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Part of How to communicate with empathy and collaboration

Sharp Enough to Cut Yourself: Using Humor to {{or: Soften the Sting|Dull the Burn|Dull the Pain}} of Exposing Biases

The more seriously you take this the less likely it is to work. A casual, playful, and non-confrontational demeanor can go a long way. Making small course corrections to a person's world-view is delicate work and very few people actually appreciate if it's done poorly.

  • "Oh, and you’d better not drop any hints that you think you’re working a dozen inferential steps away from what the audience knows, or that you think you have special background knowledge not available to them. The audience doesn’t know anything about an evolutionary-psychological argument for a cognitive bias to underestimate inferential distances leading to traffic jams in communication. They’ll just think you’re condescending."

Referenced in

How to communicate with empathy and collaboration
How to communicate with empathy and collaboration