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LineOfCredit

(This is about a social dynamic, not the related but different idea of a financial line of credit.)

This is an idea I reference most often in DiadicEncounter? – two individuals talking with one another privately. But it applies in pretty much all geometries of social exchange. I’ll be focusing on the diadic encounter in my examples here.

How much do you trust somebody?

If you don’t trust them much, then you probably don’t trust “where they’re going” with whatever it is that they’re saying. They’re going to try and build up an ArgumentPyramid, but you’re suspicious. So what do you do? You scrutinize – and quite rightly so. The atmosphere may even be hostile.

Alternatively, you trust somebody a LOT. They’re trying to build up an ArgumentPyramid, but they’re missing a ton of underneath pieces. They’re kind of holding some pieces in mid-air with their hands, and they’re “just kind of going on intuition” with other pieces. And yet, it works for you. You’re feeling collaborative, or perhaps just trying to hear their idea. You fill in with some possible explanations, and just let some be gaping holes for the time being. You offer alternative routes, alternative ways of building it up. The atmosphere is friendly.

The amount that you can express without needing to defend your name, or your reasoning, or the details of your points – this all constitutes your “line of credit.” In economical terms, what you’re making an offering of is your time. You trust that the exchange is valuable, interesting, worth your time.

The line of credit can extend and the line of credit can shrink. It is something that we’re always a bit careful about, and for good reason. It’s part of how the various pressures of reasoning work out.

See Also

Discussion

Lion: I’ve posed my iniytial “discussion” as a question simply because (1) I see some parallels, and (2) I don’t want to deflect this page on any “tangents”.

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