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“Can’t you just…” is an idiom that means “I don’t understand the work you do at all”

Dale Hagglund

@inthehands I know it took me a while (too long, I'm sure) to realize this, but after I did I would consciously try to convert these "can't you just X" questions into something like "Can you help me understand why X is hard or inappropriate?"

I also started saying "You know, 'Just' is a four letter word" when others would use it in the dismissive sense.

@DaleHagglund "just" makes me twitch. so does "simply," and "should." they trip off the tongue so easily though

@aldroid Agreed. They can all be used aggressively / dismissively. And yet, I think there's times they're all ok,,too.

@DaleHagglund sure, it's like the verbal equivalent of a code smell. it's not necessarily bad, but it triggers a certain alertness to what we might be casually committing to

@aldroid That's a nice analogy, thanks. I think those words are a lot safer if you're in a high trust highly collaborative conversation, where discussion is moving rapidly; in those cases, maybe, "simple" and "just" especially really can reflect a genuine "Eureka!" moment of understanding. (Of course, most things are safer in a high-trust environment.)

@DaleHagglund i'm not necessarily suggesting that there's bad faith involved, attentiveness can do the same work as suspicion in a high trust group!

@aldroid I certainly didn't take that from anything you posted, and I agree that genuine bad faith is rarely the problem.