After a bruising (if surprisingly productive) episode last Tuesday, David shares frustrations about his relationship with Bill. He also has to remind Ernie that the reason he (David) didn't welcome Ernie's input was that Ernie didn't seem interested in understanding David.  Ernie conceded the point, but argued it was wrong for David to bring Bill up if he didn't want Ernie's help.  David immediately agreed, apologized and confessed.

[They had initially agreed to remove the offending section, but later decided to show it to Bill first. He surprisingly agreed to publish it, but wanted to discuss David's characterization of Bill's motives.  They ended up resolving, or at least identifying, their core issues, and are in a much better place.  Which will no doubt make for a much less stressful Christmas dinner!]

David then suggested a model for why we had trouble understanding each other: we are both original thinkers, and have therefore developed heuristics for dealing with "conventional" thinkers -- which backfire when used on each other!  Ernie agreed, but felt the solution was to create shared experiences we could point to in order to develop a new vocabulary.  David argue Ernie had already tried that, and that a better route was to find some common priors and extrapolate from those.  Ernie was doubtful, but agreed to let David try next week, and they could alternate after that.

References

• Automated Transcript
• Two and a Half Men (IMDB)
• Shaka, When the Walls Fell (Star Trek: The Next Generation)