You can't tell people anything (2004) • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by ianai » Fri, Mar 24, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

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…

At my undergrad you had to do the homework and attend all the lectures to get a C+/B-. As/Bs were the realm of studying the class beforehand or, preferably, having taken it once before the time.

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

#192

Post by melagonster » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:24 AM UTC

moring wrote: post #140

crdrost wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

this why Socratic questioning is good when you have a personal teacher.

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

#193

Post by MichaelZuo » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 5:12 AM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #182

MichaelZuo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those are all techniques beyond communication: none of them allow you to verify, in the moment, whether or not the other person has "understood" you in the sense of agreeing with what you have to say. Huh? To clarify, in my example of the veteran car mechanic assessing someone's proficiency, there's no set-up required, they can verify it 'in the moment'. No special or unusual tools or environmental conditions a…

>To clarify, in my example of the veteran car mechanic assessing someone's proficiency, there's no set-up required, they can verify it 'in the moment'. > >No special or unusual tools or environmental conditions are needed to conduct verification. Well at least some environmental conditions are required: if you ask someone to change an oil filter, there has to be a car in the environment to do it on. To get any value…

> More generally, I think the point of the original post, and the original comment, are that verifying that something was communicated successfully requires out-of-band actions. Physically demonstrating something, or watching someone demonstrate something, are both out-of-band: neither work over all communication channels, like user manuals, or phone calls.

Of course? That's the implication of not just taking someone's word for it in the context of an office environment.

> Even in-person communication is often restricted to make verification difficult: imagine if you're in a water-cooler meeting with another developer, and you mention that you think they should take a different approach to a certain problem. Are you going to follow them back to their desk to verify that they really choose to do so? Probably not: it's both incredibly rude, and a bad use of your own time. But there is nothing in the water-cooler conversation that you can really do to check that they'll take your advice.

That would be the case if it was a trivial matter. But for really important things, then I don't see a problem?