What a nice comment! The next time I feel tempted to describe how GTD solves some problem or other, I’ll wait until the urge passes and message you instead; clearly my one read through Getting Things Done has taught me just enough to be dangerous.
Er, I’m not able to tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic here. But do note that I was just pointing out a systemic problem with talking about cognitive algorithms, not criticizing you OR jimrandomh for attempting to do so. In particular, I didn’t say your statement was false or incorrect, just that it was imprecise enough for somebody else to project a different meaning onto it.
My own experience trying to teach things is that in any one-way communication about cognitive techniques, it is virtually impossible to prevent this kind of projection, because you not only have to state all the distinctions, you also have to explicitly contrast them with whatever people think is the “default”.… and people have different defaults!
The only reliable way to get somebody to really understand something in the domain of experiential behavior, is to get them to actually do that something… which is why I’m so vocal about telling people to try things before they evaluate them, not after.
Anyway, the point was not to be critical of you, since the thing I would be critiquing is literally unavoidable. No matter what you write or say, people can project on it, and a feedback loop in the communication (plus willingness to listen on both sides) is the only way to guarantee a fix for the misunderstandings that result.
I was actually being sincere. I respect the GTD methods (even if I think they’re probably on the complex side), so finding out that my understanding of a fundamental point was wrong was a valuable service.
I did briefly reflect ‘hm, I wonder if this sounds sarcastic?‘, but I passed over it. I wonder what made it sarcastic for you? If I hadn’t used the ‘until the urge passes’ expression? Was it the semicolon and single-paragraph?
I found it difficult to determine whether you were being sarcastic. I think the most reads-as-sarcastic part is the structure of “[In the future,] I’ll [subordinate myself to you]; clearly [I am incompetent].”—and the overall tone is rather gushingly-positive-about-criticism which is a common mode of sarcasm, i.e. “Oh, now that I’ve been told I’m wrong I will, of course, immediately switch over to your view of things.”
A lot of Internet conversations have this problem with detecting sarcasm (or lack of it). Maybe we should start marking sarcastic statements, i.e. with the Lojban discursive je’unai (“commentary on this sentence: it’s false”), pronounced jeh-who-nye.
For example:
Those root canals I had the other day were so much fun! je’unai
Er, I’m not able to tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic here. But do note that I was just pointing out a systemic problem with talking about cognitive algorithms, not criticizing you OR jimrandomh for attempting to do so. In particular, I didn’t say your statement was false or incorrect, just that it was imprecise enough for somebody else to project a different meaning onto it.
My own experience trying to teach things is that in any one-way communication about cognitive techniques, it is virtually impossible to prevent this kind of projection, because you not only have to state all the distinctions, you also have to explicitly contrast them with whatever people think is the “default”.… and people have different defaults!
The only reliable way to get somebody to really understand something in the domain of experiential behavior, is to get them to actually do that something… which is why I’m so vocal about telling people to try things before they evaluate them, not after.
Anyway, the point was not to be critical of you, since the thing I would be critiquing is literally unavoidable. No matter what you write or say, people can project on it, and a feedback loop in the communication (plus willingness to listen on both sides) is the only way to guarantee a fix for the misunderstandings that result.
I’m pretty sure gwern was being sincere.
Interesting, I read his comment as sarcastic.
I was actually being sincere. I respect the GTD methods (even if I think they’re probably on the complex side), so finding out that my understanding of a fundamental point was wrong was a valuable service.
I did briefly reflect ‘hm, I wonder if this sounds sarcastic?‘, but I passed over it. I wonder what made it sarcastic for you? If I hadn’t used the ‘until the urge passes’ expression? Was it the semicolon and single-paragraph?
I found it difficult to determine whether you were being sarcastic. I think the most reads-as-sarcastic part is the structure of “[In the future,] I’ll [subordinate myself to you]; clearly [I am incompetent].”—and the overall tone is rather gushingly-positive-about-criticism which is a common mode of sarcasm, i.e. “Oh, now that I’ve been told I’m wrong I will, of course, immediately switch over to your view of things.”
A lot of Internet conversations have this problem with detecting sarcasm (or lack of it). Maybe we should start marking sarcastic statements, i.e. with the Lojban discursive je’unai (“commentary on this sentence: it’s false”), pronounced jeh-who-nye.
For example:
Those root canals I had the other day were so much fun! je’unai