I often struggle to find words and sentences that match what I intend to communicate.
Here are some problems this can cause:
Wordings that are odd or unintuitive to the reader, but that are at least literally correct.[1]
Not being able express what I mean, and having to choose between not writing it, or risking miscommunication by trying anyways. I tend to choose the former unless I’m writing to a close friend. Unfortunately this means I am unable to express some key insights to a general audience.
Writing taking lots of time: I usually have to iterate many times on words/sentences until I find one which my mind parses as referring to what I intend. In the slowest cases, I might finalize only 2-10 words per minute. Even after iterating, my words are still sometimes interpreted in ways I failed to foresee.
These apply to speaking, too. If I speak what would be the ‘first iteration’ of a sentence, there’s a good chance it won’t create an interpretation matching what I intend to communicate. In spoken language I have no chance to constantly ‘rewrite’ my output before sending it. This is one reason, but not the only reason, that I’ve had a policy of trying to avoid voice-based communication.
I’m not fully sure what caused this relationship to language. It could be that it’s just a byproduct of being autistic. It could also be a byproduct of out-of-distribution childhood abuse.[2]
E.g., once I couldn’t find the word ‘clusters,’ and wrote a complex sentence referring to ‘sets of similar’ value functions each corresponding to a common alignment failure mode / ASI takeoff training story. (I later found a way to make it much easier to read)
My primary parent was highly abusive, and would punish me for using language in the intuitive ‘direct’ way about particular instances of that. My early response was to try to euphemize and say-differently in a way that contradicted less the power dynamic / social reality she enforced.
Eventually I learned to model her as a deterministic system and stay silent / fawn.
Being slow at writing can be sign of failure or winning, depending on the exact reasons why you’re slow. I’d worry about being “too good” at writing, since that’d be evidence that your brain is conforming your thoughts to the language, instead of conforming your language to your thoughts. English is just a really poor medium for thought (at least compared to e.g. visuals and pre-word intuitive representations), so it’s potentially dangerous to care overmuch about it.
Btw, Aaron is another person-recommendation. He’s awesome. Has really strong self-insight, goodness-of-heart, creativity. (Twitter profile, blog+podcast, EAF, links.) I haven’t personally learned a whole bunch from him yet,[2] but I expect if he continues being what he is, he’ll produce lots of cool stuff which I’ll learn from later.
Edit: I now recall that I’ve learned from him: screwworms (important), and the ubiquity of left-handed chirality in nature (mildly important). He also caused me to look into two-envelopes paradox, which was usefwl for me.
Although I later learned about screwworms from Kevin Esvelt at 80kh podcast, so I would’ve learned it anyway. And I also later learned about left-handed chirality from Steve Mould on YT, but I may not have reflected on it as much.
I think I’ve become better at writing clearly, relative to before. Part of it is just practice. A lesson that also feels relevant:
Write very precisely, meaning there is no non-trivial space of possible interpretations that you don’t intend. Unless you do this, people may not respond to what you really mean, even if you consider it obvious.
Maybe someone has advice for finalizing-writing faster (not at the expense of clarity)? I think I can usually end up with something that’s clear, at least if it’s just a basic point that’s compatible with the reader’s ontology, but it still takes a long time.
Even after iterating, my words are often interpreted in ways I failed to foresee.
It’s also partially the problem with the recipient of communicated message. Sometimes you both have very different background assumptions/intuitive understandings. Sometimes it’s just skill issue and the person you are talking to is bad at parsing and all the work of keeping the discussion on the important things / away from trivial undesirable sidelines is left to you.
Certainly it’s useful to know how to pick your battles and see if this discussion/dialogue is worth what you’re getting out of it at all.
(Personal) On writing and (not) speaking
I often struggle to find words and sentences that match what I intend to communicate.
