrated to the border of incomprehensibility for plausible deniability' framing is a fresh, non-obvious insight.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. 2 — a within-discourse insight; no material reach.