33 ms·

You can't tell people anything (2004)

440 points by alexslobodnik 4y ago

anyfoo 4y ago
Towards the end it says: > At Communities.com we developed a system called Passport (I’ll save the astonishing trademark story for a later posting) that let us do some pretty amazing things with web browsers. For example, with just a few magic HTML tags we could stick avatars on a web page — pretty much any web page. For months Randy kept getting up at management meetings and saying, “We’ll be able to put avatars on web pages. Start thinking about what you might do with that.” Mostly, nobody reacted much. After a couple of months of this we had things working, and so he got up and presented a demo of avatars walking around on top of our company home page. People were amazed, joyful, and enthusiastic. But they also pretty much all said the same thing: “why didn’t you tell us that we could put avatars on web pages?” You can’t tell people anything. I guess they've just proven their point. I was a web developer in 2004 (I don't miss that!), and I still have no idea what this means and why people want it. You can't tell people anything, it seems...
- foul 4y ago
  Gravatar, "Login with X", Oauth, OpenID, W3c Solid, Metamask. The idea started with having an identity source-of-truth across websites but it's used to pass personal data around webapps, for e-commerce too.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    “avatars walking around on top of our company home page”?
garrickvanburen 4y ago
This. The key is noticing that actions betray not getting it.
themodelplumber 4y ago
There's some pretty astonishing theory out there as to who you can tell things to, in a way that they'll understand immediately. It's pretty interesting and unfortunately very subjective. But one thing I learned from it is that if you can identify specific people who get you, generally speaking, you should then see if you can mold newly-discovered communication problems around this already-functional communications relationship.
- LeonB 4y ago
  And keywords or search terms you can supply as a way into learning more, would be much appreciated.
- jerry1979 4y ago
  Please tell me there is actually such a theory and that this is not an AI comment.
  - nakts 4y ago
    Funny that the GPT detector is giving 75-99 percent AI probability for that comment.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    This is exactly the kind of problem ChatGPT is good at solving. Just ask it and you will get theories. I asked and it gave a list, I think he talked about uncertainty reduction theory since the other things ChatGPT listed didn't make sense in this context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_reduction_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_reduction_theory Edit: Not sure if that response is really correct, but at least it is a tractable way to try to approach this. ChatGPT let you fuzzy match words or theories much better than Google, and then you have things you can Google.
- elefanten 4y ago
  Agree with sibling comments asking for search terms. What body of work / what field are you talking about?
gardenhedge 4y ago
Sounds like the author just can't tell anyone anything :)
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  Imagine if over the last few centuries they had developed techniques for making people think and believe things. Phew!
diego_moita 4y ago
This reminds me an edition of Byte Magazine from 1990 [1] with interviews of all big shots in the industry making forecasts for the next decade. No one foresaw the internet. At best they did expect things like "we'll have networks with bigger bandwith". But no one saw the economic and cultural boom ahead. [1] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1990-09 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1990-09
- sammalloy 4y ago
  > No one foresaw the internet. That’s because it was Byte magazine. If you were reading High Frontiers (1984), which became Reality Hackers (1988) and finally Mondo 2000 (1989), you would have thought otherwise. I used to buy them at Tower Records throughout California primarily to read about what the internet was to become. By 1990, Mondo 2000 foresaw and had a fairly complete vision of the nascent internet. A lot of the artists involved went on to produce independent works that promoted these ideas. Around 1992-93, I saw a theatrical production in SF that simulated and modeled the entirety of what life was going to be like and how it would work in a connected world. These are very old ideas (E.M Forster, 1909; Vannevar Bush, 1945; Marshall McLuhan, 1964) and many people were aware of and working towards manifesting them in reality.
  - pncnmnp 4y ago
    Thank you! I did some digging and discovered an article from Mondo 2000 - "Hyperwebs" by Wes Thomas (1989). You can find it at https://archive.org/details/Mondo.2000.Issue.01.1989/page/n27/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/Mondo.2000.Issue.01.1989/page/n2.... I'm looking forward to exploring more of their archive: Mondo 2000: https://anarchivism.org/w/Mondo_2000 https://anarchivism.org/w/Mondo_2000 High Frontiers: https://anarchivism.org/w/High_Frontiers https://anarchivism.org/w/High_Frontiers
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  > But no one saw the economic and cultural boom ahead. Quite a lot of science fiction authors did indeed see this coming.
invalidator 4y ago
Now realize that this applies to everything, not just computers. Unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, you don't really understand the struggles of LGBTQ folks, the homeless, CEOs, assembly line workers... They will try to tell you, but you can't tell people anything, unless you're telling someone with good imagination and empathy.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I deeply appreciate your point that lack of understanding goes both downward (homeless) and upward (CEOs.) I think that's true. But - unrelated to your point - I think there's more empathy (or understanding, at least) - unexpectedly - downwards. A CEO knows how to become homeless (quit job, give away house and money) if they chose to for some reason. A homeless person has no path to CEO.
  - mordae 4y ago
    Perhaps in theory, but not in practice. In practice those "on top" either lack empathy from the start, or learn to disconnect it early on.
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      How do you know?
  - relaxing 4y ago
    > quit job, give away house and money Is not how people become homeless. There's no path to empathy there.
outworlder 4y ago
> When people ask me about my life’s ambitions, I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement. Agreed. The worst part is when they nod and pretend they got it and then that really important thing that you thought you had communicated everyone that was akin to the sky being on fire is not being prioritized/funded/worked on.
- ozim 4y ago
  For me worst part is just like in article that I have to explain to people first and only then I can start.
  - jackpirate 4y ago
    One of the reasons I've intentionally decided not become independently wealthy is that I want to have to explain to other people why I'm doing things. Part of my work is "charity-ish", and by not being able to do things on my own, I'm forced me to improve my communication skills and involve other people in these charity activities. I think that ultimately improves the final outcome, even if the process is immensely more frustrating.
    - mewpmewp2 4y ago
      Could be so with charity or depending on the field I suppose. I think innovating or figuring out new tech is different as if something is easily understood and explainable, it's probably already done, and if you have a great idea that hasn't been done it's probably because it's really hard to explain or to sell to others on it.
    - wwweston 4y ago
      Accountability (including the light form of it represented it by explanation) is super useful in refining personal development. And I'm starting to believe the reason power/status corrupts is that it removes it as an option for character development.
msufan 4y ago
As an elementary teacher, my spin on this same take was that you couldn't tell people things with much success, but there were two ways to break through: stories and games. If you could get your message across in story form or have kids discover it through a gamified (or experiential) setting, that generally worked.
eat_veggies 4y ago
This is the anarchist theory of the unity of means and ends: you can't tell people anything, including what a better society looks like (nor can you impose it on anyone). You have to try to build and live that society in the present in order to even "get it" yourself. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchopac-means-and-ends https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchopac-means-and...
- sammalloy 4y ago
  It also sounds rooted in Epictetus, the Greek Stoic. Interestingly, Christian monastics used the Enchiridion of Epictetus to guide their intentional communities.
- croniev 4y ago
  In my perspective this derives from the fact that "knowledge" itself is not some abstract, immaterial thing in the brain, but rather thinking and knowing works through the body and the practical application. Hence the saying "hands-on". Understanding something requires experiencing it, as experience (sensation) is inseparable from consciousness. (We call this phenomenological Emboiment, feel free to check it out!) You cannot build an ideal society in theory as it will not be realisitic in practice, and you cannot explain reason and feel with words alone, but others need to walk the same experiential path as you did. But since you already figured it out you can help them walk it faster. Thats why we now learn in primary school what originally took a long time until some greek matematician worked it out.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I have some opinions about therapy being the art of asking people questions in order to trick them into telling themselves things that nobody else can tell them. I've had more than a couple coworkers over the years who pull me into random decisions because they think I ask good questions. Part of me would rather be known for having good answers, but it's better than being discounted, and practically it may end up being more effective.
  - tonymillion 4y ago
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peppermint_gum 4y ago
Or maybe, just maybe, Xanadu wasn't as great idea as he thinks.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  Xanadu is basically the web.
  - peppermint_gum 4y ago
