(a) The first time I heard it, I didn’t realize what the teacher meant.
(b) What if the teacher says “It won’t be graded”?
(c) By using this expression, the teacher is tacitly imposing and enforcing a value system in which “having things graded” is desirable—a value system to which I reserve the right to object.
(d) Because people should say what they mean and mean what they say.
(d) Because people should say what they mean and mean what they say.
Unless they’re deliberately lying, people always believe they’re saying what they mean. The correspondance between verbal language and thought is not perfect; in the teacher’s head, as in those of many other commenters here, this particular example is sufficient to be clear. In yours, and some other commenters’, it is not. I don’t see any way to meaningfully determine which view is “correct.”
What you appear to mean—at least, what people tend to mean when they say that—is “people should say things in a way which is immediately clear to me.” I hope you see why this is a tall order for people who may not know you or understand how you think very well.
Unless they’re deliberately lying, people always believe they’re saying what they mean.
I don’t think this is true at all. I think such people believe they’re saying something close enough to what they actually mean, and that social conventions don’t require them to take care to make their language as unambiguous as possible. This last part is the problem.
in the teacher’s head, as in those of many other commenters here, this particular example is sufficient to be clear.
Again,”sufficient to be clear” is not the right criterion; the right criterion is the ideal of “no possible way to misunderstand”. (Achieving that is impossible; how much less possible is it when they aren’t even trying?)
What you appear to mean—at least, what people tend to mean when they say that—is “people should say things in a way which is immediately clear to me.” I hope you see why this is a tall order for people who may not know you or understand how you think very well.
This makes it sound like “clear to me” is a highly idiosyncratic criterion. There is such a thing as objectively less ambiguous language.
The basic issue here is people not thinking carefully enough while they’re speaking. It’s really a question of quantity of thought, not style of thought.
I think such people believe they’re saying something close enough to what they actually mean
I think they believe they’re saying what they mean, but what you say is what’s actually happening. More generally, I think you’re talking about how people should act, and I’m talking about how they do act, which is making it sound like we disagree more than I believe we actually do.
This makes it sound like “clear to me” is a highly idiosyncratic criterion.
Yes, and I stand by that—even though, as you say, there is such a thing as objectively less ambiguous language. Which parts need to be less ambiguous in order to guarantee understanding varies from person to person. Even if the truth is so simple that people who aren’t neurotypical require, on average, less ambiguity than neurotypical people do, that doesn’t mean you can communicate with all of them exactly the same. Which parts you can fudge depend on the previous experience of the specific individual you’re addressing. If I say, “Hey, did you see the less wrong thread about grading?” you would know what I meant, but someone unfamiliar with LW would be entirely justified in calling that sentence confusing. Someone who’s, say, a weaver, might go off on entirely the wrong mental path.
By that logic, I think it’s absolutely reasonable for a teacher above the first grade level to assume that all of their students are generally familiar with the mechanics of grading and potential penalties for late assignments. Of the two intepretations of the disputed statement, “you will receive a score of 0” is much more plausible than “you will be freed from having to do the assignment” to anyone who’s been in academia for any length of time. I agree with you that the chosen wording could be, objectively, clearer; I do not believe there was sufficient reason to expect it would be misinterpreted that it was negligent not to be clearer. If I ask you to “make me a sandwich,” I don’t expect you to be tripped up by the real grammatical ambiguity and wonder if I would like you to put me between slices of bread. I expect you to go with the plausible choice.
I do agree with you that most people don’t think very much about how they communicate. This frustrates me a lot, because it’s something I think about a lot and which is important to me. But I don’t find this fact as inexcusable as you appear to. Shortcuts and built-in amibiguity are a part of, as far as I know, every human language. In almost all situations, they resolve without conflict. Very few humans have ever had reason to consider that their use of language is insufficiently ambiguous. (When ambiguity does result in conflict, we assume by default that the other person is wrong, misunderstanding or stupid—which is not good or useful, but happens, and reinforces our belief that the way we communicate is fine.) Could most people benefit from learning to communicate better? Absolutely! But they don’t know that.
Being upset that humans speak ambiguously is a little like being upset that humans shake hands. You’re free to dislike it, and choose not to engage in it, but actually being unhappy every time it happens is going to get exhausting. A more productive thing to do in both cases would be to educate people about what’s wrong with it and how they can do better … in a communication style, of course, which they will find compelling and convincing, even if you wouldn’t.
Which is why, if you give me a few years, I’ll have a degree in this.