Here are some problems this can cause:
Wordings that are odd or unintuitive to the reader, but that are at least literally correct.[1]
Not being able express what I mean, and having to choose between not writing it, or risking miscommunication by trying anyways. I tend to choose the former unless I’m writing to a close friend. Unfortunately this means I am unable to express some key insights to a general audience.
Writing taking lots of time: I usually have to iterate many times on words/sentences until I find one which my mind parses as referring to what I intend. In the slowest cases, I might finalize only 2-10 words per minute. Even after iterating, my words are still sometimes interpreted in ways I failed to foresee.
These apply to speaking, too. If I speak what would be the ‘first iteration’ of a sentence, there’s a good chance it won’t create an interpretation matching what I intend to communicate. In spoken language I have no chance to constantly ‘rewrite’ my output before sending it. This is one reason, but not the only reason, that I’ve had a policy of trying to avoid voice-based communication.
I’m not fully sure what caused this relationship to language. It could be that it’s just a byproduct of being autistic. It could also be a byproduct of out-of-distribution childhood abuse.[2]
E.g., once I couldn’t find the word ‘clusters,’ and wrote a complex sentence referring to ‘sets of similar’ value functions each corresponding to a common alignment failure mode / ASI takeoff training story. (I later found a way to make it much easier to read)
(Content warning)
My primary parent was highly abusive, and would punish me for using language in the intuitive ‘direct’ way about particular instances of that. My early response was to try to euphemize and say-differently in a way that contradicted less the power dynamic / social reality she enforced.
Eventually I learned to model her as a deterministic system and stay silent / fawn.
Aaron Bergman has a vid of himself typing new sentences in real-time, which I found really helpfwl.[1] I wish I could watch lots of people record themselves typing, so I could compare what I do.
Being slow at writing can be sign of failure or winning, depending on the exact reasons why you’re slow. I’d worry about being “too good” at writing, since that’d be evidence that your brain is conforming your thoughts to the language, instead of conforming your language to your thoughts. English is just a really poor medium for thought (at least compared to e.g. visuals and pre-word intuitive representations), so it’s potentially dangerous to care overmuch about it.
Btw, Aaron is another person-recommendation. He’s awesome. Has really strong self-insight, goodness-of-heart, creativity. (Twitter profile, blog+podcast, EAF, links.) I haven’t personally learned a whole bunch from him yet,[2] but I expect if he continues being what he is, he’ll produce lots of cool stuff which I’ll learn from later.
Edit: I now recall that I’ve learned from him: screwworms (important), and the ubiquity of left-handed chirality in nature (mildly important). He also caused me to look into two-envelopes paradox, which was usefwl for me.
Although I later learned about screwworms from Kevin Esvelt at 80kh podcast, so I would’ve learned it anyway. And I also later learned about left-handed chirality from Steve Mould on YT, but I may not have reflected on it as much.
Thank you, that is all very kind! ☺️☺️☺️
I hope so haha
Record yourself typing?
EDIT: I uploaded a better example here (18m18s):
Old example still here (7m25s).
Ah, most relevant: Paul Graham has a recording-of-sorts of himself writing a blog post “Startups in 13 sentences”.
I think I’ve become better at writing clearly, relative to before. Part of it is just practice. A lesson that also feels relevant:
Write very precisely, meaning there is no non-trivial space of possible interpretations that you don’t intend. Unless you do this, people may not respond to what you really mean, even if you consider it obvious.
Maybe someone has advice for finalizing-writing faster (not at the expense of clarity)? I think I can usually end up with something that’s clear, at least if it’s just a basic point that’s compatible with the reader’s ontology, but it still takes a long time.
It’s also partially the problem with the recipient of communicated message. Sometimes you both have very different background assumptions/intuitive understandings. Sometimes it’s just skill issue and the person you are talking to is bad at parsing and all the work of keeping the discussion on the important things / away from trivial undesirable sidelines is left to you.
Certainly it’s useful to know how to pick your battles and see if this discussion/dialogue is worth what you’re getting out of it at all.