    It is nothing like the web. The web is unstructured, Xanadu isn't. The web supports all kinds of content, Xanadu is stricly textual. Xanadu documents are immutable. Xanadu is integrated with a payment system and everything is pay-per-view. Xanadu has been worked on for more than 50 years and there's still no useful demo. I know HN has this weird custom to assume without evidence that all old failed technologies were superior (or at least equivalent) to their more successful competitors, but it isn't always that simple. Sometimes technologies fail because they aren't that great.
    - zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
      I just checked out their website and it looks really cool. Just needs blockchain integration
    - nerpderp82 4y ago
      Ok, "Xanadu is the NYT viewed over elinks while logged in". My comment was reductionist, but it conveyed the idea in 5 words.
    - foul 4y ago
      The web is strictly textual too. The web browser isn't. So that boils to Xanadu having nothing to prove in practice. Obviously atm it's doomed and you're right.
  - msla 4y ago
    The Web is to Xanadu what a kid's go-kart is to a modern Formula One race car, if the Formula One race car somehow rewrote copyright law and solved the microtransaction problem through sheer weight of unadulterated technological awesome.
jongjong 4y ago
This article resonates with me. I think it may also explain why some very smart people are not appreciated; they say things which are far too nuanced for most people to understand; others often won't understand the depth of the argument being made. Most people assume that because everyone is at a similar rank and salary range within a company (or in the industry), they are all operating at the same level and communicate with the same level or nuance. It's not the case. That's why it's important (especially for those in leadership positions) to assume that the people around you are smarter than you (at least for some time). If you assume that someone is dumber than you, you will miss any nuance and signs of deep domain expertise hidden within. I find that very clever ideas from very clever people don't provide an instant 'Aha' moment; it takes a bit longer to see the brilliance. It's not obvious at all, that's why it's brilliant.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  I think you are correct, but this just doesn't feel right, I can't quite put my finger on why. It's almost like people categorically reject the possibility of greater levels of nuance existing. If they didn't they'd be looking for it carefully, because that is always where deeper insight comes in, right? If you look at, for example, popular news and political discourse- it is lacking nuance to the point where it's meaningless nonsense, which also lacking any humility, insight, or open-ness to the possibility that more nuance may be possible.
  - jongjong 4y ago
    Could it be because a lot of big, important decisions by influential people are often made based on superficial factors (or gut feelings) and this skews outcomes? I guess sometimes dumb ideas do seem to win; especially in the short term. "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." I think outside of markets and finance, there are areas where nuanced thinking delivers results, even if it's not necessarily rewarded appropriately by management. In tech, it might lead to a feature being implemented in a way which some users will really appreciate (without understanding why).
- sammalloy 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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at_a_remove 4y ago
I was a private tutor for a long time, specializing in kids through young adults with learning disabilities and/or psychiatric disorders. Sort of my Job-2. I had tutored some even as a kid and teen, mostly math. One of the things I came to understand was that communicating many concepts, skills, ideas, whatever required a working model of the recipient's mind. What did they value? How did they understand things? How was their world constructed? For each student had to come a unique approach. This made me often weep for the subtleties which would be lost in mass communication. Also related to tutoring: quite a lot of people fake "getting it." They'll nod, they'll say "yeah yeah," maybe even parrot back some phrases ... but they don't get it. This is its own unique impediment and it requires, for want of a better term, quizzing. Test the success of the communication. By the time the kids found their way to me, they had already developed a raft of coping mechanisms, mostly counter-productive in the long run, and faked comprehension signals were a large part of it. These are impediments to just communicating new ideas to a blank slate. Much worse is an audience who already has some other idea in their head, and even in the rare case of some kind of objective measure of validity, you're swimming upstream. Many is the time I had heard the dreaded phrase, "I know you're very smart but ..." The objection was their idea, of course, and only after repeated and crumbling failure would it be discarded. Maybe there was now room for my thing, or maybe not, but I had often lost much passion by that point. Sometimes I despair of being understood. I soon have to face the music in which I must explain to higher-ups that one of our data source providers will need to supply unique and stable identifiers on their data if we would like to accomplish Project X. I know the questions I will get: what if we just did it without it? If you can't, why shouldn't we get a consultant who will tell us what we want to hear? Have you asked $ThisParty? What if we make up our own identifiers? I will probably have to engineer an exercise to explain the pitfalls, and even then ... you can't tell people anything.
- simultsop 4y ago
  > and even then ... you can't tell people anything Didn't see this coming xD good luck with engineering...
_yb2s 4y ago
This puts to clear words a nagging sensation I've had my whole life, that I (also) tried to tell other people but couldn't. Talking just doesn't work as well as people think it does. It seems so obvious once you start noticing, but almost nobody notices this. People are either just repeating memes each other basically already know, or else are talking past each other. When I overhear people having a conversation, almost always, I can see that the two people aren't really understanding each other, and neither of them realize it. Unless the content is basically emotion only, with no real new information. If I try to be aware of this dynamic when listening to people, it frustrates them... without me jumping to (probably wrong) conclusions and pretending to understand, it seems like I have some kind of communications disability and/or obnoxious personality, where I am drawing out the explanation way more than they expected to be necessary. The social norm is to think or at least act like you understand immediately when you really don't. I often get the impression, when trying to explain totally new ideas to people, that they just assign it to the nearest known trope/meme, and assume it's that, and are unable to see how it's different. Even when it's really really different! As an academic scientist this is a HUGE problem. All of my really new ideas, I cannot communicate to anyone, and get funding for them. Only the obvious/stupid things, the things they expect, get understood and funded. I then do my real work, the stuff I later get tons of praise for, "in my spare time." Like the author, I too wish I was independently wealthy, so I could actually do my job! I like this perspective because it puts the burden back on me, and gives me something to act on. How can I put them into this experience, so they really get it?
- ilaksh 4y ago
  I don't know if it's just stupidity, ignorance, or a lack of effort. Maybe a combination. But this type of deficiency is so prevalent, it makes me want to see fully autonomous AI. Even though I know it's an incredibly bad idea and would never actively work towards it until it becomes an irreversible trend. People are stupid. They will do it soon enough. Hopefully it doesn't immediately turn into a disaster. But GPT 4 definitely listens and understands. Usually.
  - Rury 4y ago
    It works like this: "Draw me a picture of a house" You draw a picture of a house. Someone else also draws a picture of a house (but it looks different from yours, as they had a different idea in their head as to what a house should look like). "That's not right, it's supposed to be on a hill" You draw a picture of house on a hill. "Still not quite what I had in mind. It should have 3 front windows, with a chimney on the left side, and a tree between the door and the driveway." You redraw the picture again. "Not that kind of tree... it should be pointier" "You mean like a conifer?" "What's a conifer?" Words simply aren't very good at conveying a lot of information, so it can take many words to get a clear message across to someone. Additionally, there's often multiple ways to interpret words, which humor typically plays on. And then, with people not all sharing the same knowledge/understanding of things, it often becomes very difficult to tell someone something, especially complicated things. I mean just imagine how hard it would be to try telling tribal people who live away from civilization, who don't even know what a computer is, about ChatGPT... that is, if they even understand the language you speak.
rektide 4y ago
This is just part #1 of natural science & constructionist learning. You can't only not tell people thing, you can't expect them to learn until they can engage their brain & monkey around & see for themselves. They have to have a lived experience, not just of it working & doing the thing, but also need to try & see other random hijinx. Humanity only ever works, only becomes human, when we are allowed the agency of the experimenter. When we can find out. This has slowly lead me towards detesting applications. The idea of interface is almost always a curtain, a veil, that obfuscates & hides some pretty graspable real truths. Interface & apps often take something real & make it virtual, impervious, symbic, in a decoupled lying way. We are complicit all too often in raising a worse, in-natural science helpless version of humanity. We say it helps users to get tasks done. But it's all fractured narrow experiences, something small distilled out where few lessons port. It masks, without any chance to begin to improve beyond, to see like a human ought to be able to.
joefigura 4y ago
