I notice logic leaps, cognitive missteps and dumb conclusions of people who are considered smart, deep and expert on stuff while they talk on the radio or on other medias and I get angry.
If you are listening to an expert on the radio and similar mainstream media the expert gives you a dumbed down argument for the position he’s holding.
In an interviews you have cycles of the expert making a complex claim and then the interviewer telling them: “Can you say this in a more concise way?”
If the expert doesn’t really get it they might also be told: “Part of our audience is housewifes who never went to college who listen to our program while doing the dishes, can you make your point in a way that the housewife also understands while she does the dishes?” (This example is recounted from memory from https://media.ccc.de/v/24c3-2334-de-die_wahrheit_und_was_wirklich_passierte/related )
The argument that the same expert would make when sitting down with collegues where the expert can have an off-the-record conversation will be more nuanced and complex then the argument the expert gives on the radio.
If you hear an obviously flawed argument on the radio you shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the expert making it is stupid but that they are just not in a position to give you the nuanced argument.
(When talking to non-experts, most points should become less concise than when talking to other experts, because to meaningfully communicate anything to a non-expert, you also have to communicate the necessary prerequisites that other experts already know.)
It’s a valid stance to take but it’s the stance that gets the journalist to ask some other expert that’s willing to be concise. Those people you hear interviewed are generally willing to play the game of the journalists.
When being a news consumer it’s useful to not have misconceptions about what kind of information you are exposed to.
Exactly, that’s what makes the question as you formulated it funny. It’s not a question, or even a request. It’s a non-negotiable demand. If you don’t concede, the whole deal is off. Yet not conceding is often the only reasonable thing to do, so it’s a demand to be unreasonable masquerading as a question, because don’t be rude.
I remember having noticed people explaining badly things I knew were actually right and had better proofs than what was being explained. If I wouldn’t know about the evidence already I wouldn’t have noticed they were misrepresenting the position, but the subjects I get angry on are rarely the kind of things where background knowledge is so complex you can’t explain it properly to a laymen.
Some of what I got angry about were just plainly stupid ideas, it doesn’t look plausible that the people talking had better reasons to sustain those and just weren’t saying them, it clearly looked as if someone was trying to be clever rather than trying to think about the evidence, and those people were the experts of their side, not the village fools.
But I did get angry at people who were quoting research and studies I hadn’t read, because, from the way they explained said studies, it was clear to me that research was plain rubbish conceived by someone who just doesn’t understand what research and evidence are.
But it’s indeed possible that the people quoting it had just made a mess and understood nothing…
I always tried to avoid being mislead because I didn’t understood passages of the two minute version of an idea, if I wasn’t understanding why they had said a thing I’d go read more on it.
I never thought that people could go as far as completely botch the two minute version they had explained to me, even when they are supposed to have studied it, but it’s clearly possible, even if not so likely.
I’ll have to remember to check the original sources when I really should get something right.
I remember a TV interview I did with a friend on Quantified Self. One of the elements was my friend measuring stress with a emWave2. In the process of dumbing down the complexity of what we were doing to make it TV compatible, my friend in the end said that he was measuring heart rate with the emWave2 to measure stress.
The thing that emWave2 actually measure is heart rate variability but there was no time to explain what heart rate variabilty is. If a viewer would actually understand the subject matter they would rightfully find it strange that my friend said he measures heartrate for stress but for the average viewer that inaccuracy wouldn’t be a big deal.
Complexity reduction like that happens when focusing on expressing oneselves in a way that works on TV and the radio.
If you are listening to an expert on the radio and similar mainstream media the expert gives you a dumbed down argument for the position he’s holding.
In an interviews you have cycles of the expert making a complex claim and then the interviewer telling them: “Can you say this in a more concise way?”
If the expert doesn’t really get it they might also be told: “Part of our audience is housewifes who never went to college who listen to our program while doing the dishes, can you make your point in a way that the housewife also understands while she does the dishes?” (This example is recounted from memory from https://media.ccc.de/v/24c3-2334-de-die_wahrheit_und_was_wirklich_passierte/related )
The argument that the same expert would make when sitting down with collegues where the expert can have an off-the-record conversation will be more nuanced and complex then the argument the expert gives on the radio.
If you hear an obviously flawed argument on the radio you shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the expert making it is stupid but that they are just not in a position to give you the nuanced argument.
“No.”
(When talking to non-experts, most points should become less concise than when talking to other experts, because to meaningfully communicate anything to a non-expert, you also have to communicate the necessary prerequisites that other experts already know.)
It’s a valid stance to take but it’s the stance that gets the journalist to ask some other expert that’s willing to be concise. Those people you hear interviewed are generally willing to play the game of the journalists.
When being a news consumer it’s useful to not have misconceptions about what kind of information you are exposed to.
Exactly, that’s what makes the question as you formulated it funny. It’s not a question, or even a request. It’s a non-negotiable demand. If you don’t concede, the whole deal is off. Yet not conceding is often the only reasonable thing to do, so it’s a demand to be unreasonable masquerading as a question, because don’t be rude.
I hadn’t thought about this possibility.
I remember having noticed people explaining badly things I knew were actually right and had better proofs than what was being explained. If I wouldn’t know about the evidence already I wouldn’t have noticed they were misrepresenting the position, but the subjects I get angry on are rarely the kind of things where background knowledge is so complex you can’t explain it properly to a laymen.
Some of what I got angry about were just plainly stupid ideas, it doesn’t look plausible that the people talking had better reasons to sustain those and just weren’t saying them, it clearly looked as if someone was trying to be clever rather than trying to think about the evidence, and those people were the experts of their side, not the village fools.
But I did get angry at people who were quoting research and studies I hadn’t read, because, from the way they explained said studies, it was clear to me that research was plain rubbish conceived by someone who just doesn’t understand what research and evidence are.
But it’s indeed possible that the people quoting it had just made a mess and understood nothing…
I always tried to avoid being mislead because I didn’t understood passages of the two minute version of an idea, if I wasn’t understanding why they had said a thing I’d go read more on it.
I never thought that people could go as far as completely botch the two minute version they had explained to me, even when they are supposed to have studied it, but it’s clearly possible, even if not so likely.
I’ll have to remember to check the original sources when I really should get something right.
I remember a TV interview I did with a friend on Quantified Self. One of the elements was my friend measuring stress with a emWave2. In the process of dumbing down the complexity of what we were doing to make it TV compatible, my friend in the end said that he was measuring heart rate with the emWave2 to measure stress.
The thing that emWave2 actually measure is heart rate variability but there was no time to explain what heart rate variabilty is. If a viewer would actually understand the subject matter they would rightfully find it strange that my friend said he measures heartrate for stress but for the average viewer that inaccuracy wouldn’t be a big deal.
Complexity reduction like that happens when focusing on expressing oneselves in a way that works on TV and the radio.
I see, thank you for this example.
I’ll remember to prepare the dumbed down explanations in advance, in my plans I’ll have to communicate a lot in the future.