Rereading “Illusion of transparency” and “Expecting short inferential distances”, it finally dawned on me that the concept cuts both ways: When in the role of explainers we need to be careful to explain ourselves fully and to account for the inferential gaps between ourselves and those to whom we are talking. On the flip side (and this is the part that I didn’t fully appreciate before), when in the role of listeners we sometimes read / hear something from an expert and think, “wait, there are a few gaps in that argument”, or even “that’s just ridiculous”. Thoughts like these should raise an “inferential distance!” flag in our mind. It’s much more likely that the gaps are due to inferential distance rather than to any actual flaw in the argument.
Rereading “Illusion of transparency” and “Expecting short inferential distances”, it finally dawned on me that the concept cuts both ways: When in the role of explainers we need to be careful to explain ourselves fully and to account for the inferential gaps between ourselves and those to whom we are talking. On the flip side (and this is the part that I didn’t fully appreciate before), when in the role of listeners we sometimes read / hear something from an expert and think, “wait, there are a few gaps in that argument”, or even “that’s just ridiculous”. Thoughts like these should raise an “inferential distance!” flag in our mind. It’s much more likely that the gaps are due to inferential distance rather than to any actual flaw in the argument.