This article really frustrated me the last time it was posted, but now I think I have a clear enough idea why to put it into words. You absolutely can tell people things! But to tell someone something, you need to do three things: - Establish enough shared context that they can understand you - Speak about something they actually care about (or convince them to care) - Use a format that works for what you're trying to communicate I've told people about technical topics in conversation or presentation plenty of times. I don't really understand how you can be an engineer and not tell people things. The article is frustrating because it puts the blame onto the listener. But that's not how communication works! You don't have the right to just "tell people things" - you have to put in the work to be understood and to show people it's worth their time to pay attention. Communicating well is part of the job. The author does this even in this piece. He says: "For example, with just a few magic HTML tags we could stick avatars on a web page — pretty much any web page. For months Randy kept getting up at management meetings and saying, “We’ll be able to put avatars on web pages. Start thinking about what you might do with that.” Well yeah - if someone stood up in a management meeting and told me to think about what I might do with an avatar, my first thought would be "What's an avatar" and my second thought would be "I'm already busy with other things". He hasn't said what an avatar is or why anyone should care about them. So people pay no attention. Then the demo shows what an avatar is and lets people see immediately how it might be useful, in a format that works regardless of the skill of the communicator. And so of course now they understand! And maybe the thing you're trying to communicate is so novel that you can't establish context or convince people to care without showing them a demo. But at least take the time to understand why you can't tell people about it.
- oidar 4y ago
  So all this article is really trying to communicate is that you can't get people on board with your product/software without them seeing/using it first. It's the general idea behind the MVP strategy that ycombinator teaches.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  "...you have to put in the work to be understood and to show people it's worth their time to pay attention. Communicating well is part of the job." That's fine and I don't disagree but the problem is that there are very few truly good communicators out there (there is just not enough to go around). Communication is difficult and really effective communication is very difficult. I'll use myself as an example, When I post to HN I usually know what I want to say and I generally make myself clear—in fact I go considerable lengths ensure I'm not misinterpreted or misconstrued. To ensure this does not happen I'll often restate what I've said in a different way and or provide examples. This makes my comments long, prolix and boring so few bother to read them. I don't have a Shakespeare-like talent to be short, pithy and simultaneously convey what I'm saying both succinctly and accurately, and I believe that not many people do. OK, so when people have some talent, skill or knowledge that needs to be conveyed to the world and they can't get their point across effectively then what are they to do?
hinkley 4y ago
I had a coworker who made a sport of telling people things. Once he'd flipped the bozo bit on someone, he took a certain sardonic delight in predicting outcomes that they would promptly reject... and then face-plant directly into. Sort of like the Oracle in the Matrix, only cynical, or perhaps more like Willy Wonka. "I wouldn't do that, I really wouldn't." <does it anyway>
- astrange 4y ago
  Does he know they had Socrates killed for being annoying?
  - hinkley 4y ago
    He was ex military. A few thirty-somethings weren't going to scare him.
- SillyUsername 4y ago
  I'm like this in my areas of expertise. I guess I'm just an ass for saying I told you so when this happens, but I firmly believe you need to let people make their own mistakes before they learn, both how to solve the problem, and to gain a begrudged respect.
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
The article axiom is an extension of the famous John Watson[1] quote : "Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle" Which naturally extends to "You don't know", and I believe, the equivalent of this 2004 article. Now, as the article suggests, this is best shown - instead of explained. A Neuroscientist was interviewed in a podcast [2] and illustrated this point with a story. He tells of a time when he dated long distance. Whenever he called his gf, she would ask him to call back and do facetime instead. At first, he thought it was cute, but eventually this quirk started eating at him, making him irritated. Finally, he built the nerve to ask. Why do you always want to do facetime ? She explained that whenever he calls, she literally couldn't picture him in her head. Apparently she had a rare and poorly research condition[3], where the affected person cannot mentally draw a picture of the interlocutor (caller). So for the gf, resorting to facetime was the only thing that she could do, in order to picture of him. You can't tell people anything = You just don't know. One of the same. Egotistic vs Humble. Take your pick. [1] https://checkyourfact.com/2019/08/15/fact-check-plato-hard-battle/ https://checkyourfact.com/2019/08/15/fact-check-plato-hard-b... [2] econtalk.org [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
- EricE 4y ago
  [flagged]
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  Someone posted a Jan Morris interview here some time ago, and in it she said "Everything good in the world is kindness." Anyway, I've been humbled a few times where I thought someone wasn't understanding me, but really I didn't understand them or some piece of the problem outside my experience. On HN I learned about Chesterton's Fence, between that and the thought on kindness, I try to just be nice and assume I'm missing something when reasonable people disagree with me and if I'm not the one missing something, my questions will only help me help them understand my perspective.
rq1 4y ago
> “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I got this impression on my own self while studying math in college. I noticed it when I made the connection about the studied subject, wondering why didn’t the professor say it that way to begin with. Because everything made sense now… After few likely moments I asked myself the question: was the last explanation really better or did I just happen to understand the thing at that particular moment? Later on, you get the “better” explanation while practicing the art… We’re usually not aware of the process of understanding itself.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  It's important to note that sometimes in university or elsewhere, you are just getting rigorous definitions, and while those are unquestionable useful or important, they might be entirely insufficient to build the necessary intuition. I've thought about this a few times, and written comments about it like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28122728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28122728 That being said, I do actually also literally rote memorize actual definitions and equations (using a flashcard program), because conversely, intuition is not enough. Rigorous definitions and "intuitive" ways to grasp math go hand in hand: One informs the other. It's immensely useful to be able to just recall complex definitions and equations while intuiting. I think you hint at that, but often for me the definitions start out as "abstract nonsense" while learning them, and I just memorize them, but the further my intuition goes, the more the definitions themselves become crystal clear.
zsz 4y ago
> 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 of Bs and Cs) in my various math classes, physics, chemistry, etc. had I simply bothered to do my homework properly--or, to put it differently, had I only properly applied the knowledge which I passively acquired by reading the associated textbook sections. Notably, I was always convinced that I "understood" everything I had read, only to find out otherwise when I tried to solve any of the problems. It was only after I actively applied the knowledge I had picked up, that my understanding transitioned from superficial (as in, understanding the underlying logic itself) to concrete (being able to apply the logic toward other problems). If you apply this to abstract and esoteric technical concepts, it is easy to see why someone might say they understand--and even believe that they do--while in reality only having a superficial understanding at best. The problem then becomes getting the other person to spend the effort to properly internalize the concepts being conveyed, before they have built up the requisite interest in the idea to be sufficiently motivated to carry out said effort. It's probably also true, however, that this may only apply to sufficiently esoteric and complex ideas in the first place.
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- inopinatus 4y ago
  The irony here is that bypassing active learning early, means one only discovers how valuable it is much later in life. As per article above in which the hubris is its own comeuppance.
- tricksforfree 4y ago
  I've seen this time and time again when attempting to implement a centralized design system across a group of existing apps.
sneak 4y ago
Most people have terrible listening and reading comprehension. You can work around it (to a limited extent) by explaining the same thing multiple times, with slightly different descriptions.
Nevermark 4y ago
This suggests to me the difference between understanding and fluency. -- Understanding is relatively easy, with good communication. "Oh, that makes sense!" It happens in our working memory, which operates somewhat symbolically, but can't hold much, iterate, generalize, or interpolate well. And forgets quickly. You can "give" understanding, but it requires spelling out everything to be understood, very clearly. And it won't stick. People will "feel" they understand for a moment. The big "win" is if they later recall you said something or other that seemed to make sense. -- Fluency begins when we have experienced something ourselves. It is all about training our subconscious, the more intuitive part of our brain, which is very sensory and intuition driven. A lot like deep learning. It compresses sample experiences into a general, spontaneously available form, usable in combinations with other fluencies, and give you "light bulb" epiphany moments when new combinations are surprising. It is very hard to "give" fluency. But you can smooth the path, by making experiences clear, fun, interesting, useful, surprising, low barrier, and low latency.
bloaf 4y ago
I think this is related to the AI alignment problem; our human languages simply aren't precise enough to communicate with any guarantee that our intent will be correctly conveyed.
nikola_virtual 4y ago
