I sent this as an email to someone and thought it would be good to put out to the world. The situation went like this. Person 1 (A guy) told the recipient that Person 2 did not like them, much the same as a high school rumor mill. And so the email starts.

 

 

Ok, first thing. Here is a definition of hearsay:

 

1. Unverified information heard or received from another; rumor.

2. Law. Evidence based on the reports of others rather than the personal knowledge of a witness and therefore generally not admissible as testimony.

 

 

I think (my opinion) is that it is wrong to base/change your judgments on a person based on hearsay alone. Now, in this situation, the information you got was not legal hearsay , but it is unverified information. If you are going to feel differently about Person2 only because of something Person1 said Person2 said, than that would disappoint me. Person1 might be 100% right and it would be ok, but from your own words and what I have seen, Person2 does not have any issue with you.

 

 

Remember that there are 4 stages to communication:

 

 

It is VERY easy to have one of those stages have a hiccup when two people are talking or otherwise communicating. Think about how often you have communication issues even when you are talking face to face with someone. Then add 4 more steps and you find you can’t rely on anything said that you did not hear or have backed up.

 

Somewhat changing subjects here, but this conversation (post?) is one of the things that I discuss with all my close friends on. There are so many people that take any rumor or hearsay as fact and then destroy their relationships with people or quit their jobs or whatever because of it. You really have to separate yourself from the information you receive.

 

 

Here are the steps required before you can act on information:

You have received information, but not you need to verify it. Ask Person2 out to lunch and talk to them about it. Then you need to scope the information. Scope is the “area covered by a given activity or subject”. You need to know what that information refers to.

 

And then as you figure out those things, you start to get even more information and as you verify and scope that information you get this huge tangled web of information (some of it will surely conflict). Then you need to understand it. That is the real hard one. We go through life (every one of us) without really understanding anything.

 

The (partial) definition of “understand” is “to perceive and comprehend the nature and significance of.” That is pretty serious. Not to really draw out some stupid pop-culture thought, but think about the 90s rage of Chaos Theory and the whole “if a butterfly flaps its wings in Chicago, it can cause a hurricane that takes our New Orleans”, do you think you could have perceived the significance of that one?

 

Think about (and I know this is a obscure example) Joseph von Fraunhofer who discovered the spectrum of the Sun (was the 2^nd person to do that really, William Wollaston was first). He perceived, but he was not able to comprehend that the spectrum was really the chemical makeup of sun itself. He could not comprehend that a dark spot at 299nm meant that the sun had Nickel inside it.

 

 

Anyway, only once you understand information AND understand the result AND NEED of an action should you act. Acting (even changing your views of someone) without following any of the steps is morally wrong (in my opinion).