ETA: Skipped something I think was important: While I do agree that we should strive to be clearer in our communication, I don’t think it’s feasible or even a good idea to try to be as unambiguous as possible all the time. Thinking carefully about everything you say is difficult and tiring, and it takes a long time. Optimizing for unambiguity would be a sacrifice of mental energy and communication throughput which I don’t think it’s worth, given that the system really does work most of the time. In my experience, it’s easier and more useful to try to optimize for the specific understanding of the person you’re addressing, which may include being less ambiguous but almost certainly includes choosing particular ambiguities that the listener is likely to understand as intended. This still uses some mental energy, but not as much (at a guess, that’s because it’s a more natural thought pattern), and it doesn’t sacrifice throughput because you’re just choosing your shortcuts more carefully, not abandoning them altogether.
Both the original discussion of this and the current one, not to mention numerous other discussions about other things, exemplify the following pattern:
I point out that phenomenon X is bad. Then, instead of replying with “I agree”, or “I agree that it’s bad, but don’t think it’s as bad as you do” or even “I agree with you about how bad it is now that you’ve pointed it out, but wouldn’t myself have bothered to raise the issue”, people come up with elaborate justifications, rationalizations, or explanations of X, which (I hypothesize) are basically intended to signal distance from “anti-X fanaticism”. The parent comment is yet another example of this.
Folks, there just isn’t any need to defend the teacher here—unless you actually want to take the position that saying “I won’t grade it” is preferable to saying “you will receive a score of 0“ (and if anyone is tempted to take that position in reply to this comment, be forewarned that I simply won’t believe you’re being honest unless you say something genuinely surprising, that I hadn’t thought of). I did not say I was still confused by the teacher’s meaning, and I do not need an explanation of the fact that human language is imprecise in general, and of the reasons people say the ambiguous things they do. I’m not stupid, and I’m not even autistic. I’m aware of the social conventions that are operative here, and I’m not proposing that teachers speak to their students in Lojban. All I’m doing is expressing disapproval of the fact that some teachers say “I won’t grade it”, and proposing that they say “I will give it a score of 0” instead. This is really pretty simple; in particular, it would require much less effort on the teacher’s part to implement this suggestion than you spent writing the parent comment. It’s an easy, low-cost net-improvement on the world.
Agreeing with a “fanatic” doesn’t make you a fanatic. You’re allowed to agree with me and yet not feel as strongly about the matter as I do. You don’t need to signal your distance by presenting superfluous rationalizations of the bad phenomenon. In fact, you don’t even need to point out that you don’t feel as strongly as I do—because simple agreement carries no implication that you do feel that strongly!
No one really disagrees with me here; if you doubt this, ask yourself whether anyone would protest that a teacher who actually said “you will receive a score a 0” should instead have said “I won’t grade it”! Rather, the dialectic pattern of apparent disagreement is due to the fact that my original complaint violated two social rules: (1) it was tangential to the post; and, more importantly (2) it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief—something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, “rational” people.
So, while I appreciate your concern with communication, and don’t want to discourage you from further pursuing your efforts in that area, I am obliged to point out that your comment—like those of many others—didn’t communicate anything to me other than resistance to my strength of feeling.
I just dropped in to agree with this: “it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief—something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, “rational” people.”
I care about lots of things that are not themes of LW. I get a pretty negative reaction whenever I express such feelings—even when I don’t think I’m being particularly fanatical. I don’t believe it makes you foolish to have strong opinions or preferences about a variety of things.
It was on IRC, when I got a bit political and ranty. I was very mild, by my standards, but I do tend to slide into vendetta-mode, which this crowd doesn’t like.
(There is a useful place in the psyche for hate; it makes you feel like you matter.)
Ah, that would explain why I was having trouble thinking of times I’d noticed that happening :)
There is a useful place in the psyche for hate; it makes you feel like you matter
Disagree. My hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists and really annoying coworkers doesn’t feel very useful to me, and makes me less able to react in a way consistent with my overall values.
If cultivating a hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists makes you less likely to become a Scientologist or dumb conspiracy theorist, wouldn’t it be a rational self-modification to make to ensure that those undesirable self-modifications don’t come to pass?
I can strongly disagree or disapprove of a position or person without bringing hate into it.
eg. back when I was pseudo-religious and kept kosher, I was fine with seeing and smelling pork products and listening to my friends go on about how tasty pork products are, because I was completely confident in my choice not to eat them. No emotional bolstering required. In the case of Scientology et al. it’s even easier to be confident, because I would have to undergo brain damage or some kind of severe personality modification before their beliefs would look plausible.
Also on a more pragmatic note, humans aren’t good at separating people from their opinions. If you cultivate a hatred of Scientology and then meet someone who used to be a Scientologist but left, there’s a very real chance that I would feel dislike for them purely based on their past affiliation, and that’s not a behaviour I want to endorse.