“知行合一” a concept in Yangmingism, a philosophy developed by the Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming. It refers to the unity of inner knowledge and action, and is explained as "Nobody can separate the knowledge and the action apart. If one knows, one will act" fits the article very well
narag 4y ago
Show, don't tell.
- layer8 4y ago
  Yep, I think that’s basically it.
zuj 4y ago
This hit home hard. Wondering if this is the case with giving advice as well ? In case of giving advice you are not selling a product but definitely selling an alternative path of action you would like there other person to take. And they will only take it if they understand you in the first place.
dannyobrien 4y ago
Small note: Chip Morningstar is now working, with many of the original team he worked with, at Agoric; Randy (Farmer) is currently leading the object capabilities non-profit Spritely Institute along with ActivityPub editor, Christine Lemmer-Webber.
didgetmaster 4y ago
>Alas, many things really must be experienced to be understood. We didn’t have much of an experience to deliver to them though — after all, the whole point of all this evangelizing was to get people to give us money to pay for developing the software in the first place! But someone who’s spent even 10 minutes using the Web would never think to ask some of the questions we got asked. THIS! I think most people can relate to this concept if they ever tried to explain something completely new to someone else. I have struggled with this many times with my own project. I have a new kind of data management system that is much different than other systems. I can try to explain it to others in a personal or a public setting. I have written blogs, whitepapers, and other documentation. I have a set of demo videos that are each less than 10 minutes. It is still very, very difficult to get people to understand what I am building. So far only a few people have taken the chance to really 'experience it' by downloading the software and using it to do something useful that they need. I have some really good beta sites that are enthusiastic about it once they get that 'Aha moment'. It will take a lot more work before the masses 'get it' like the average teenage now 'gets' the Internet.
- gregw134 4y ago
  Can you add a link?
  - didgetmaster 4y ago
    I usually include a link when I refer to my project in a comment, but I have tried not to be 'over-promotional' lately. But since you asked... https://didgets.com/ https://didgets.com/
noduerme 4y ago
On a side note, this: >> another thing I’ve learned is to pay attention to things I find myself saying; that way I’ll know what I really think is what led to Nixon leaving office. Recordings of yourself haven't gotten any more private since he did that in the Oval Office... to preserve his thoughts and, presumably, to document what he really thought. If you're not a total alcoholic, you'll find your thoughts in similar situations are coincident with your previous thoughts, to the point of being indistinguishable. You probably shouldn't actually write them all down or record them. In fact, if you have to record them to remember them (that they might never recur) then they probably aren't firm enough to be worth going back to. And if, like me, you are an alcoholic, you can virtually depend on saying the same things over and over.
xvilka 4y ago
Part of it can be explained by the curse of knowledge - many people explain things to others how they would explain to themselves. The key difference is to figure out how to explain it to someone else, not a copy of you.
thibran 4y ago
This is why I think it's possible to have an "information advantage", even when the information is publicly available to everyone ... which in reality just means, it's an understanding advantage of the public information.
pushedx 4y ago
This article has found its way to the HN homepage multiple times, and every time I wonder if it’s because of the poorly worded and misleading title, combined with the phenomenon of HN users not actually reading the article and just saving it because the title looks interesting. The article would be much better titled as, “It’s more difficult to explain new concepts to people than you think it is.”
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  In my experience a Proof of Concept is king but even then there is a balance to strike. A PoC that is too rough around the edges has the risk that less imaginative people will not get it. But a PoC that is too polished risks being confused with an end product and people may start to focus on implementation details rather than the concept.
random3 4y ago
Reposting here - A picture is worth a thousand words – my layman spin on it :) Our brains build models to interpret (translate) everything. We use languages to communicate and share things. When brains share the same models communication is simple. It’s simple to talk about day, night and light with anyone and, similarly, well formed teams (or couples) need few words to communicate even complex ideas because they have shared models. When models differ the language needs to be adjusted or learned. Identical problem/solutions may sound different in different domains. However when the model doesn’t exist in someone elses brain to communicate, the model needs to be built. Building models (learning) takes time. Natural language evolved for natural things. Hence, it’s not very efficient for abstract things that require accuracy. Math (and code) is an accurate language, and (often) effective to communicate models that require accurate replication. For example. It takes time to build the intuition for some things (e.g. fluid dynamics). Once you build the intuition, the easiest way to explain it is through the formulas. Someone can read the formulas, understand what the model communicates and then build intuition accurately. You watch and learn to build a mental model, you download the mental model, someone uploads it and builds the model. This is my mental model for communicating models
nice2meetu 4y ago
I like to think of the bike problem. Sit down and draw a picture of a bike from memory in as much detail as you can in 2 minutes. Easy right? But it is surprisingly hard.
- SillyUsername 4y ago
  Assuming side on... T--/- O|-/O I tend to think in abstractions so to me it's a triangle (frame), 2 circles (wheels), a T shape (seat), an inverted L (handlebars), a letter 8/infinity (bike chain)... Maybe I'm just weird :)
  - nice2meetu 4y ago
    Maybe Ascii art simplified things :-). I think what tends to trip people up are things like - Where do the pedals actually live in relation to the rest of the frame? How/where does the seat attach? The front wheel? Most people know there is kind of an angled bar on the frame, but where does it go exactly?
mdmglr 4y ago
> I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement. In the context of software if you want to build something you will need a team. A team requires funding. I'm excited for AI tools like GPT/Copilot/etc. to be that team. If the price is reasonable no one needs to have enough wealth to employ other knowledge workers.
isaacfrond 4y ago
Another HN favorite. Been posted here 6 times, of which 4 where 200 points+. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=You+can%27t+tell+people+anything https://hn.algolia.com/?q=You+can%27t+tell+people+anything Clearly this post touches a nerve somewhere.
tomerbd 4y ago
Step 1: Passive learn the whole material! Whole course! Step 2: Now with the whole picture and terminology in mind you can embark on active learning the course!
scotty79 4y ago
> People would ask astonishing questions, like “who’s going to pay to make all those links?” or “why would anyone want to put documents online?” Isn't the answer to those ultimately "online ads"?
deleted 4y ago
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rodolphoarruda 4y ago
This text resonates so much with the situation my team and I are experiencing right now. We are working on a Sales Territory management module which sits on basic concepts the typical field sales managers deals with every day. So what sounds totally obvious to our product owner, a former sales manager, is kind of out of this world alien talk to our devs. We are working on prototypes so they can understand things as they use something. The schemas on the PowerPoints didn't help at all.
bilekas 4y ago
> I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. This resonates with me so much today it's uncanny.
Sevan777 4y ago
It's worth reading The Design of Design by Fred Brooks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Design
deleted 4y ago
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lootsauce 4y ago
I always say it is non-trivial to achieve a meeting of the minds. We often act adversarially to new ideas to challenge them as they in turn challenge our conceptions. Often this looks like arguing and many people ain’t got time for that, it can be emotional, you’re not listening, just give it 5 mins, no you’re wrong, etc. This is not a failing of individuals so much as the impedance to aligning two different cognitive patterns. One does not simply walk into a new cognitive state you have to do battle with your own and another’s conceptions and in the face of imperfect communication.
AlexanderTheGr8 4y ago
This reminds me of Steve Jobs saying that people don't know what they want until you give it to them. To me, sometimes, it sounds a bit arrogant but definitely true in my experience. I would never have seen the value in an expensive fragile small-computer with a tiny screen that you have to squint to see until I actually used one.
charles_f 4y ago
One thing I hate about the delete button is that it is a standard thing. Quite literally every application has a delete button, it's asking you to confirm, and poof its gone. Designers going out of their way to reinvent things in a way that people don't expect are adding things in the way of usability. Cuteness shouldn't be at the expense of ease of use
mortify 4y ago
Taking this to the logical extreme are things that can only be experienced. E.g. I can read about oysters, but I will never be able to understand what an oyster tastes like until I eat one... until I experience it. When communicating, the more the topic involves an experience the harder it is to communicate. We use metaphor, simile, and analogies to help people relate it to something with which they are familiar, but it fails for many reasons. When building a prototype for a new camera system, we began with a physical mock up which was cut from wood and painted. The client's first comment was that is was garbage because no one would take a wooden camera seriously. Even after an hour-long presentation, his final comment was "This all sounds great, but it absolutely cannot be made out of wood." Some people have terribly abstraction skills, and there's simply no getting through to them until they see the final product. They need the experience to understand.

