Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

Define simple; it is often the case that something seemingly simple is actually quite complicated.

It is often good to provide additional context to identify common ground and from there guide the discussion.

A system that can be described in a linear and continuous fashion without drilling down is either too simple, or too broadly described, neither of which is particularly useful when complexity is high.

I've always felt incredibly at how trivially we take our ability to coherently sync our minds by using symbols and utterances. Language is so fascinating and unfortunately, there will always be people who are good at at and those who are bad at it. My insight is to never assume that the person opposite of me will always understand my interpretation of what I'm uttering and therefore repeat often, using different terms, analogies and (surprisingly) gestures. Many a times I've felt that I do not ask a super confusing question clearly but still my professors are able to understand what I'm trying to communicate about. But they are some of the smartest people I've ever met in my life and it'd be unfair to hold everyone to their standards.

To recap again, language is difficult and communication requires active effort as opposed to just assuming that what one has in his mind will always come across perfectly no matter what words/utterances are used. Unfortunately, not everyone knows or ponders upon it.

I am considered to be a strong communicator (so my boss tells me), but I still find myself talking too much, and going off topic at times. So I've put some thought into this just for my own profession to try and get better at it.

In a work context:

- Some people just follow their train of thought wherever it leads. It works OK in their internal working life, because it leads them interesting places. They may not realize that they have to maintain a clean "interface" with the external world and have some of that chatter not cross that boundary.

- Some people have hangups. They like to draw the conversation to their own things which make them look good.

- Some people are just self-centered. I don't mean conceited as in full of themselves necessarily, but as in they really find it difficult to see the world through another person's viewpoint. The world only exists through the viewing pane of their own interests and experience.

- Some people over communicate when they are nervous instead of keeping it crisp. I do this. It's important for me to be relaxed in a meeting where I am presenting.

- Some people just don't know how to gauge their audience. They try to explain the whole "elephant" when asked about it, instead of trying to scope the answer to the audience's level of expertise and the scope of the question. Imagine a blind man considering a vacation to Africa asking, "What's the dangerous part of an elephant?" - Well, it's partly the pointy things on its face, but also they are gigantic and ill tempered. There, I answered it in a concise way, but you can imagine (say) a nerdy zoologist getting wayyyy into the details of anecdotes of the myriad ways elephants have killed people.

- Playing dumb, by the way, can be a sneaky way of setting people's expectations to gain an advantage. See: The scene the Shlomo character in "The Honourable Woman" has near the end of the season where he admits that as CEO of a telecom that he actually understands all the tech from the top to the bottom. And that people's expectation that he doesn't reveals things about them in their interactions.

1) Sometimes not staying perfectly focused on what you see as the main point of a conversation is not the wrong thing to do. In a meeting discussing a complex business problem for instance, a smarter person in the room might see that the root cause of a problem you're all working on is "Problem D", whereas everybody else is focused on "Problem A".

2) Some people will always communicate poorly as worse than average communicators will always exist in nature.

3) On top of this, phones and other modern technologies provide a constant distraction for people. That average person might have appeared far more competent in a different era where they lived more in the moment and had to focus on what was in front of them rather than trying to resolve a problem as quickly as possible to go back and look at their notifications.

4) IMO, the question shouldn't be "why don't some people communicate clearly", the question should be "why does it seem like more people are communicating unclearly than before". To that I would say a combination of technical distractions as well as dropping IQs.

5) My personal life tip for both programming and interacting with people in your daily life (real-estate agents, waiters, customer-support people, plumbers, etc) is to make very simple requests without conditionals whenever possible. Everybody gets confused with words like the following: if, unless, and, or, until, when. To reduce the chance of confusion, say straightforward things to your busy waiter like "Please bring me some bread" and don't give convoluted requests like "If my appetizer or salad is ready, bring me that and my bread, but if the meal is ready, I want you to please get me my drinks first." Convoluted requests with conditionals are most often a chance for confusion.

Some people are truly bad at comminicating.

The other side of this, trying to insist on yes/no answers to questions that are not yes/no questions is also a bit of a recipe for disaster.

> EDIT: I see some answers referring to learning disorders, disabilities, anxiety, not knowing the issue at hand. I'm talking about people which do know the topic

Some learning disorders do exhibit really good math and logic skills but poor conversational skills. Or just requiring a lot of time to put thoughts together and being really bad at on the spot real time conversation. Casual conversation and being academically talented are really pretty distinct skills that dont neccesarily come together.