Being Specific. Holy crap! Once you start noticing this, it is everywhere. Still not super good at automatically being specific, but I’m quite good at noticing unspecific things now.
Such as...?
(Sorry, it just begged to be said, and no one else took the bait!)
Last weekend, I was arguing with family members about the merits of rationality and decision theory. My uncle kept saying things that were painfully vague and didn’t give me any mental images of what he was saying. I kept telling him to be more specific. I don’t actually remember what was said (probably because it was so vague).
I do remember the things my dad said, because he was good at being specific. His objection to decision theory was that it wouldn’t “[take] the road less travelled, and [thereby get] all the difference” (vivid example, quoted from poetry. +5 points, dad). Another example was Shackleton’s antarctic expidition, where he quoted the newspaper ad asking for people to join. I was trying to explain that if it was in fact knowably a good idea to take the road less travelled, an expected utility calculation would capture that and make the right choice, and that decision theory was not a descriptive theory of how people would react to shackleton’s ad. Then out came the vague philosophical objections that I don’t remember. (probably somethign along the lines of outcome trees and numbers not being able to capture some mysterious essence)
So ironically, the only things I can remember are the things that were not painfully vague. I remember saying be specific a lot tho. Sorry.
Such as...?
(Sorry, it just begged to be said, and no one else took the bait!)
(Surprised it took so long, actually.)
Last weekend, I was arguing with family members about the merits of rationality and decision theory. My uncle kept saying things that were painfully vague and didn’t give me any mental images of what he was saying. I kept telling him to be more specific. I don’t actually remember what was said (probably because it was so vague).
I do remember the things my dad said, because he was good at being specific. His objection to decision theory was that it wouldn’t “[take] the road less travelled, and [thereby get] all the difference” (vivid example, quoted from poetry. +5 points, dad). Another example was Shackleton’s antarctic expidition, where he quoted the newspaper ad asking for people to join. I was trying to explain that if it was in fact knowably a good idea to take the road less travelled, an expected utility calculation would capture that and make the right choice, and that decision theory was not a descriptive theory of how people would react to shackleton’s ad. Then out came the vague philosophical objections that I don’t remember. (probably somethign along the lines of outcome trees and numbers not being able to capture some mysterious essence)
So ironically, the only things I can remember are the things that were not painfully vague. I remember saying be specific a lot tho. Sorry.