440 points by alexslobodnik 4y ago

Towards the end it says: > At Communities.com we developed a system called Passport (I’ll save the astonishing trademark story for a later posting) that let us do some pretty amazing things with web browsers. For example, with just a few magic HTML tags we could stick avatars on a web page — pretty much any web page. For months Randy kept getting up at management meetings and saying, “We’ll be able to put avatars on web pages. Start thinking about what you might do with that.” Mostly, nobody reacted much. After a couple of months of this we had things working, and so he got up and presented a demo of avatars walking around on top of our company home page. People were amazed, joyful, and enthusiastic. But they also pretty much all said the same thing: “why didn’t you tell us that we could put avatars on web pages?” You can’t tell people anything. I guess they've just proven their point. I was a web developer in 2004 (I don't miss that!), and I still have no idea what this means and why people want it. You can't tell people anything, it seems...

foul 4y ago
Gravatar, "Login with X", Oauth, OpenID, W3c Solid, Metamask. The idea started with having an identity source-of-truth across websites but it's used to pass personal data around webapps, for e-commerce too.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  “avatars walking around on top of our company home page”?

garrickvanburen 4y ago

This. The key is noticing that actions betray not getting it.

themodelplumber 4y ago

There's some pretty astonishing theory out there as to who you can tell things to, in a way that they'll understand immediately. It's pretty interesting and unfortunately very subjective. But one thing I learned from it is that if you can identify specific people who get you, generally speaking, you should then see if you can mold newly-discovered communication problems around this already-functional communications relationship.

LeonB 4y ago
And keywords or search terms you can supply as a way into learning more, would be much appreciated.
jerry1979 4y ago
Please tell me there is actually such a theory and that this is not an AI comment.
- nakts 4y ago
  Funny that the GPT detector is giving 75-99 percent AI probability for that comment.
- Jensson 4y ago
  This is exactly the kind of problem ChatGPT is good at solving. Just ask it and you will get theories. I asked and it gave a list, I think he talked about uncertainty reduction theory since the other things ChatGPT listed didn't make sense in this context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_reduction_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_reduction_theory Edit: Not sure if that response is really correct, but at least it is a tractable way to try to approach this. ChatGPT let you fuzzy match words or theories much better than Google, and then you have things you can Google.
elefanten 4y ago
Agree with sibling comments asking for search terms. What body of work / what field are you talking about?

gardenhedge 4y ago

Sounds like the author just can't tell anyone anything :)

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
Imagine if over the last few centuries they had developed techniques for making people think and believe things. Phew!

diego_moita 4y ago

This reminds me an edition of Byte Magazine from 1990 [1] with interviews of all big shots in the industry making forecasts for the next decade. No one foresaw the internet. At best they did expect things like "we'll have networks with bigger bandwith". But no one saw the economic and cultural boom ahead. [1] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1990-09 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1990-09

sammalloy 4y ago
> No one foresaw the internet. That’s because it was Byte magazine. If you were reading High Frontiers (1984), which became Reality Hackers (1988) and finally Mondo 2000 (1989), you would have thought otherwise. I used to buy them at Tower Records throughout California primarily to read about what the internet was to become. By 1990, Mondo 2000 foresaw and had a fairly complete vision of the nascent internet. A lot of the artists involved went on to produce independent works that promoted these ideas. Around 1992-93, I saw a theatrical production in SF that simulated and modeled the entirety of what life was going to be like and how it would work in a connected world. These are very old ideas (E.M Forster, 1909; Vannevar Bush, 1945; Marshall McLuhan, 1964) and many people were aware of and working towards manifesting them in reality.
- pncnmnp 4y ago
  Thank you! I did some digging and discovered an article from Mondo 2000 - "Hyperwebs" by Wes Thomas (1989). You can find it at https://archive.org/details/Mondo.2000.Issue.01.1989/page/n27/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/Mondo.2000.Issue.01.1989/page/n2.... I'm looking forward to exploring more of their archive: Mondo 2000: https://anarchivism.org/w/Mondo_2000 https://anarchivism.org/w/Mondo_2000 High Frontiers: https://anarchivism.org/w/High_Frontiers https://anarchivism.org/w/High_Frontiers
jeremyjh 4y ago
> But no one saw the economic and cultural boom ahead. Quite a lot of science fiction authors did indeed see this coming.

invalidator 4y ago

Now realize that this applies to everything, not just computers. Unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, you don't really understand the struggles of LGBTQ folks, the homeless, CEOs, assembly line workers... They will try to tell you, but you can't tell people anything, unless you're telling someone with good imagination and empathy.

xyzelement 4y ago
I deeply appreciate your point that lack of understanding goes both downward (homeless) and upward (CEOs.) I think that's true. But - unrelated to your point - I think there's more empathy (or understanding, at least) - unexpectedly - downwards. A CEO knows how to become homeless (quit job, give away house and money) if they chose to for some reason. A homeless person has no path to CEO.
- mordae 4y ago
  Perhaps in theory, but not in practice. In practice those "on top" either lack empathy from the start, or learn to disconnect it early on.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    How do you know?
- relaxing 4y ago
  > quit job, give away house and money Is not how people become homeless. There's no path to empathy there.

outworlder 4y ago

> When people ask me about my life’s ambitions, I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement. Agreed. The worst part is when they nod and pretend they got it and then that really important thing that you thought you had communicated everyone that was akin to the sky being on fire is not being prioritized/funded/worked on.

ozim 4y ago
For me worst part is just like in article that I have to explain to people first and only then I can start.
- jackpirate 4y ago
  One of the reasons I've intentionally decided not become independently wealthy is that I want to have to explain to other people why I'm doing things. Part of my work is "charity-ish", and by not being able to do things on my own, I'm forced me to improve my communication skills and involve other people in these charity activities. I think that ultimately improves the final outcome, even if the process is immensely more frustrating.
  - mewpmewp2 4y ago
    Could be so with charity or depending on the field I suppose. I think innovating or figuring out new tech is different as if something is easily understood and explainable, it's probably already done, and if you have a great idea that hasn't been done it's probably because it's really hard to explain or to sell to others on it.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Accountability (including the light form of it represented it by explanation) is super useful in refining personal development. And I'm starting to believe the reason power/status corrupts is that it removes it as an option for character development.

msufan 4y ago

As an elementary teacher, my spin on this same take was that you couldn't tell people things with much success, but there were two ways to break through: stories and games. If you could get your message across in story form or have kids discover it through a gamified (or experiential) setting, that generally worked.

eat_veggies 4y ago

This is the anarchist theory of the unity of means and ends: you can't tell people anything, including what a better society looks like (nor can you impose it on anyone). You have to try to build and live that society in the present in order to even "get it" yourself. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchopac-means-and-ends https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarchopac-means-and...

sammalloy 4y ago
It also sounds rooted in Epictetus, the Greek Stoic. Interestingly, Christian monastics used the Enchiridion of Epictetus to guide their intentional communities.
croniev 4y ago
In my perspective this derives from the fact that "knowledge" itself is not some abstract, immaterial thing in the brain, but rather thinking and knowing works through the body and the practical application. Hence the saying "hands-on". Understanding something requires experiencing it, as experience (sensation) is inseparable from consciousness. (We call this phenomenological Emboiment, feel free to check it out!) You cannot build an ideal society in theory as it will not be realisitic in practice, and you cannot explain reason and feel with words alone, but others need to walk the same experiential path as you did. But since you already figured it out you can help them walk it faster. Thats why we now learn in primary school what originally took a long time until some greek matematician worked it out.
hinkley 4y ago
I have some opinions about therapy being the art of asking people questions in order to trick them into telling themselves things that nobody else can tell them. I've had more than a couple coworkers over the years who pull me into random decisions because they think I ask good questions. Part of me would rather be known for having good answers, but it's better than being discounted, and practically it may end up being more effective.
- tonymillion 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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peppermint_gum 4y ago

Or maybe, just maybe, Xanadu wasn't as great idea as he thinks.

