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Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

ashley.rolfmore.com

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Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#131

Post by obsidianbases1 »

donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

Perfect candidate for a custom prompt/LLM that translates your writing into normie speak.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#132

Post by david-gpu »

mjburgess wrote: post #129
donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your language is, and hence the more precise, the more cognitive effort you require the reader to expend on each word. Reading is a translation from your mental model, as expressed in words, to the readers mental model. Words alone don't perform this translation, t…

This is such a good summary of effective communication practices. It was the same sort of thought process that I went through when writing technical documentation and presentations, and it served me very well.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#133

Post by nottorp »

yetihehe wrote: post #126
nottorp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, when I don't know what to ask for, I search for expert who will know what I should ask and will help me with expanding my knowledge of the options. > Yes, I speak from experience of such moments. And did you actually look for an expert or did you just get something from Ikea? Do you even know how to identify an expert furniture designer? One of my points is we think we're damn unique but we aren't. And my exa…

> And did you actually look for an expert or did you just get something from Ikea? Sorry, but I don't see the point of your comment. I looked for an expert who helped me with expanding my options. Expert != "will sell his exact product he is trying to sell in the place he is working at". Sometimes as an expert you even have to advise a client against your product, because he will try to use something not designed for…

Yes to everything you said and also to what i said :) You just took it personally.

The whole idea is I'm trying to place the "expert" software engineers in a position where they're not the experts to make them understand their clients better.

> and you being observant

OT: How many other great home improvement ideas have i missed because i wasn't observant enough?

Edit: or is it really off topic? Will the customer of the software engineer research, say, all possible database solutions or, even assuming great communication with the engineers, just pick a good enough one from their combined knowledge?

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#134

Post by Brian_K_White »

donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

"I feel like people using AI to both read and interpret language is the death of rigorous language. I have genuinely been pondering for months if generative AI is the "Great Filter" preventing space faring civilizations from flourishing. Around the same time a civilization begins to enter space they invent a device that destroys their minds."

Holy cow what a great premis. I require that Cory Doctorow write this book as soon as possible.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#135

Post by welldoneator »

donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

> They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret.

I find this notion a little strange. The implication here is that words are precisely bounded to bounds of thoughts. Language is a representation of our world (and our individual understanding of it) - we all (including you) will use different words to describe similar-ish concepts. This will always be more clear to you as the originator of the thought -> word process than the receiver.

You can’t hand wave away the work of interpreting (aka listening) to someone.

I’m sure if I spoke to your counterparts in the scenario you described they’d say different words which also ultimately amounted to something like “it’s difficult to interpret what they’re saying.”

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#136

Post by balamatom »

mjburgess wrote: post #129
donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your language is, and hence the more precise, the more cognitive effort you require the reader to expend on each word. Reading is a translation from your mental model, as expressed in words, to the readers mental model. Words alone don't perform this translation, t…

>Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI.

Note that the manager may or may not have incentive at all to provide useful or even meaningful feedback.

I mean, he did pass on an incorrect version of the documentation, didn't he?

hi! yes. perhaps he wil write inchoate sentence like point out which word is wrong

>One suspicion I have is that your one-pager was passed through AI because it was too terse to serve the job of aiding the general reader in obtaining an understanding of the topic for themselves.

"Too terse" beats "factually wrong" any day. Anyone who claims otherwise is evil.

>Writing to be read by an audience is a vastly different activity than writing notes that merely, precisely, document for the maximally informed highest-context reader (or one willing to do the work of reassembling this context during reading).

Now do "writing to be read by an unwilling audience", and "writing to be read by an audience that controls the feeder and shockprod".

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#137

Post by balamatom »

busyant wrote: post #122
digi59404 wrote: post #54

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic. Let me add a couple to this list. 1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept. 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to y…

The points in # 2 are profound. I plan on sending this to someone who is dear to me. Maybe he will "listen" to it, too. Thank you.

Let us know how that goes, telling someone who is defending themself from you how they should "Be More Vulnerable!"

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#138

Post by balamatom »

welldoneator wrote: post #135
donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

> They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. I find this notion a little strange. The implication here is that words are precisely bounded to bounds of thoughts. Language is a representation of our world (and our individual understanding of it) - we all (including you) will use different w…

>You can’t hand wave away the work of interpreting (aka listening) to someone.

And yet, that's what their manager did.

Not only that, they precluded interpretation for the other people, by running the documentation through the language mixer.

And half the commenters are blaming GP for making the effort to do the right thing.

"Power", "authority", literally refers to the ability to hand-wave interpretative labor uncontested. (See: Graeber 2006, yeah the one about his mum dying)

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#139

Post by cindyllm »

balamatom wrote: post #137
busyant wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The points in # 2 are profound. I plan on sending this to someone who is dear to me. Maybe he will "listen" to it, too. Thank you.

Let us know how that goes, telling someone who is defending themself from you how they should "Be More Vulnerable!"

[dead]

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#140

Post by Brian_K_White »

b3lvedere wrote: post #78
6P58r3MXJSLi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state if it's not two ways, stop trying, stand up and leave.

What a privilige it must be to be able to have a job where you can stand up and leave when your psyche can't handle it. Ever done tech support for ten hours a day? :)

Unless you are literally in manacles chained to an oar on a slave ship, you have the option to stand up for yourself. Everyone has to navigate the needs of life somehow. The simple universal requirement to find food somewhere somehow in no way translates to "what a privilege it must be". You have exactly that same luxury because it's not a luxury it's simply existing.
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