Multiple people are pointing out that posting this thread on Twitter is probably a mistake and can't figure out why he would do it: Dan (currently) works at Twitter.
Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
81–90 of 279 posts
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the spirit of generosity, I'll assume that was a very sly joke, and not an ironic misunderstanding of the point of the comment and the original post. Nice, I see what you did there!
I don't think it's a joke, it's a correction of attribution. The quote seems to have been attributed to a lot of people, but earliest mention of similar message is indeed from Blaise Pascal, see https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
Quote Investigator is a gem. There's another page[1] on a similar quote:
> If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.
~ Woodrow Wilson, as quoted in The Operative Miller 23
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#83We need to talk more about this.
That said, Organizations with professionals should be able to do nuance, at least a bit of it.
But the general public at large ... you're dealing with 'lowest common denominator' which is 'issues with literacy' and harder to grasp - very limited, care, attention span, and may not even be listening to the message - and may be getting misinformation from elsewhere.
Communicating clearly is a skill.
A lot of marketing people I believe have missed the message on this, every day I come across a new product and can't really understand what it does, the value proposition, who it's for, etc.. while at the same time there's tons of arbitrary marketing verbiage. Words matter.
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#84This is why there must be separate private and public conversations. A comment that is appropriate for exploring nuances in a small group is inappropriate for wider communication to a large audience. Social media's blurring between small group conversations and publicly broadcasted conversations removes this distinction.
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#85Counter-examples: Harry Potter, Marvel, etc. High bandwidth, low latency (often days or less), unlimited scale (most of the planet), high retention. Nuance will be pruned at scale if inessential. It’s a feature, not a bug. The popular stories are [perceived as essential] for survival and propagation.
I love your counter examples. In moving beyond the famous Shannon-Weaver model of communication[1], the one with the "signal," "noise," "channel" that network folks love, researchers settled on the importance of "feedback." I would say that these popular stories that become part of "mainstream culture" spread through comedy, song, news, bars, and repeated viewings on television to reinforce and strengthen the "mainstream" understanding of what these things mean and whether nuance is important when talking about them.
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#86Quoted post unavailable.
I don't want to get political here, but strictly speaking on communication, Donald Trump was one of the best political communicators in recent history for the ideas he wanted to emphasize to a large audience. He kept his concepts very simple, he didn't use complex language that might confuse or alienate his audience, he used funny and memorable nicknames to keep your attention, he kept things visual with a lot of pro…
No yeah, I agree. I was just joking around since DT is a master of large scale nuance-free communication
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#87I 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 you're half-right about the critical thinking skills, but the other half is shared context. The bigger the group the less shared context they will have. This gap doesn't necessarily scale linearly, but it also doesn't scale for free unless you're in a cult.
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#88One of the comments for the thread.
> I see this for every post, e.g., when I talked about how latency hadn't improved, one of the most common responses I got was about how I don't understand the good reasons for complexity.
> I literally said there are good reasons for complexity in the post
It feels like this kind of half baked point scoring reply is just a risk of posting on the internet. I'm sure I've been guilty of it at times too, and I think forums like HN or Reddit encourage it.
So you end up having to be overclear in a way that hurts your message.
For example, in just my previous post in another thread, I was talking about how I felt IMAP and SMTP support was important for a mail provider. However, I felt that if I just left it at that, some pedant would come yell at me about how IMAP and SMTP are not secure protocols since they're plaintext. So I wrote out IMAPS and SMTPS to ward off that kind of pedantry.
But I'm still at risk of someone else wanting to score points indicating that actually, IMAPS and SMTPS isn't a thing. And they'd be sort of right, IMAPS and SMTPS are colloqial terms for their corresponding protocols over TLS, but you won't find an IMAPS spec, and if you look in the IMAP RFC, IMAPS is not something that is mentioned.
I don't know how you fix this.
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#89Nuance 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…
Those are good, but the big overarching rules are:
1) Assume no prior knowledge of a situation.
2) Provide some context for intent, objectives etc..
3) Greatly simplify the thrust of the message and initially provided only the most highly relevant details.
If you do that - then 'everything else is a detail' - meaning, if someone has a basic understanding of what the situation is, they can go into detail as needed.
If context is not provided, people have no idea what is going on and their professionalism, conscientiousness and curiosity is wasted.
I like the AMZN approach but I'll gather it could be done in a different way.
Re: Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect "overtly adversarial environment" applies to a large chunk of all communication. Perhaps even most. People will willfully interpret any communication to suit their own agendas.
I think maybe you mean misinterpret? Or maybe we need a new word: disinterpret.
I think interpret was accurate already. I will definitely interpret something differently from someone else without either of us necessarily being guilty of active perversion.