nerpderp82 4y ago
Xanadu is basically the web.
- peppermint_gum 4y ago
  It is nothing like the web. The web is unstructured, Xanadu isn't. The web supports all kinds of content, Xanadu is stricly textual. Xanadu documents are immutable. Xanadu is integrated with a payment system and everything is pay-per-view. Xanadu has been worked on for more than 50 years and there's still no useful demo. I know HN has this weird custom to assume without evidence that all old failed technologies were superior (or at least equivalent) to their more successful competitors, but it isn't always that simple. Sometimes technologies fail because they aren't that great.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
    I just checked out their website and it looks really cool. Just needs blockchain integration
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    Ok, "Xanadu is the NYT viewed over elinks while logged in". My comment was reductionist, but it conveyed the idea in 5 words.
  - foul 4y ago
    The web is strictly textual too. The web browser isn't. So that boils to Xanadu having nothing to prove in practice. Obviously atm it's doomed and you're right.
- msla 4y ago
  The Web is to Xanadu what a kid's go-kart is to a modern Formula One race car, if the Formula One race car somehow rewrote copyright law and solved the microtransaction problem through sheer weight of unadulterated technological awesome.

jongjong 4y ago

This article resonates with me. I think it may also explain why some very smart people are not appreciated; they say things which are far too nuanced for most people to understand; others often won't understand the depth of the argument being made. Most people assume that because everyone is at a similar rank and salary range within a company (or in the industry), they are all operating at the same level and communicate with the same level or nuance. It's not the case. That's why it's important (especially for those in leadership positions) to assume that the people around you are smarter than you (at least for some time). If you assume that someone is dumber than you, you will miss any nuance and signs of deep domain expertise hidden within. I find that very clever ideas from very clever people don't provide an instant 'Aha' moment; it takes a bit longer to see the brilliance. It's not obvious at all, that's why it's brilliant.

_yb2s 4y ago
I think you are correct, but this just doesn't feel right, I can't quite put my finger on why. It's almost like people categorically reject the possibility of greater levels of nuance existing. If they didn't they'd be looking for it carefully, because that is always where deeper insight comes in, right? If you look at, for example, popular news and political discourse- it is lacking nuance to the point where it's meaningless nonsense, which also lacking any humility, insight, or open-ness to the possibility that more nuance may be possible.
- jongjong 4y ago
  Could it be because a lot of big, important decisions by influential people are often made based on superficial factors (or gut feelings) and this skews outcomes? I guess sometimes dumb ideas do seem to win; especially in the short term. "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." I think outside of markets and finance, there are areas where nuanced thinking delivers results, even if it's not necessarily rewarded appropriately by management. In tech, it might lead to a feature being implemented in a way which some users will really appreciate (without understanding why).
sammalloy 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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at_a_remove 4y ago

I was a private tutor for a long time, specializing in kids through young adults with learning disabilities and/or psychiatric disorders. Sort of my Job-2. I had tutored some even as a kid and teen, mostly math. One of the things I came to understand was that communicating many concepts, skills, ideas, whatever required a working model of the recipient's mind. What did they value? How did they understand things? How was their world constructed? For each student had to come a unique approach. This made me often weep for the subtleties which would be lost in mass communication. Also related to tutoring: quite a lot of people fake "getting it." They'll nod, they'll say "yeah yeah," maybe even parrot back some phrases ... but they don't get it. This is its own unique impediment and it requires, for want of a better term, quizzing. Test the success of the communication. By the time the kids found their way to me, they had already developed a raft of coping mechanisms, mostly counter-productive in the long run, and faked comprehension signals were a large part of it. These are impediments to just communicating new ideas to a blank slate. Much worse is an audience who already has some other idea in their head, and even in the rare case of some kind of objective measure of validity, you're swimming upstream. Many is the time I had heard the dreaded phrase, "I know you're very smart but ..." The objection was their idea, of course, and only after repeated and crumbling failure would it be discarded. Maybe there was now room for my thing, or maybe not, but I had often lost much passion by that point. Sometimes I despair of being understood. I soon have to face the music in which I must explain to higher-ups that one of our data source providers will need to supply unique and stable identifiers on their data if we would like to accomplish Project X. I know the questions I will get: what if we just did it without it? If you can't, why shouldn't we get a consultant who will tell us what we want to hear? Have you asked $ThisParty? What if we make up our own identifiers? I will probably have to engineer an exercise to explain the pitfalls, and even then ... you can't tell people anything.

simultsop 4y ago
> and even then ... you can't tell people anything Didn't see this coming xD good luck with engineering...

_yb2s 4y ago

This puts to clear words a nagging sensation I've had my whole life, that I (also) tried to tell other people but couldn't. Talking just doesn't work as well as people think it does. It seems so obvious once you start noticing, but almost nobody notices this. People are either just repeating memes each other basically already know, or else are talking past each other. When I overhear people having a conversation, almost always, I can see that the two people aren't really understanding each other, and neither of them realize it. Unless the content is basically emotion only, with no real new information. If I try to be aware of this dynamic when listening to people, it frustrates them... without me jumping to (probably wrong) conclusions and pretending to understand, it seems like I have some kind of communications disability and/or obnoxious personality, where I am drawing out the explanation way more than they expected to be necessary. The social norm is to think or at least act like you understand immediately when you really don't. I often get the impression, when trying to explain totally new ideas to people, that they just assign it to the nearest known trope/meme, and assume it's that, and are unable to see how it's different. Even when it's really really different! As an academic scientist this is a HUGE problem. All of my really new ideas, I cannot communicate to anyone, and get funding for them. Only the obvious/stupid things, the things they expect, get understood and funded. I then do my real work, the stuff I later get tons of praise for, "in my spare time." Like the author, I too wish I was independently wealthy, so I could actually do my job! I like this perspective because it puts the burden back on me, and gives me something to act on. How can I put them into this experience, so they really get it?

ilaksh 4y ago
I don't know if it's just stupidity, ignorance, or a lack of effort. Maybe a combination. But this type of deficiency is so prevalent, it makes me want to see fully autonomous AI. Even though I know it's an incredibly bad idea and would never actively work towards it until it becomes an irreversible trend. People are stupid. They will do it soon enough. Hopefully it doesn't immediately turn into a disaster. But GPT 4 definitely listens and understands. Usually.
- Rury 4y ago
  It works like this: "Draw me a picture of a house" You draw a picture of a house. Someone else also draws a picture of a house (but it looks different from yours, as they had a different idea in their head as to what a house should look like). "That's not right, it's supposed to be on a hill" You draw a picture of house on a hill. "Still not quite what I had in mind. It should have 3 front windows, with a chimney on the left side, and a tree between the door and the driveway." You redraw the picture again. "Not that kind of tree... it should be pointier" "You mean like a conifer?" "What's a conifer?" Words simply aren't very good at conveying a lot of information, so it can take many words to get a clear message across to someone. Additionally, there's often multiple ways to interpret words, which humor typically plays on. And then, with people not all sharing the same knowledge/understanding of things, it often becomes very difficult to tell someone something, especially complicated things. I mean just imagine how hard it would be to try telling tribal people who live away from civilization, who don't even know what a computer is, about ChatGPT... that is, if they even understand the language you speak.

rektide 4y ago

This is just part #1 of natural science & constructionist learning. You can't only not tell people thing, you can't expect them to learn until they can engage their brain & monkey around & see for themselves. They have to have a lived experience, not just of it working & doing the thing, but also need to try & see other random hijinx. Humanity only ever works, only becomes human, when we are allowed the agency of the experimenter. When we can find out. This has slowly lead me towards detesting applications. The idea of interface is almost always a curtain, a veil, that obfuscates & hides some pretty graspable real truths. Interface & apps often take something real & make it virtual, impervious, symbic, in a decoupled lying way. We are complicit all too often in raising a worse, in-natural science helpless version of humanity. We say it helps users to get tasks done. But it's all fractured narrow experiences, something small distilled out where few lessons port. It masks, without any chance to begin to improve beyond, to see like a human ought to be able to.

