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 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.