In the case of Scientology et al. it’s even easier to be confident, because I would have to undergo brain damage or some kind of severe personality modification before their beliefs would look plausible.
Personality modification is exactly how cults and affective death spirals work. ;)
Right, but why would I want to undergo that kind of modification to join in something that I already find completely stupid and implausible? It would be like trying to convince myself that I’ve always wanted to be a circus clown. My prior for becoming a Scientologist is just so low that I can’t see how trying to cultivate an emotional response could decrease it any further.
As a rule I don’t think hatred is very often a useful emotion to cultivate. Even if I decide before hand that a position is so bad that it deserves hatred, calculating calmly and rationally, after I have hatred towards a group it clouds any rational evaluation of them. It’s possible I was missing important evidence when I first came to that conclusion, but having hatred makes me less likely to re-examine the evidence and decide they’re not hate worthy. Maybe they change how they act subsequently, once again I will struggle to re-evaluate my position.
Further, even if I knew for sure that neither of the above situations could happen, hatred is generally not a useful emotion because it:
Clouds insights on myself I could gain from these groups. Perhaps particular decisions or beliefs they made or acquired led to their current status. I could learn a valuable lesson of what to avoid from that, but hatred makes it more likely that I will view them as other to me, and not want to acknowledge that I could make similar mistakes, and so should be wary of them.
Is generally not very pleasant. Hating people can increase stress, especially if I come into contact with them or mention of them often.
Diminishes the power of any warnings you may try to deliver to people regarding them. Trying to dissuade someone from joining them, or trying to warn people about some heinous action the hated group is undertaking is a lot harder if people are going to dismiss you because of your hatred.
When you can do something for the better, being rational helps. When you can’t—when somebody can or has hurt somebody you care about, and there’s not a damn thing you can do—there’s no point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly. You may as well hate, because it at least gives you a sense of loyalty when more impressive actions are impossible.
I never wind up hating anybody I know personally. Not permanently. They always seem to do something to remind me of their humanity. I actually wish I were more adversarial. It seems to give people a terrific glory buzz.
When you can do something for the better, being rational helps. When you can’t—when somebody can or has hurt somebody you care about, and there’s not a damn thing you can do—there’s no point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly. You may as well hate, because it at least gives you a sense of loyalty when more impressive actions are impossible.
There is nothing intrinsically irrational about hate. Indeed being rational can both make your act on your hate more effectively and actually encourage you to hate when doing so furthers your goals. But that’s an entirely different matter to “not point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly”.
If you aren’t trying to get the details right or act fairly while making political rants why on earth would you expect LW to be particularly accommodating?
(I am willing to believe that LW is not accommodating of expression of strong feeling even when not acting as you advocate here. It is a perfectly plausible bias for LW to have and I can see downsides to it. Another bias (or the same one generalised) is regarding not acting as though you have strong feelings about an issue that there is a social consensus about. People turn their brains off when it comes to cryonics avocation and utilitarian existential risk prevention, for example. ie. Not proselytising is labelled ‘murder’.)
Ok, fair enough. By local standards I was engaging in bad behavior.
(It still puzzles me why it’s important to try to be right about everything. Surely it’s not necessary for everyone to be correct about waterbirds in Antarctica or something. Why do we care so much about being right here?)
It still puzzles me why it’s important to try to be right about everything.
Hypothesis: Take a group of 30 12 year olds, randomly divided them into two groups and give one group the name “Less Wrong” and the other arbitrary and unrelated name then observed the group interaction over a period of a week, both free form interaction and while performing some suitable tasks. The “Less Wrong” group will forge an identity in which they rigorously hold themselves to high intellectual standards while the others may be belligerently irrational or contemptuous of all things intellectual. (Consequences may be long lasting. I don’t expect ethics approval! ;) )
Surely it’s not necessary for everyone to be correct about waterbirds in Antarctica or something. Why do we care so much about being right here?
If someone makes unfair and inaccurate political diatribes against water-birds in Antarctica then I will likely choose to correct the inaccuracies and defend the honour of the poor maligned water-birds even though I am otherwise neutral on the subject.. That is a natural egalitarian response against grabs for political power in my tribe (by a group of which I am not a part). Yet if another person with a hate filled passionate bias against water-birds in Antarctica were to come along they will just see people apparently advocating said birds without knowing the context. They may assume that LessWrong is a group of chauvanistic Antartican water-bird lovers and feel unwelcome or maligned.
Part of living in a system that’s a bit democratic is that it’s good if you promote accurate political beliefs among the population.
Even if you don’t change your behavior based on your beliefs politicians do change their behavior based on public polling. Politicians don’t always react to public opinion but it’s certainly incorrect to say that they don’t care about the results of polls.