joefigura 4y ago

This article really frustrated me the last time it was posted, but now I think I have a clear enough idea why to put it into words. You absolutely can tell people things! But to tell someone something, you need to do three things: - Establish enough shared context that they can understand you - Speak about something they actually care about (or convince them to care) - Use a format that works for what you're trying to communicate I've told people about technical topics in conversation or presentation plenty of times. I don't really understand how you can be an engineer and not tell people things. The article is frustrating because it puts the blame onto the listener. But that's not how communication works! You don't have the right to just "tell people things" - you have to put in the work to be understood and to show people it's worth their time to pay attention. Communicating well is part of the job. The author does this even in this piece. He says: "For example, with just a few magic HTML tags we could stick avatars on a web page — pretty much any web page. For months Randy kept getting up at management meetings and saying, “We’ll be able to put avatars on web pages. Start thinking about what you might do with that.” Well yeah - if someone stood up in a management meeting and told me to think about what I might do with an avatar, my first thought would be "What's an avatar" and my second thought would be "I'm already busy with other things". He hasn't said what an avatar is or why anyone should care about them. So people pay no attention. Then the demo shows what an avatar is and lets people see immediately how it might be useful, in a format that works regardless of the skill of the communicator. And so of course now they understand! And maybe the thing you're trying to communicate is so novel that you can't establish context or convince people to care without showing them a demo. But at least take the time to understand why you can't tell people about it.

oidar 4y ago
So all this article is really trying to communicate is that you can't get people on board with your product/software without them seeing/using it first. It's the general idea behind the MVP strategy that ycombinator teaches.
hilbert42 4y ago
"...you have to put in the work to be understood and to show people it's worth their time to pay attention. Communicating well is part of the job." That's fine and I don't disagree but the problem is that there are very few truly good communicators out there (there is just not enough to go around). Communication is difficult and really effective communication is very difficult. I'll use myself as an example, When I post to HN I usually know what I want to say and I generally make myself clear—in fact I go considerable lengths ensure I'm not misinterpreted or misconstrued. To ensure this does not happen I'll often restate what I've said in a different way and or provide examples. This makes my comments long, prolix and boring so few bother to read them. I don't have a Shakespeare-like talent to be short, pithy and simultaneously convey what I'm saying both succinctly and accurately, and I believe that not many people do. OK, so when people have some talent, skill or knowledge that needs to be conveyed to the world and they can't get their point across effectively then what are they to do?

hinkley 4y ago

I had a coworker who made a sport of telling people things. Once he'd flipped the bozo bit on someone, he took a certain sardonic delight in predicting outcomes that they would promptly reject... and then face-plant directly into. Sort of like the Oracle in the Matrix, only cynical, or perhaps more like Willy Wonka. "I wouldn't do that, I really wouldn't." <does it anyway>

astrange 4y ago
Does he know they had Socrates killed for being annoying?
- hinkley 4y ago
  He was ex military. A few thirty-somethings weren't going to scare him.
SillyUsername 4y ago
I'm like this in my areas of expertise. I guess I'm just an ass for saying I told you so when this happens, but I firmly believe you need to let people make their own mistakes before they learn, both how to solve the problem, and to gain a begrudged respect.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago

The article axiom is an extension of the famous John Watson[1] quote : "Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle" Which naturally extends to "You don't know", and I believe, the equivalent of this 2004 article. Now, as the article suggests, this is best shown - instead of explained. A Neuroscientist was interviewed in a podcast [2] and illustrated this point with a story. He tells of a time when he dated long distance. Whenever he called his gf, she would ask him to call back and do facetime instead. At first, he thought it was cute, but eventually this quirk started eating at him, making him irritated. Finally, he built the nerve to ask. Why do you always want to do facetime ? She explained that whenever he calls, she literally couldn't picture him in her head. Apparently she had a rare and poorly research condition[3], where the affected person cannot mentally draw a picture of the interlocutor (caller). So for the gf, resorting to facetime was the only thing that she could do, in order to picture of him. You can't tell people anything = You just don't know. One of the same. Egotistic vs Humble. Take your pick. [1] https://checkyourfact.com/2019/08/15/fact-check-plato-hard-battle/ https://checkyourfact.com/2019/08/15/fact-check-plato-hard-b... [2] econtalk.org [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

EricE 4y ago
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libraryatnight 4y ago
Someone posted a Jan Morris interview here some time ago, and in it she said "Everything good in the world is kindness." Anyway, I've been humbled a few times where I thought someone wasn't understanding me, but really I didn't understand them or some piece of the problem outside my experience. On HN I learned about Chesterton's Fence, between that and the thought on kindness, I try to just be nice and assume I'm missing something when reasonable people disagree with me and if I'm not the one missing something, my questions will only help me help them understand my perspective.

rq1 4y ago

> “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I got this impression on my own self while studying math in college. I noticed it when I made the connection about the studied subject, wondering why didn’t the professor say it that way to begin with. Because everything made sense now… After few likely moments I asked myself the question: was the last explanation really better or did I just happen to understand the thing at that particular moment? Later on, you get the “better” explanation while practicing the art… We’re usually not aware of the process of understanding itself.

anyfoo 4y ago
It's important to note that sometimes in university or elsewhere, you are just getting rigorous definitions, and while those are unquestionable useful or important, they might be entirely insufficient to build the necessary intuition. I've thought about this a few times, and written comments about it like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28122728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28122728 That being said, I do actually also literally rote memorize actual definitions and equations (using a flashcard program), because conversely, intuition is not enough. Rigorous definitions and "intuitive" ways to grasp math go hand in hand: One informs the other. It's immensely useful to be able to just recall complex definitions and equations while intuiting. I think you hint at that, but often for me the definitions start out as "abstract nonsense" while learning them, and I just memorize them, but the further my intuition goes, the more the definitions themselves become crystal clear.

zsz 4y ago

> 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 of Bs and Cs) in my various math classes, physics, chemistry, etc. had I simply bothered to do my homework properly--or, to put it differently, had I only properly applied the knowledge which I passively acquired by reading the associated textbook sections. Notably, I was always convinced that I "understood" everything I had read, only to find out otherwise when I tried to solve any of the problems. It was only after I actively applied the knowledge I had picked up, that my understanding transitioned from superficial (as in, understanding the underlying logic itself) to concrete (being able to apply the logic toward other problems). If you apply this to abstract and esoteric technical concepts, it is easy to see why someone might say they understand--and even believe that they do--while in reality only having a superficial understanding at best. The problem then becomes getting the other person to spend the effort to properly internalize the concepts being conveyed, before they have built up the requisite interest in the idea to be sufficiently motivated to carry out said effort. It's probably also true, however, that this may only apply to sufficiently esoteric and complex ideas in the first place.

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inopinatus 4y ago
The irony here is that bypassing active learning early, means one only discovers how valuable it is much later in life. As per article above in which the hubris is its own comeuppance.
tricksforfree 4y ago
I've seen this time and time again when attempting to implement a centralized design system across a group of existing apps.

sneak 4y ago

Most people have terrible listening and reading comprehension. You can work around it (to a limited extent) by explaining the same thing multiple times, with slightly different descriptions.

Nevermark 4y ago

This suggests to me the difference between understanding and fluency. -- Understanding is relatively easy, with good communication. "Oh, that makes sense!" It happens in our working memory, which operates somewhat symbolically, but can't hold much, iterate, generalize, or interpolate well. And forgets quickly. You can "give" understanding, but it requires spelling out everything to be understood, very clearly. And it won't stick. People will "feel" they understand for a moment. The big "win" is if they later recall you said something or other that seemed to make sense. -- Fluency begins when we have experienced something ourselves. It is all about training our subconscious, the more intuitive part of our brain, which is very sensory and intuition driven. A lot like deep learning. It compresses sample experiences into a general, spontaneously available form, usable in combinations with other fluencies, and give you "light bulb" epiphany moments when new combinations are surprising. It is very hard to "give" fluency. But you can smooth the path, by making experiences clear, fun, interesting, useful, surprising, low barrier, and low latency.

bloaf 4y ago

I think this is related to the AI alignment problem; our human languages simply aren't precise enough to communicate with any guarantee that our intent will be correctly conveyed.

nikola_virtual 4y ago

“知行合一” a concept in Yangmingism, a philosophy developed by the Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming. It refers to the unity of inner knowledge and action, and is explained as "Nobody can separate the knowledge and the action apart. If one knows, one will act" fits the article very well

narag 4y ago

Show, don't tell.

