201–210 of 279 posts
Many of the failures of public policy in recent years stems from a failure to confront how stupid the public at large is.
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…
I bet this objectively can't be helped. Nuance requires representing uncertainty and is higher complexity from accounting for multiple special cases. Placing more cognitive load and attentional demands on receiver. Human communication is lossy and decoding can be non-trivial inference. Given that everyone comes with differing priors, the more finer grained and complex details are required in reconstructing message in…
I guess it scales on text with a specific crowd (HN).
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…
That's an interesting quotation, but it doesn't sound like the problem with Curio's was too much nuance. If anything, very plain (albeit clear) speech has a lack of nuance.
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…
I bet this objectively can't be helped. Nuance requires representing uncertainty and is higher complexity from accounting for multiple special cases. Placing more cognitive load and attentional demands on receiver. Human communication is lossy and decoding can be non-trivial inference. Given that everyone comes with differing priors, the more finer grained and complex details are required in reconstructing message in…
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…
I bet this objectively can't be helped. Nuance requires representing uncertainty and is higher complexity from accounting for multiple special cases. Placing more cognitive load and attentional demands on receiver. Human communication is lossy and decoding can be non-trivial inference. Given that everyone comes with differing priors, the more finer grained and complex details are required in reconstructing message in…
Actually it can be helped when everybody agrees that some information must be known by everybody. Communication campaigns, making it a subject in schools...
So the problem uses to be that there are opposing sides trying to beat each other. OK, that's obvious, isn't it? But come to think of it, is society so divided that most people's interests conflicts with somebody else's?
I understand that there are diverse interests dividing countries or continents, but often differences inside the same country seem to be artificially amplified and fuelled.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet this objectively can't be helped. Nuance requires representing uncertainty and is higher complexity from accounting for multiple special cases. Placing more cognitive load and attentional demands on receiver. Human communication is lossy and decoding can be non-trivial inference. Given that everyone comes with differing priors, the more finer grained and complex details are required in reconstructing message in…
I bet this objectively can't be helped. Actually it can be helped when everybody agrees that some information must be known by everybody. Communication campaigns, making it a subject in schools... So the problem uses to be that there are opposing sides trying to beat each other. OK, that's obvious, isn't it? But come to think of it, is society so divided that most people's interests conflicts with somebody else's? I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “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.
I met someone who did that all the time. Turns out it was a learned behavior from having gotten pushed aside for coming across as too nit-picky one too many times. They turned in to the kind of person that would let other people make mistakes and just watch - and believe it or not, it worked for them! In their environment, that was a bad lesson well-learned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I met someone who did that all the time. Turns out it was a learned behavior from having gotten pushed aside for coming across as too nit-picky one too many times. They turned in to the kind of person that would let other people make mistakes and just watch - and believe it or not, it worked for them! In their environment, that was a bad lesson well-learned.
There is some merit to that approach though. For example, I moved IT support requests from a messaging system to an actual ticketing system. The number of requests actually dropped because if they aren't getting help instantly they'll actually try something rather than just giving up immediately and calling IT. Many many issues just went away because if you have to wait a bit all the braindead "click the button" or "…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet this objectively can't be helped. Actually it can be helped when everybody agrees that some information must be known by everybody. Communication campaigns, making it a subject in schools... So the problem uses to be that there are opposing sides trying to beat each other. OK, that's obvious, isn't it? But come to think of it, is society so divided that most people's interests conflicts with somebody else's? I…
"Make your idea a required chapter of study for a week in every school" isn't relly actionable advice...