Have you read "Thinking, fast and slow"? I believe it will provide part of the answers you're asking for.
Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
101–110 of 372 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#102People seek what is emotionally comfortable for them. This steers their communication. For example, they may wander off to topics they feel more comfortable with, or where they unconsciously hope for more emotional payoff. You can’t treat people as being rational actors, except in the sense that they may actually be quite rational about achieving their emotional goals. This is often completely subconscious. Another f…
> they may wander off to topics they feel more comfortable with Or they intentionally want to steer the group towards discussing those topics either for their own benefit or because they believe it is the right problem to bring into focus. If they are successful in doing so without coming across as rude, that could be viewed as great communication even if it leaves some questioning communication skills; it really dep…
Right, but at least in the nonpolitical context I wouldn’t assume conscious intent without very clear evidence of it. The greatest fallacy is assuming to know what people are actually thinking, without them saying it. People tend to vastly overestimate their insight into other people’s minds.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, when I see this kind of story (and I do see it a lot), the confusion is typically more on the side of the person insisting on a yes or no. I had a conversation once with a customer who demanded a yes or no answer to the question of "is your system in-memory". They didn't want to talk about what was in memory - they'd just learned from Oracle marketing material that "in-memory" was faster, so they wanted to…
To be clear about the yes/no, let me tell you an example from yesterday: - We are building an embedded system, which has a data interface, which is not working properly (nothing is being received). We have to take care of the emitter, other team the receiver. - My question: after lunch you are going to see with the oscilloscope of there is activity in the interfaces lines? - Answer: No need, the registers in the ASIC…
You imply that the other PhD is being difficult but I think you're being difficult. In my opinion you should start with an open-ended question "How do we determine if there is a malfunction in the ASIC?".
Unless this is your subordinate and you are convinced of a plan of action. In that case don't ask, just be direct and tell them what you want to test.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#104I am, charitably, a pretty decent developer. I also have what I think most would agree is a pretty successful career.
My career is not built on programming. Rather, it's built on my ability to communicate effectively in writing and in spontaneous speech, and to serve as a translation layer between various parts of an organization. Your frustration is my opportunity.
In my experience, few people without the training or education will be effective communicators. What's my training? A philosophy degree. Theater. An interest in psychology and psychotherapy. Extensive reading. All sorts of management duties within my family, who are of a different culture and class than myself.
Tech is full of young people with CS and business degrees, lots of money, in a homogenous social context, without their own family. So they haven't been educated to express deeply abstract concepts effectively, and lack the experience of getting a large diverse group working effectively toward a shared goal.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#105Here are some altruistic reasons these events might occur: > - don't directly address the point of your question / provide a much complex answer (or even worse, a non-answer) to a simple question > - don't stay focused to the point of the discussion I often dive deeper if the question itself raises suspicions that the question asker might not fully understand the topic. For example, if someone asked: "can you unbatch…
> You yourself are missing words in your communication like the word "have" in the quote above. Also, I don't know enough linguistic rules to correct you, but colloquially at least your title is better understood if you write it as "Why do some people not communicate clearly?" Thanks, corrected the mistakes. However, I wasn't referring to missing words (which can be inferred) or bad grammar. Actually I wasn't referri…
Everyone is running a complex neural network, that was formed by trial and error, to express complex and often abstract notions for which we may not even share a common context or concept. People think differently, and someone trying to express a concept is essentially walking through the mental model that they made for themselves. It may not work for you for a variety of reasons. Having acquired language via another culture might be enough to make it more difficult or frustrating to understand someone from a different background, even if you both now share the same language.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#106The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. (George Bernard Shaw)
Are you certain that you have clearly communicated your question to the listener? I frequently encounter questions asked without context, questions without assumptions being stated, or questions which are trivial/dontcares.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#107Communication is a skill. It needs to be practiced. It usually means that people need to get out of their heads, and imagine what the other person currently knows, and what information you can provide to them to bridge the gap between you and them.
I work with a brilliant programmer who is one of the worst communicators I've ever worked with. It's exhausting, because he doesn't have the empathy required to properly explain things to others. I'm definitely bringing this up to him during feedback time.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, when I see this kind of story (and I do see it a lot), the confusion is typically more on the side of the person insisting on a yes or no. I had a conversation once with a customer who demanded a yes or no answer to the question of "is your system in-memory". They didn't want to talk about what was in memory - they'd just learned from Oracle marketing material that "in-memory" was faster, so they wanted to…
To be clear about the yes/no, let me tell you an example from yesterday: - We are building an embedded system, which has a data interface, which is not working properly (nothing is being received). We have to take care of the emitter, other team the receiver. - My question: after lunch you are going to see with the oscilloscope of there is activity in the interfaces lines? - Answer: No need, the registers in the ASIC…
It's hard to say without having been there. I've definitely been in your shoes before, where I have to pull teeth to get someone to sit down and actually do what they clearly need to do. But I've also been the PhD guy, saying "yes sure" and agreeing to spend 30 minutes on a task that doesn't make much sense rather than spend 30 minutes arguing about it. I don't have the technical knowledge to speculate on how obvious it should have been that the test you proposed was right.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#109Lots of people are afraid to say "I don't know" in my experience. Although, sometimes people ask me a question where I have to work out in my head what the answer is and it feels weird to sit there in silence for 15 seconds as I do so.
It's such a shame when people aren't comfortable admitting they don't know something. Often it's way more valuable to know that, and safer in many cases too!
Safer when?
Guessing the right answer in school was always acceptable. Just sitting silently always made the teacher upset. People are trained for ~10 years to just guess/make stuff up when they don't know.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#110Speech is a (relatively) low bandwidth protocol connecting two very densely connected extremely high bandwidth systems.
Changing the state of a system through the speech protocol is a slow, time consuming and error prone task. Some people are better at it than others.