我也有话要说（九）你有99%的可能性被误解

I Have Something to Say Too (9): There's a 99% Chance You'll Be Misunderstood

> By Li Xiaolai · 2010-06-30 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113130722/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/9644.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

[On the whole, the speaker must trust the audience](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/9573.html). A speaker on stage should keep firmly in mind:

> Believe that they (the audience as a whole) have judgment, believe that they have taste, believe that they have enough intelligence and wisdom, believe that they're kind, believe that they're fair, believe that they have every positive quality.

However, each audience member as an individual is uneven in every respect. He may have no judgment, yet think he has quite a bit of judgment and the standing to judge; he may have taste in this respect, but very poor taste; he may well not be kind, or may indeed be kind, but only with the kind of kindness that's based on cowardice; he may not be fair, living his whole life by double standards, lenient with himself and strict with others... Some of them may even have every negative quality.

The most frightening thing is that many audience members have never seriously examined their own "**selective input disorder**." Very often the relationship between speaker and listener isn't mutual but "you say your thing, I hear my thing." In the end, the version the listener heard and the version the speaker said may well be a hundred and eight thousand li apart.

[So far (Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 13:42), there are 23,546 comments on my blog, and I've never deleted any of them, even the ones cursing in the street](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/768.html), so readers can find countless examples here of "you write your thing, I read my thing, and then 'it's you I'm cursing.'"

When I said "[beginners nowadays had best not choose the Wubi input method](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/8338.html)," the people who rushed up to oppose me seemed not to have seen the words "*nowadays*," "*beginners*," "*had best*" at all—for them, "anyway, you're saying Wubi is bad, and that won't do!"

[The most recent example happened on Twitter](http://twitter.com/xiaolai/status/17258783772):

> @xiaolai: I can't see what you're opposing. @miaomiaowang: Completely opposed! The simplest reason: taking X-rays of the same body part, different technicians produce completely different levels of quality; and with the same X-ray, what different doctors can see in it is also completely different @xiaolai: I strongly suspect that many of China's Western-medicine doctors are really nothing more than ordinary users of modern medical equipment.
> [Translator's note: the words after @miaomiaowang are another user's, quoted here, not Li Xiaolai's; the @xiaolai lines are his own. The thread is set as a quote block in the original.]

How exactly did this opponent manage to "strongly oppose the other party using evidence that supports the other party's view"?

The explanation is simple: what he heard was his own version, not the version I said. People of this type are the kind easily swayed by emotion; if you carelessly trigger some negative emotion in him, they'll immediately have a "physiological reaction."

If such a simple sentence can be misunderstood like this, let alone your "lengthy discourse" of 30 minutes or even longer on stage as a speaker.

There are several effective ways to avoid being misunderstood:

1. **Keep it as simple as possible.** Simple doesn't mean "oversimplified." I mean keep the logical relationships simple and clear as far as possible. Only this way can unnecessary misunderstanding be avoided.
2. **Avoid arousing negative emotions in the audience.** If the speaker is sure he's right, there's really no need to please the audience. However, there's no need for anyone to offend the audience for no reason. It's best to carefully examine every sentence you say, and avoid sentences, examples and words that might arouse negative emotions in the audience.
3. **Do your homework in advance, communicate on a small scale.** Through everyday conversation and small-scale discussion, collect different opinions, think about where they're reasonable and where they're unreasonable, and then design a strategy for each one. On stage, you can deal with these "possible audience doubts" directly by asking and answering your own questions.

Of course, **the most important thing is to "keep a calm frame of mind."** People aren't sages; who can be without faults?

For each of us, "the one who most often makes mistakes is oneself"—because others make mistakes too, and may make them just as often, but those mistakes don't have much to do with us. However, most people haven't figured this out. So when they themselves make mistakes they cover them up, and over time they believe they rarely make mistakes, or even never make mistakes; and when others make mistakes, they can't wait to point them out, and over time they believe everyone else is a dumbfuck [Translator's note: 傻屄 (shabi), a vulgar insult, rendered "dumbfuck" as elsewhere in these translations]. Among people, this kind of person makes up the majority. So sometimes when we're not wrong but are misunderstood, there's nothing to be surprised about.

More importantly, if you really keep a calm frame of mind and can think seriously about everything, you'll often find that the so-called "misunderstanding" was really only a momentary false impression; think it over carefully some time later, and that "criticism," or that "misunderstanding," turns out to be actually right—a big win!

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