3 ms·

I'm not sure I agree. You bring up an important point -- that specialists will always encounter slight errors when interacting with laypeople. There's a trick

I'm not sure I agree. You bring up an important point -- that specialists will always encounter slight errors when interacting with laypeople. There's a tricky balance to be struck there -- how do you communicate with them without adopting the same errors yourself, but also without bruising their ego, while hopefully educating them at the same time? The best mix seems to be the "correct by agreeing" approach. "Is the tumor beniggun?" "Yes, that's correct, the tumor is benign".

wutbrodo 9y ago
This is a broader concept that I've had to get used to recently: I don't think this is a specialist/layman thing as much as a smart/dumb thing. I know plenty of very smart people who are happy to show their ignorance about a topic that they don't know about when talking to someone with that knowledge (including examples like the benign/bennigun thing). For the first time in my life, I'm working with people who aren't particularly intelligent[1]. The lack of intelligence doesn't bother me much per se, but I was absolutely not prepared for how incredibly childish their psyche is when it comes to making mistakes and learning from them, admitting they don't know things, asking questions, etc. It was absolutely shocking how routinely people would read all kinds of ulterior motives into every possible question: "the only reason you would ask X is because you're trying to put me down" and stuff like that. I've learned to heavily sugarcoat things, stroke egos with compliments before describing things that need improvement or fixing, etc etc. Goddam is it an exhausting waste of time. My plan at this point is to steer my career as far away as possible from people who are this stupid and immature; I spent a long time at the start of my career surrounded by very smart people and I just got used to the idea that everyone is secure in their intelligence and everyone can focus on being productive together without needing to keep stopping and feeding the egos of infants. [1] Just to forestall the complaints: this isn't a value judgment of who they are as people, it's just a single weakness. A comparable weakness of my own is that I have to exert quite a bit of effort to maintain a strong work ethic when being hardworking comes more easily to some.

wutbrodo 9y ago

This is a broader concept that I've had to get used to recently: I don't think this is a specialist/layman thing as much as a smart/dumb thing. I know plenty of very smart people who are happy to show their ignorance about a topic that they don't know about when talking to someone with that knowledge (including examples like the benign/bennigun thing). For the first time in my life, I'm working with people who aren't particularly intelligent[1]. The lack of intelligence doesn't bother me much per se, but I was absolutely not prepared for how incredibly childish their psyche is when it comes to making mistakes and learning from them, admitting they don't know things, asking questions, etc. It was absolutely shocking how routinely people would read all kinds of ulterior motives into every possible question: "the only reason you would ask X is because you're trying to put me down" and stuff like that. I've learned to heavily sugarcoat things, stroke egos with compliments before describing things that need improvement or fixing, etc etc. Goddam is it an exhausting waste of time. My plan at this point is to steer my career as far away as possible from people who are this stupid and immature; I spent a long time at the start of my career surrounded by very smart people and I just got used to the idea that everyone is secure in their intelligence and everyone can focus on being productive together without needing to keep stopping and feeding the egos of infants. [1] Just to forestall the complaints: this isn't a value judgment of who they are as people, it's just a single weakness. A comparable weakness of my own is that I have to exert quite a bit of effort to maintain a strong work ethic when being hardworking comes more easily to some.