Yeah, I think this is actually probably a decent solution, with one caveat being that people who have the background knowledge to effectively summarize the conversation probably (soon afterwards) have the skills necessary to do other things. (At least, this is what someone claimed when I asked them about the idea)
So it serves as a training program for aspiring researchers… even better! Actually, in more ways than one, because other aspiring researchers can read the transcript and come up to speed more quickly.
“soon afterwards” was meant to be more of a throwaway qualifier than a main point. The claim (not made my me and I’m not sure if I endorse it) is that the people who can write up the transcripts effectively (esp. if there’s any kind of distillation work going on) would already have more important things they are already capable of doing.
Well if they’re incompetent, that enhances the plausible deniability aspect (‘If there was anything in the conversation that didn’t make sense on reflection, they could say “oh it was probably the secretary’s mistake in transcribing the conversation”.’) It also might be a way to quickly evaluate someone’s distillation ability.
who have the background knowledge to effectively summarize the conversation
This sounds like it might make more sense for the people having the conversation to do, perhaps at the end (possibly with the recorder prompting “What were the essential points in this discussion?”).
But part of the problem aiming to be solved here is “the people who’s conversations you want to record are busy, and don’t actually get much direct benefit from having recorded or summarized their conversation, and one of the primary problems is anxiety about writing it up in a way that won’t get misconstrued or turn out to be wrong later”, and the whole point is to outsource the executive function to someone else.
And the executive function is actually a fairly high bar.
Yeah, I think this is actually probably a decent solution, with one caveat being that people who have the background knowledge to effectively summarize the conversation probably (soon afterwards) have the skills necessary to do other things. (At least, this is what someone claimed when I asked them about the idea)
So it serves as a training program for aspiring researchers… even better! Actually, in more ways than one, because other aspiring researchers can read the transcript and come up to speed more quickly.
“soon afterwards” was meant to be more of a throwaway qualifier than a main point. The claim (not made my me and I’m not sure if I endorse it) is that the people who can write up the transcripts effectively (esp. if there’s any kind of distillation work going on) would already have more important things they are already capable of doing.
Well if they’re incompetent, that enhances the plausible deniability aspect (‘If there was anything in the conversation that didn’t make sense on reflection, they could say “oh it was probably the secretary’s mistake in transcribing the conversation”.’) It also might be a way to quickly evaluate someone’s distillation ability.
This sounds like it might make more sense for the people having the conversation to do, perhaps at the end (possibly with the recorder prompting “What were the essential points in this discussion?”).
But part of the problem aiming to be solved here is “the people who’s conversations you want to record are busy, and don’t actually get much direct benefit from having recorded or summarized their conversation, and one of the primary problems is anxiety about writing it up in a way that won’t get misconstrued or turn out to be wrong later”, and the whole point is to outsource the executive function to someone else.
And the executive function is actually a fairly high bar.