An example of this that will be familiar to any programmer, and was taught to me in grade school, is “give orders to a malicious idiot.” The teacher has the students write down the algorithm for a simple task, like “sharpen a pencil,” with a wooden pencil and an old crank-operated sharpener as the props.
… Then the malicious idiot stabs you in the eye with the pencil. Oh, the malicious idiot was supposed to follow orders and only follow orders? Why didn’t you say so?!
I guess the malicious idiot is not suppossed to be creative, but lazy. They should use the simplest possible explanation—only the simplicity is not measured by common sense, but by something like Solomonoff prior.
No, it’s maliciousness, but very specifically aimed maliciousness. They don’t want to hurt you, they just want to demonstrate that you are bad at giving directions.
I don’t think this a good restriction. Consider the fact that Hanlon’s Razor is even a thing:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
This suggests that people often mistake stupidity for malice. So given that in these examples, your opponent probably does secretly understand what you’re communicating (most of us know deep down how to sharpen a pencil), it might be necessary to have malice/creativity play the part of inferential distance. Otherwise you may learn to anticipate an unrealistically rational audience, one which never comes in with incorrect preconceived ideas, or lacks the necessary technical vocabulary, or seems to practice selective hearing, etc.
In short, original seeing is the exception, not the rule, so the opponent should be at least slightly hostile in his/her interpretations to account for this.
… Then the malicious idiot stabs you in the eye with the pencil. Oh, the malicious idiot was supposed to follow orders and only follow orders? Why didn’t you say so?!
Because I love setting other people up for jokes.
I guess the malicious idiot is not suppossed to be creative, but lazy. They should use the simplest possible explanation—only the simplicity is not measured by common sense, but by something like Solomonoff prior.
No, it’s maliciousness, but very specifically aimed maliciousness. They don’t want to hurt you, they just want to demonstrate that you are bad at giving directions.
I don’t think this a good restriction. Consider the fact that Hanlon’s Razor is even a thing:
This suggests that people often mistake stupidity for malice. So given that in these examples, your opponent probably does secretly understand what you’re communicating (most of us know deep down how to sharpen a pencil), it might be necessary to have malice/creativity play the part of inferential distance. Otherwise you may learn to anticipate an unrealistically rational audience, one which never comes in with incorrect preconceived ideas, or lacks the necessary technical vocabulary, or seems to practice selective hearing, etc.
In short, original seeing is the exception, not the rule, so the opponent should be at least slightly hostile in his/her interpretations to account for this.