From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 07:40:42 MST
On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> "A witty saying proves nothing." I used to believe the eight-year-old
> principle. I really did. Richard Feynman succeeded in explaining the
> theory of little arrows to me when I was nine (Q.E.D.), and I have on
> occasion tried to explain General Relativity to very small relatives...
>
> ...but eventually, things got complicated.
This is very true Eliezer. One could use "global warming" as a good
example for this currently. It isn't clear to me whether it is so
complex that it can't be understood by a roomful of scientists or
whether we just don't have the abstractions that can turn it into
something that most people can deal with.
> I think the universe is a deeper place than Kurt Vonnegut realized. It's
> very easy to *think* you've conveyed understanding, when all you've really
> done is taught someone shiny new words that sound impressive to them but
> don't really connect to anything else in their minds.
You always have to tie "understanding" to the foundation that exists
in the personal experience of an individual. One of the problems with
one-to-many communication is that you have little knowledge of the
experience of each individual. One has to speak to the common denominator.
Very difficult, IMO.
> I don't know how to convey understanding. Sometimes people catch the
> pattern of what I say, or at least they seem to, but it seems more due to
> their own ability to fill in the tremendous gaps in what I say than to any
> writing ability of my own. It works, sort of, a little, if all you need
> is for a few geniuses to understand what you say. But how do I talk to
> anyone else? I don't know.
This is perhaps the true test of writing and communicating. How does one
bridge the gap between people who have ones knowledge base (say the
extropian reading list -- which even I haven't read completely) and
the people who have no knowledge of the "culture" of that list?
This is related to the problem I think Eliezer may be speaking of which
seems to be more along the lines of how do technically adept people
communicate with those who are much less so? Can one develop analogies
that bridge the gap?
Robert
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