In my professional life, I am frequently asked questions about a complex system I have some responsibility for. For pieces of that system, I got sufficiently tired of answering certain recurring questions that I wrote a set of documents that addressed those areas.
How would you recommend I reply to someone who asks me questions about those areas and, when directed to the documents I wrote, replies that they don’t have time to read the document, they just want to participate in a conversation with me about the subject in which I answer their specific questions?
I usually deal with these types of questions by sending them a link to a specific document. For example, I might say, “take a look at the flow diagram at ${url}, then read the notes on ${node}, they will explain why you are getting that error”. If the person comes back and says, “I read your notes but I have no idea what they mean”, I’d point him to some introductory material; but in practice, this happens rarely, because my notes are full of links.
One thing I used to do, but stopped doing, was to say, “open up the project wiki and read through all the pages in it”. The people who come to me with questions are looking for an effective solution to a specific problem, not for general education and/or enlightenment. They have tangible goals just like I do, after all, and there are only so many hours in a day.
How would you recommend I reply to someone who asks me questions about those areas and, when directed to the documents I wrote, replies that they don’t have time to read the document, they just want to participate in a conversation with me about the subject in which I answer their specific questions?
You could answer in the same way that a lot of AI researchers and computer scientists did, who I wrote (400+ by now): “Your fears are the result of a lack of knowledge. Come back once you have enough background to ask intelligent questions about AI.”
But then nobody learns anything because everyone thinks that they are obviously right and the others are idiots.
You might have seen the following sentences in some of my recent submissions:
″...highly specific, conjunctive, non-evidence-backed speculations on possible bad outcomes.”
″… in my view they’ve just sprinkled enough mathematics and logic over their fantasies to give them a veneer of respectability.”
″… I … personally think that they are naïve as far as the nature of human intelligence goes. I think they are mostly very bright and starry-eyed adults who never quite grew out of their science-fiction addiction as adolescents. None of them seems to have a realistic picture about the nature of thinking...”
Those lines are copied straight out of emails from people who know a lot more than I do.
So what do I recommend? I recommend that both sides do the same that evolutionary biologist did when creationists attacked. Write a book on it or create documents that can actually be read by people with a large inferential distance. But don’t tell them to read hundreds of blog posts that are largely unrelated to the problem in question, or your papers that only someone with a doctorate in machine learning can understand.
OK. So, suppose I decide to write a book on it, as you suggest. What do you recommend I do during the years that that book-writing process is going on? And does that recommendation change if it turns out that I’m wrong and merely think that I’m right, vs. if I’m actually right?
What do you recommend I do during the years that that book-writing process is going on?
Talk about the subject of the book as much as possible, even if you talk bullshit. Because the book was meant to explain why you are talking bullshit. People talking bullshit is exactly what it takes to write a good book on dissolving bullshit.
And does that recommendation change if it turns out that I’m wrong and merely think that I’m right, vs. if I’m actually right?
No. See ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ by Daniel Dennett. The book starts by reviewing all the bullshit people have been saying in the past few hundred years and manages to shed light on culture, popular misconceptions and how you can be wrong.
He actually mentions a few times how creationists and other enemies of evolution actually allowed evolutionary biologists to hone their arguments and become stronger. And yes, the arguments of the critics were often poor from the point of view of the experts, but strong from the point of view of laymen.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with your first recommendation.
I do agree that Dennett (both in DDI and more generally) has an admirable willingness to engage with the “bullshit” in his field, though he also is willing to unilaterally dismiss vast swaths of it when he decides it’s no longer valuable for him to engage with (see, for example, his treatment of qualia in ‘Consciousness Explained’… or listen to him talk to undergraduates, if he still does that; he was always a treat to listen to).
In my professional life, I am frequently asked questions about a complex system I have some responsibility for. For pieces of that system, I got sufficiently tired of answering certain recurring questions that I wrote a set of documents that addressed those areas.
How would you recommend I reply to someone who asks me questions about those areas and, when directed to the documents I wrote, replies that they don’t have time to read the document, they just want to participate in a conversation with me about the subject in which I answer their specific questions?
I usually deal with these types of questions by sending them a link to a specific document. For example, I might say, “take a look at the flow diagram at ${url}, then read the notes on ${node}, they will explain why you are getting that error”. If the person comes back and says, “I read your notes but I have no idea what they mean”, I’d point him to some introductory material; but in practice, this happens rarely, because my notes are full of links.
One thing I used to do, but stopped doing, was to say, “open up the project wiki and read through all the pages in it”. The people who come to me with questions are looking for an effective solution to a specific problem, not for general education and/or enlightenment. They have tangible goals just like I do, after all, and there are only so many hours in a day.
You could answer in the same way that a lot of AI researchers and computer scientists did, who I wrote (400+ by now): “Your fears are the result of a lack of knowledge. Come back once you have enough background to ask intelligent questions about AI.”
But then nobody learns anything because everyone thinks that they are obviously right and the others are idiots.
You might have seen the following sentences in some of my recent submissions:
″...highly specific, conjunctive, non-evidence-backed speculations on possible bad outcomes.”
″… in my view they’ve just sprinkled enough mathematics and logic over their fantasies to give them a veneer of respectability.”
″… I … personally think that they are naïve as far as the nature of human intelligence goes. I think they are mostly very bright and starry-eyed adults who never quite grew out of their science-fiction addiction as adolescents. None of them seems to have a realistic picture about the nature of thinking...”
Those lines are copied straight out of emails from people who know a lot more than I do.
So what do I recommend? I recommend that both sides do the same that evolutionary biologist did when creationists attacked. Write a book on it or create documents that can actually be read by people with a large inferential distance. But don’t tell them to read hundreds of blog posts that are largely unrelated to the problem in question, or your papers that only someone with a doctorate in machine learning can understand.
OK.
So, suppose I decide to write a book on it, as you suggest.
What do you recommend I do during the years that that book-writing process is going on?
And does that recommendation change if it turns out that I’m wrong and merely think that I’m right, vs. if I’m actually right?
Talk about the subject of the book as much as possible, even if you talk bullshit. Because the book was meant to explain why you are talking bullshit. People talking bullshit is exactly what it takes to write a good book on dissolving bullshit.
No. See ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ by Daniel Dennett. The book starts by reviewing all the bullshit people have been saying in the past few hundred years and manages to shed light on culture, popular misconceptions and how you can be wrong.
He actually mentions a few times how creationists and other enemies of evolution actually allowed evolutionary biologists to hone their arguments and become stronger. And yes, the arguments of the critics were often poor from the point of view of the experts, but strong from the point of view of laymen.
OK, thanks… that’s clear.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with your first recommendation.
I do agree that Dennett (both in DDI and more generally) has an admirable willingness to engage with the “bullshit” in his field, though he also is willing to unilaterally dismiss vast swaths of it when he decides it’s no longer valuable for him to engage with (see, for example, his treatment of qualia in ‘Consciousness Explained’… or listen to him talk to undergraduates, if he still does that; he was always a treat to listen to).