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You can't tell people anything (2004)

habitatchronicles.com

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Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#131

Post by mordae »

xyzelement wrote: post #90
invalidator wrote: post #8

Now realize that this applies to everything, not just computers. Unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, you don't really understand the struggles of LGBTQ folks, the homeless, CEOs, assembly line workers... They will try to tell you, but you can't tell people anything, unless you're telling someone with good imagination and empathy.

I deeply appreciate your point that lack of understanding goes both downward (homeless) and upward (CEOs.) I think that's true. But - unrelated to your point - I think there's more empathy (or understanding, at least) - unexpectedly - downwards. A CEO knows how to become homeless (quit job, give away house and money) if they chose to for some reason. A homeless person has no path to CEO.

Perhaps in theory, but not in practice. In practice those "on top" either lack empathy from the start, or learn to disconnect it early on.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#132

Post by unwind »

joefigura wrote: post #39

This article really frustrated me the last time it was posted, but now I think I have a clear enough idea why to put it into words. You absolutely can tell people things! But to tell someone something, you need to do three things: - Establish enough shared context that they can understand you - Speak about something they actually care about (or convince them to care) - Use a format that works for what you're trying t…

If it's a management meeting at a company developing a massively online multiplayer game as one of their main projects, perhaps you would assume people to know what an avatar is, in that context.

That still doesn't make it sound or feel like a good idea, to me. :)

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#133

Post by Aune »

weinzierl wrote: post #120
zsz wrote: post #51

> I’m totally convinced that a new idea or a new plan or a new technique is never really understood when you just explain it. > People will often think they understand, and they’ll say they understand, but then their actions show that it just ain’t so. Isn't this the very reason that homework assignments exist? When I was in college, it took me two years to realize that I could have easily gotten As and Bs (instead o…

> Isn't this the very reason that homework assignments exist? Absolutely. It is also why I will never understand why it is considered a virtue (especially in the maths and physics community) to set assignments without exemplary solution. I'm not asking to give this exemplary solution to students right away, but it should definitely exist and be given when students have shown honest effort and especially to weaker stu…

I have seen plenty of miss-use of solutions of the following though:

1. Struggle with exercise.

2. Check proposed solution.

3. Thinking that your understanding of the proposed solution constitutes an ability to solve it yourself.

This is analogous to the original problem, where you assume the ability to follow reasoning translates to being able to reproduce it.

The main use of exercises without solutions is to try and force students to go to their teachers and interact, so that someone can try to pinpoint what exactly the missunderstanding is.

This can probably be better done with assigned homework. However grading can be time consuming, so trying to filter so that only those that have problem with specific exercises come to see you is one way to try and get some time economy going.

Also yeah. This is better in course specific work sheets than in books, since books should be self contained enough to be usable without the guidence of TAs or professors.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#134

Post by user_7832 »

qez wrote: post #69
joefigura wrote: post #39

This article really frustrated me the last time it was posted, but now I think I have a clear enough idea why to put it into words. You absolutely can tell people things! But to tell someone something, you need to do three things: - Establish enough shared context that they can understand you - Speak about something they actually care about (or convince them to care) - Use a format that works for what you're trying t…

Whoever wrote this piece is a bad communicator who thinks he's a good communicator, and then goes through life getting confused about why no one understands him. For example, in the story about the Japanese, he assumes some context from the reader: "What are they building? What is Fujitsu and what is Habitat and why does Japan need their own special version of it?" It's not even clear they're building anything techni…

> Whoever wrote this piece is a bad communicator who thinks he's a good communicator, and then goes through life getting confused about why no one understands him.

As much as I appreciate the author writing this piece, I have to agree with your comment. I was half wondering if the entire article was an exercise in “this is how you don’t communicate, here’s the final para which explains everything I wrote!”. Reading the comments on the article and here on HN helped.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#136

Post by scotty79 »

zsz wrote: post #51

> I’m totally convinced that a new idea or a new plan or a new technique is never really understood when you just explain it. > People will often think they understand, and they’ll say they understand, but then their actions show that it just ain’t so. Isn't this the very reason that homework assignments exist? When I was in college, it took me two years to realize that I could have easily gotten As and Bs (instead o…

Hear and forget. See and remember. Do and understand.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#137

Post by eloisant »

qez wrote: post #69
joefigura wrote: post #39

This article really frustrated me the last time it was posted, but now I think I have a clear enough idea why to put it into words. You absolutely can tell people things! But to tell someone something, you need to do three things: - Establish enough shared context that they can understand you - Speak about something they actually care about (or convince them to care) - Use a format that works for what you're trying t…

