I appreciate your feedback!
I agree that lucidity is a fairly subjective trait, but I don't find that to be unique. Virtually all traits describing people are subjective. There is no measure for charismatic, curious, or witty. Even traits like intelligence that do come with a measure like IQ are imperfectly approximated at best.
I think I misleadingly portrayed lucidity as being A. a social trait and B. a synonym for charismatic.
The bit on pathologies is interesting and I hadn't considered that! A great point.
James avoided trouble by being lucid, perhaps I wasn't overly clear about that. I think more examples about the ways where lucidity could help or harm would be beneficial.
Overall, this is helpful for my future essays, and I really appreciate your feedback!
>Thanks, I'm glad my guess at how to balance critical and constructive came across okay :)
It did indeed :) Thanks for playing with this idea with me
>If you let the reader guess how the trait should be measured for comparison, it's likely that they'll assume a metric other than the one you had in mind.
Agreed!
>When I read your post, I got the strong impression that detecting lucidity is a social process...
Detecting lucidity is largely a social process, but lucidity itself is not merely a social trait. As you correctly identify with the laundromat example, somebody's action may appear lucid without possessing the underlying trait. In order to actually discern lucidity, you need to understand their motivations and thought process, which is easiest through social contact.
Your example dialogue is very helpful for me to hopefully elucidate what I originally meant, and also tried to reference with the laundromat example:
In life, you will be put in various positions [which I call games], and you can generally either choose to play those games or change the game altogether. Recognizing this is lucid.
The non-lucid James doesn't recognize that he is playing games, nor that he can change the game. The only game that he knows how to play is "be factually correct" and he plays that very well. This leads to the breakdowns that you describe in the scenario.
The fallout that you describe is an example of the two of them playing different games. Stacy is expecting James to play the "demonstrate you care about my feelings even in situations where you don't find them factually correct" game, but he doesn't realize that.
By appealing to S's emotions, I originally meant he acknowledges her feelings — saying something like "I understand why you feel this way" and making sure the "root cause" of the argument, Stacy feeling emotionally neglected, is addressed.
It's not unlike the classic male-female divide when discussing problems of "men want solutions, women want to be heard." Recognizing this meta-game and playing it accordingly is a step towards lucidity, rather than a man always playing the "solution" game with his wife.