I’m not sure where I’m proposing bureaucracy? The value is in making sure a conversation efficiently adds value for both parties, by not having to spend time rehashing things that are much faster absorbed in advance. This avoids the friction of needing to spend much of the time rehashing 101-level prerequisites. A very modest amount of groundwork beforehand maximizes the rate of insight in discussion.
I’m drawing in large part from personal experience. A significant part of my job is interviewing researchers, startup founders, investors, government officials, and assorted business people. Before I get on a call with these people, I look them (and their current and past employers, as needed) up on LinkedIn and Google Scholar and their own webpages. I briefly familiarize myself with what they’ve worked on and what they know and care about and how they think, as best I can anticipate, even if it’s only for 15 minutes. And then when I get into a conversation, I adapt. I’m picking their brain to try and learn, so I try to adapt to their communication style and translate between their worldview and my own. If I go in with an idea of what questions I want answered, and those turn out to not be the important questions, or this turns out to be the wrong person to discuss it with, I change direction. Not doing this often leaves everyone involved frustrated at having wasted their time.
Also, should I be thinking of this as a debate? Because that’s very different than a podcast or interview or discussion. These all have different goals. A podcast or interview is where I think the standard I am thinking of is most appropriate. If you want to have a deep discussion, it’s insufficient, and you need to do more prep work or you’ll never get into the meatiest parts of where you want to go. I do agree that if you’re having a (public-facing) debate where the goal is to win, then sure, this is not strictly necessary. The history of e.g. “debates” in politics, or between creationists and biologists, shows that clearly. I’m not sure I’d consider that “meaningful” debate, though. Meaningful debates happen by seriously engaging with the other side’s ideas, which requires understanding those ideas.
I agree with whay you say about how to maximize what you get out of an interview. I also agree about that discussion vs. debate distinction you make, and I wasn’t specifically trying to go there when I used the word “debate”, I was just sloppy with words.
I guess you agree that it is friction to create a social norm that you should do a read up of the other person material before engaging in public. I expect less discussions would happen. There is not a clear threshold at how much you should be prepared.
I guess we disagree about how much value do we lose due to eliminating discussions that could have happaned, vs. how much value we gain by eliminating some lower quality discussions.
Another angle I have in mind that sidesteps this direct compromise, is that maybe what we value out of such discussions is not just doing an optimal play in terms of information transmitted between the parties. A public discussion has many different viewers. In the case at hand, I expect many people get more out of the discussion if they can see Wolfram think through the thing for the first time in real time, rather than having two informed people start discussing finer points in medias res.
I’m not sure where I’m proposing bureaucracy? The value is in making sure a conversation efficiently adds value for both parties, by not having to spend time rehashing things that are much faster absorbed in advance. This avoids the friction of needing to spend much of the time rehashing 101-level prerequisites. A very modest amount of groundwork beforehand maximizes the rate of insight in discussion.
I’m drawing in large part from personal experience. A significant part of my job is interviewing researchers, startup founders, investors, government officials, and assorted business people. Before I get on a call with these people, I look them (and their current and past employers, as needed) up on LinkedIn and Google Scholar and their own webpages. I briefly familiarize myself with what they’ve worked on and what they know and care about and how they think, as best I can anticipate, even if it’s only for 15 minutes. And then when I get into a conversation, I adapt. I’m picking their brain to try and learn, so I try to adapt to their communication style and translate between their worldview and my own. If I go in with an idea of what questions I want answered, and those turn out to not be the important questions, or this turns out to be the wrong person to discuss it with, I change direction. Not doing this often leaves everyone involved frustrated at having wasted their time.
Also, should I be thinking of this as a debate? Because that’s very different than a podcast or interview or discussion. These all have different goals. A podcast or interview is where I think the standard I am thinking of is most appropriate. If you want to have a deep discussion, it’s insufficient, and you need to do more prep work or you’ll never get into the meatiest parts of where you want to go. I do agree that if you’re having a (public-facing) debate where the goal is to win, then sure, this is not strictly necessary. The history of e.g. “debates” in politics, or between creationists and biologists, shows that clearly. I’m not sure I’d consider that “meaningful” debate, though. Meaningful debates happen by seriously engaging with the other side’s ideas, which requires understanding those ideas.
I agree with whay you say about how to maximize what you get out of an interview. I also agree about that discussion vs. debate distinction you make, and I wasn’t specifically trying to go there when I used the word “debate”, I was just sloppy with words.
I guess you agree that it is friction to create a social norm that you should do a read up of the other person material before engaging in public. I expect less discussions would happen. There is not a clear threshold at how much you should be prepared.
I guess we disagree about how much value do we lose due to eliminating discussions that could have happaned, vs. how much value we gain by eliminating some lower quality discussions.
Another angle I have in mind that sidesteps this direct compromise, is that maybe what we value out of such discussions is not just doing an optimal play in terms of information transmitted between the parties. A public discussion has many different viewers. In the case at hand, I expect many people get more out of the discussion if they can see Wolfram think through the thing for the first time in real time, rather than having two informed people start discussing finer points in medias res.
That’s a good point about public discussions. It’s not how I absorb information, but I can definitely see that.