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Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

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Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#181

Post by lanstin »

logicalmonster wrote: post #18

Nuance is hard to convey in groups, but I believe that *a small part of the problem is a lack of design*. Many peoples' eyes glaze over when they see a wall of text in an email and they just skim rather than read. Some simple things to enhance communications can be the following. * Use a few bullet points to put attention on the main points you want to convey. * Without going overboard, use a tasteful amount of graph…

When ever I am working on some large project that involves others, I spend a lot of time searching for the slogans that capture the weighted average of the nuanced meaning. Simple and almost all applicable.

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#182

Post by robryan »

BurningFrog wrote: post #53
harryf wrote: post #13

We live in an attention economy, both outside and inside companies. The rules that apply to B2C marketing largely apply inside companies as well. Despite that we still have people that assume “I sent an email and I’m important therefore everyone got the message”. Try running those emails through some tool like Mailchimp and you’ll probably find less than 40% even opened the email, let alone read beyond the first para…

> “I sent an email and I’m important therefore everyone got the message” I see a similar flaw in programmers. "I said it once, and therefore everyone has it memorized", as if people are computers who store every utterance in a file system.

This is more of a response to people not paying attention. If all this time is being spent on email and chat and meetings it gets frustrating continually covering the same ground where it is obvious not much attention was paid the first time.

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#183

Post by wrp »

timr wrote: post #172
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that health care orgs should have recommended masks early in the pandemic. What I am saying is their adamant declarations of "masks don't work for the public", which note is an affirmative declaration, were false, and never had any supporting evidence. My question is about whether this "simpler, un-nuanced" explanation in fact complicated things in the longer run.

Yes, I know. We're basically in agreement on the broader points, but I don't agree with your second sentence, and you seem to have the opposite bias in terms of how to act under uncertainty: > What I am saying is their adamant declarations of "masks don't work for the public", which note is an affirmative declaration, were false, and never had any supporting evidence. There's no such thing as an affirmative declarati…

For practical purposes, there has to be a point where "we saw no evidence that X works" is considered equivalent to "X doesn't work."

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#184

Post by Pamar »

logicalmonster wrote: post #18

Nuance is hard to convey in groups, but I believe that *a small part of the problem is a lack of design*. Many peoples' eyes glaze over when they see a wall of text in an email and they just skim rather than read. Some simple things to enhance communications can be the following. * Use a few bullet points to put attention on the main points you want to convey. * Without going overboard, use a tasteful amount of graph…

Nitpick: the quote about making a letter longer is usually attributed to Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#185

Post by grafporno »

viksit wrote: post #161
Animats wrote: post #124

This is an observation that goes back to at least Cicero.[1] Cicero on the primary goal of oratory: "As, therefore, the two principal qualities required in an Orator, are to be neat and clear in stating the nature of his subject, and warm and forcible in moving the passions; and as he who fires and inflames his audience, will always effect more than he who can barely inform and amuse them..." Cicero describes the pro…

This comment is truly on point and very meta — it takes a nuanced twitter thread and distills it down via the force of an authoritative source in a way that people immediately get the point.

> authoritative source

2000+ year old source, calling that _authoritative_ is a wild stretch

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#186

Post by lanstin »

harryf wrote: post #13

We live in an attention economy, both outside and inside companies. The rules that apply to B2C marketing largely apply inside companies as well. Despite that we still have people that assume “I sent an email and I’m important therefore everyone got the message”. Try running those emails through some tool like Mailchimp and you’ll probably find less than 40% even opened the email, let alone read beyond the first para…

These dynamics are why centralized release orgs or enfoced code review/merge blockers are so powerful. People ignore all the email till it is explaining why the thing they want right now can’t be given to the, unless they do steps a and b. Not sure there is a public health equivalent. If you are trying to move 100% of a dev org to stricter standards, say due to some new security discovery, you benefit from this centralized approach.

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#187

Post by lanstin »

mistermann wrote: post #102
mattmaroon wrote: post #56

I think the problem is that people, even smart people, lack critical thinking skills or don't apply them. It's not the scale that makes the nuanced communication not work, it's the scale that makes you notice it. You could have the same communications with smaller groups and you'd have the same results, you just wouldn't be as likely to get negative feedback indicating it. It's also ironic to me that someone would tr…

> I think the problem is that people, even smart people, lack critical thinking skills or don't apply them. I agree, but I think it's more nuanced than this: smart people can regularly be observed being unable to think critically during conversations (particularly on certain topics), yet the same people can think critically writing code. Assuming this is true (it's certainly quite true), it seems to me that differenc…

Also there is a certain lack of training in clear thinking with words and ideas that are not emphasized in STEM curriculum but are emphasized in the humanities. I took a fair amount of history and literature in college, and while they lack the clarifying reality of equations and axiom systems, the practitioners of such fields are quite good at dissecting statements and pulling out the subtleties of human language based communication. A group of upper level literature students would I think pick up on more nuance than a group of CompSci students. They are also exposed to a lot more nuance in their regular reading and work.

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#188

Post by dpeck »

grafporno wrote: post #185
viksit wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is truly on point and very meta — it takes a nuanced twitter thread and distills it down via the force of an authoritative source in a way that people immediately get the point.

> authoritative source 2000+ year old source, calling that _authoritative_ is a wild stretch

2000 years old and still speaking truth to our own lived experience makes it all the more authoritative.

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#189

Post by lanstin »

urthor wrote: post #176

Semi-related: The amount of complaining about "dumb management" amongst software engineers is truly out of control I find. Newsflash, usually your principal engineer and VP are a lot cleverer than you, on average. They're at the top of a process to weed out idiots and are paid a multiple of your salary. I usually start from the position of "my VP is a smart and clever person" and work backwards, ALWAYS. It seems like…

Also people completely dissing other groups as being a bunch of incompetent wannabes because the speaker does not appreciate the full details of their actual work conditions. I tend to join new orgs every two or three years, but in the same large companies, and so many times I have joined an “underperforming” group to help them with a “turn around” only to find the group an intelligent and heroic group dealing with crazy conditions, with fixes they all well knew but which required a persistent long term effort, that management wouldn’t agree to.

Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale

#190

Post by adolph »

dpeck wrote: post #188
grafporno wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> authoritative source 2000+ year old source, calling that _authoritative_ is a wild stretch

2000 years old and still speaking truth to our own lived experience makes it all the more authoritative.

Survivor bias | Authoritative
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