Whoever wrote this piece is a bad communicator who thinks he's a good communicator, and then goes through life getting confused about why no one understands him. For example, in the story about the Japanese, he assumes some context from the reader: "What are they building? What is Fujitsu and what is Habitat and why does Japan need their own special version of it?" It's not even clear they're building anything techni…

Yeah it was a very confusing read, and when I finally understood the point of the writer I wondered if he wrote a confusing article on purpose to create a "Aha!" moment when you finally understand what he's saying, to illustrate his point through this article.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#138

Post by alex-moon »

zsz wrote: post #51

> I’m totally convinced that a new idea or a new plan or a new technique is never really understood when you just explain it. > People will often think they understand, and they’ll say they understand, but then their actions show that it just ain’t so. Isn't this the very reason that homework assignments exist? When I was in college, it took me two years to realize that I could have easily gotten As and Bs (instead o…

Yes and also https://build-your-own.org/

I had a boss years ago who would encourage me, whenever I was interested in e.g. a new library or framework, to go and reinvent the wheel in my spare time i.e. build it myself from scratch first to understand what the problems it solves actually are.

I've never built my own anything quite as low level as the build-your-own.org projects, but doing things like implementing a PHP web server with a class loader without any frameworks, or a JS templating system which stores the state of the UI in a big ol' object and updates the DOM automatically, has given me the deeper understanding of these things that I've later needed to debug weird issues and find creative fixes.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#139

Post by funcDropShadow »

koyote wrote: post #63
zsz wrote: post #51

> I’m totally convinced that a new idea or a new plan or a new technique is never really understood when you just explain it. > People will often think they understand, and they’ll say they understand, but then their actions show that it just ain’t so. Isn't this the very reason that homework assignments exist? When I was in college, it took me two years to realize that I could have easily gotten As and Bs (instead o…

> When I was in college, it took me two years to realize that I could have easily gotten As and Bs (instead of Bs and Cs) in my various math classes, physics, chemistry, etc. had I simply bothered to do my homework properly--or, to put it differently, had I only properly applied the knowledge which I passively acquired by reading the associated textbook sections. I took this realisation to the extreme and decided to…

> I took this realisation to the extreme and decided to completely deprioritise classes in favour of homework and doing the reading in my own time. I figured the cost-benefit, at least for me, was much higher if I spent an hour doing as opposed to an hour listening.

That depends very much on the lecturer. If he or she just follows one book for the whole semester and doesn't add any additional insight, explanation of tradeoffs, or enlightening anecdotes, then by any means skip the lecture. But if you have a lecturer giving you all from above and the possibility to ask questions, lectures can be invaluable. Luckily I experienced many of the latter kind, although some of the first.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#140

Post by moring »

crdrost wrote: post #64
zsz wrote: post #51

> I’m totally convinced that a new idea or a new plan or a new technique is never really understood when you just explain it. > People will often think they understand, and they’ll say they understand, but then their actions show that it just ain’t so. Isn't this the very reason that homework assignments exist? When I was in college, it took me two years to realize that I could have easily gotten As and Bs (instead o…

Yes. Well, examples. Good homework assignments give you some examples to sit in your head, not all homework assignments are good though. The way I like to tell people this is, you know that thing where you want to take your kids or your students and make sure that they don't have to go through the same pain that you did to learn what you had learned? That feeling? If you have ever had that feeling you must understand…

> The way I like to tell people this is, you know that thing where you want to take your kids or your students and make sure that they don't have to go through the same pain that you did to learn what you had learned? That feeling?

I am not yet convinced. Let me take the following example because I remember it well: I tried to learn about geometric optics and lenses. To do so, I downloaded multiple lecture PDFs from the internet and read them.

All of them started to explain lenses by describing how large the image of a real object is, defining focal length and such. Literally not a single one of them even defined what an image is. The whole talk about image size and focal length and magnification and what not was totally worthless because it was all based on the same fundamental word that had no meaning. In the end, I tried to make up my own definition that was consistent with all those PDFs, but it left me unsure if I got it right.

The "pain" was there, but there was no relief from it, and I am still convinced that that simple definition could have avoided it. If I were to teach optics, I would give such a definition, and I am still convinced that it would help with the pain.

The other example was one of those PDFs that showed a real object that was "wide" along the distance axis from the lens, and so by my understanding should have an image whose magnification changes along the distance axis, but the explanatory picture in the PDF showed equal magnification everywhere. Today I am convinced that this "explanatory picture" was simply wrong.

Again, there was "pain", no relief (because I could not be sure), and I am still convinced that a learner can be saved a lot of pain when you just exlucde factually wrong content from the learning material.

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