layer8 4y ago
Yep, I think that’s basically it.

zuj 4y ago

This hit home hard. Wondering if this is the case with giving advice as well ? In case of giving advice you are not selling a product but definitely selling an alternative path of action you would like there other person to take. And they will only take it if they understand you in the first place.

dannyobrien 4y ago

Small note: Chip Morningstar is now working, with many of the original team he worked with, at Agoric; Randy (Farmer) is currently leading the object capabilities non-profit Spritely Institute along with ActivityPub editor, Christine Lemmer-Webber.

didgetmaster 4y ago

>Alas, many things really must be experienced to be understood. We didn’t have much of an experience to deliver to them though — after all, the whole point of all this evangelizing was to get people to give us money to pay for developing the software in the first place! But someone who’s spent even 10 minutes using the Web would never think to ask some of the questions we got asked. THIS! I think most people can relate to this concept if they ever tried to explain something completely new to someone else. I have struggled with this many times with my own project. I have a new kind of data management system that is much different than other systems. I can try to explain it to others in a personal or a public setting. I have written blogs, whitepapers, and other documentation. I have a set of demo videos that are each less than 10 minutes. It is still very, very difficult to get people to understand what I am building. So far only a few people have taken the chance to really 'experience it' by downloading the software and using it to do something useful that they need. I have some really good beta sites that are enthusiastic about it once they get that 'Aha moment'. It will take a lot more work before the masses 'get it' like the average teenage now 'gets' the Internet.

gregw134 4y ago
Can you add a link?
- didgetmaster 4y ago
  I usually include a link when I refer to my project in a comment, but I have tried not to be 'over-promotional' lately. But since you asked... https://didgets.com/ https://didgets.com/

noduerme 4y ago

On a side note, this: >> another thing I’ve learned is to pay attention to things I find myself saying; that way I’ll know what I really think is what led to Nixon leaving office. Recordings of yourself haven't gotten any more private since he did that in the Oval Office... to preserve his thoughts and, presumably, to document what he really thought. If you're not a total alcoholic, you'll find your thoughts in similar situations are coincident with your previous thoughts, to the point of being indistinguishable. You probably shouldn't actually write them all down or record them. In fact, if you have to record them to remember them (that they might never recur) then they probably aren't firm enough to be worth going back to. And if, like me, you are an alcoholic, you can virtually depend on saying the same things over and over.

xvilka 4y ago

Part of it can be explained by the curse of knowledge - many people explain things to others how they would explain to themselves. The key difference is to figure out how to explain it to someone else, not a copy of you.

thibran 4y ago

This is why I think it's possible to have an "information advantage", even when the information is publicly available to everyone ... which in reality just means, it's an understanding advantage of the public information.

pushedx 4y ago

This article has found its way to the HN homepage multiple times, and every time I wonder if it’s because of the poorly worded and misleading title, combined with the phenomenon of HN users not actually reading the article and just saving it because the title looks interesting. The article would be much better titled as, “It’s more difficult to explain new concepts to people than you think it is.”

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
In my experience a Proof of Concept is king but even then there is a balance to strike. A PoC that is too rough around the edges has the risk that less imaginative people will not get it. But a PoC that is too polished risks being confused with an end product and people may start to focus on implementation details rather than the concept.

random3 4y ago

Reposting here - A picture is worth a thousand words – my layman spin on it :) Our brains build models to interpret (translate) everything. We use languages to communicate and share things. When brains share the same models communication is simple. It’s simple to talk about day, night and light with anyone and, similarly, well formed teams (or couples) need few words to communicate even complex ideas because they have shared models. When models differ the language needs to be adjusted or learned. Identical problem/solutions may sound different in different domains. However when the model doesn’t exist in someone elses brain to communicate, the model needs to be built. Building models (learning) takes time. Natural language evolved for natural things. Hence, it’s not very efficient for abstract things that require accuracy. Math (and code) is an accurate language, and (often) effective to communicate models that require accurate replication. For example. It takes time to build the intuition for some things (e.g. fluid dynamics). Once you build the intuition, the easiest way to explain it is through the formulas. Someone can read the formulas, understand what the model communicates and then build intuition accurately. You watch and learn to build a mental model, you download the mental model, someone uploads it and builds the model. This is my mental model for communicating models

nice2meetu 4y ago

I like to think of the bike problem. Sit down and draw a picture of a bike from memory in as much detail as you can in 2 minutes. Easy right? But it is surprisingly hard.

SillyUsername 4y ago
Assuming side on... T--/- O|-/O I tend to think in abstractions so to me it's a triangle (frame), 2 circles (wheels), a T shape (seat), an inverted L (handlebars), a letter 8/infinity (bike chain)... Maybe I'm just weird :)
- nice2meetu 4y ago
  Maybe Ascii art simplified things :-). I think what tends to trip people up are things like - Where do the pedals actually live in relation to the rest of the frame? How/where does the seat attach? The front wheel? Most people know there is kind of an angled bar on the frame, but where does it go exactly?

mdmglr 4y ago

> I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement. In the context of software if you want to build something you will need a team. A team requires funding. I'm excited for AI tools like GPT/Copilot/etc. to be that team. If the price is reasonable no one needs to have enough wealth to employ other knowledge workers.

isaacfrond 4y ago

Another HN favorite. Been posted here 6 times, of which 4 where 200 points+. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=You+can%27t+tell+people+anything https://hn.algolia.com/?q=You+can%27t+tell+people+anything Clearly this post touches a nerve somewhere.

tomerbd 4y ago

Step 1: Passive learn the whole material! Whole course! Step 2: Now with the whole picture and terminology in mind you can embark on active learning the course!

scotty79 4y ago

> People would ask astonishing questions, like “who’s going to pay to make all those links?” or “why would anyone want to put documents online?” Isn't the answer to those ultimately "online ads"?

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rodolphoarruda 4y ago

This text resonates so much with the situation my team and I are experiencing right now. We are working on a Sales Territory management module which sits on basic concepts the typical field sales managers deals with every day. So what sounds totally obvious to our product owner, a former sales manager, is kind of out of this world alien talk to our devs. We are working on prototypes so they can understand things as they use something. The schemas on the PowerPoints didn't help at all.

bilekas 4y ago

> I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. This resonates with me so much today it's uncanny.

Sevan777 4y ago

It's worth reading The Design of Design by Fred Brooks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Design

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lootsauce 4y ago

I always say it is non-trivial to achieve a meeting of the minds. We often act adversarially to new ideas to challenge them as they in turn challenge our conceptions. Often this looks like arguing and many people ain’t got time for that, it can be emotional, you’re not listening, just give it 5 mins, no you’re wrong, etc. This is not a failing of individuals so much as the impedance to aligning two different cognitive patterns. One does not simply walk into a new cognitive state you have to do battle with your own and another’s conceptions and in the face of imperfect communication.

AlexanderTheGr8 4y ago

This reminds me of Steve Jobs saying that people don't know what they want until you give it to them. To me, sometimes, it sounds a bit arrogant but definitely true in my experience. I would never have seen the value in an expensive fragile small-computer with a tiny screen that you have to squint to see until I actually used one.

charles_f 4y ago

One thing I hate about the delete button is that it is a standard thing. Quite literally every application has a delete button, it's asking you to confirm, and poof its gone. Designers going out of their way to reinvent things in a way that people don't expect are adding things in the way of usability. Cuteness shouldn't be at the expense of ease of use

mortify 4y ago

Taking this to the logical extreme are things that can only be experienced. E.g. I can read about oysters, but I will never be able to understand what an oyster tastes like until I eat one... until I experience it. When communicating, the more the topic involves an experience the harder it is to communicate. We use metaphor, simile, and analogies to help people relate it to something with which they are familiar, but it fails for many reasons. When building a prototype for a new camera system, we began with a physical mock up which was cut from wood and painted. The client's first comment was that is was garbage because no one would take a wooden camera seriously. Even after an hour-long presentation, his final comment was "This all sounds great, but it absolutely cannot be made out of wood." Some people have terribly abstraction skills, and there's simply no getting through to them until they see the final product. They need the experience to understand.