Democracy works really well when people get outraged over the right things. It doesn’t work when people are outraged over made up drama.
Holding accurate political beliefs is a bit similar to voting. If one individual refuses, it’s no problem. Promoting social standards that prevent people from voting is a problem.
I have nothing against your strength of feeling, though I am a bit surprised at how strongly you resist having that feeling resisted. So let us get back to the original question, but lets come at it from a different direction. Let us ask why the professor chose to express himself with the words “I won’t grade it”, rather than “I will give it a failing grade”.
It is doubtful that this wording was chosen so as to confuse or annoy you. My guess would be that the professor assumed (incorrectly, it turns out) that both phrasings would be interpreted the same. So why would he chose to say “I won’t grade it”? Well, which statement sounds more like the professor imposing an arbitrary burden upon the student? And which sounds more like the professor refusing to be imposed upon by students? Which makes the failing grade appear as resulting from something the student did, and which makes it appear to result from something the professor did?
Statements have meanings at several levels. At the level of simply communicating the policy, yes, ambiguity should have been avoided. But at the level of communicating the reasonableness of the policy, the professor preferred to seem reasonable rather than arbitrary. It is often best to simply tolerate this kind of moral-positioning subtext in language, unless you are deconstructing some text for an English lit class.
You didn’t just do that. You said that the teacher’s words don’t match their meaning.
I do not need an explanation of the fact that human language is imprecise in general
Explanations may be a poor way of promoting beliefs, but belief in that fact would discourage your claim that the teacher’s statement has a precise meaning.
I think newerspeak’s take is pretty good. It quite late (and rather temporarily) that you switched from discussing lack of clarity, especially the need to learn a new idiom, to discussing what is bad about the phrasing. (except that I strongly object to newerspeak’s use of “wrong phrasing.”)
You can (like newerspeak, with the well-chosen username) think that the choice of idiom has bad consequences. I might agree, but only contingently on my political beliefs about education. But to say that an idiom is wrong is a category error.
I disagree with that interpretation, perhaps because of a meta-ambiguity about which of two questions we’re discussing:
Which of two example wordings should the teacher have used?
Was there anything wrong with what the teacher said?
These are obviously related but by no means the same. You seem to be assuming that the dispute is about the former (which, as you say, we all seem to agree on); my understanding was that it is about the latter. Specifically, I interpreted you as believing that the teacher’s wording was so unacceptable as to warrant correction, and this is what I disagreed with and presented arguments against. I suppose that, yes, that means we were arguing about your strength of feeling, but that’s exactly what I was trying to do. If I seemed to claim that I was arguing about anything else, that was a miscommunication.
I appreciate that you made a point of distinguishing between disliking the nature of this particular discussion and disliking this kind of feedback from me in general.
ETA after discussing in IRC: Also, you seem to be relying on the premise that less ambiguity in language is universally better, and for the reasons outlined in my previous comment I don’t think it’s that simple.
Which of two example wordings should the teacher have used?
Was there anything wrong with what the teacher said?
...You seem to be assuming that the dispute is about the former (which, as you say, we all seem to agree on); my understanding was that it is about the latter.
My assumption is that if A is preferable to B, then there is “something wrong” with B. The level of “wrongness” implied by this mere fact depends on how preferable A is to B, which in turn depends (among other things) on how easy A is to implement.
I suppose that, yes, that means we were arguing about your strength of feeling, but that’s exactly what I was trying to do
My assumption is that if A is preferable to B, then there is “something wrong” with B.
I use a fan to keep my room cool. An air conditioner would do a better job, but what I have is a fan. I don’t see anything wrong with using a fan.
To which I ask: why?
For the same reason anybody argues about anything—I disagreed with you, and was looking to either convince you of my reasons or learn new facts which would convince me of yours. But you seem not to want to argue about this, and it’s rapidly becoming more stressful than enlightening, so I’m happy to drop it.
So, while I appreciate your concern with communication, and don’t want to discourage you from further pursuing your efforts in that area, I am obliged to point out that your comment—like those of many others—didn’t communicate anything to me other than resistance to my strength of feeling.
Now that I think about it, the real point I should have made is that getting noticeably angry on the Internet about language usage is sort of low-status (only the first level above using poor spelling and grammar); the second level is to let such things pass, and the third is to remark wittily on bad usage (or only remark openly on it when it has bad externalities).
My original response, in retrospect, was clearly meant to signal second-level sophistication. This one is, perhaps, attempting the fourth level (going meta on questions of language usage).
Unless they’re deliberately lying, people always believe they’re saying what they mean.
I don’t think this is true at all. I think such people believe they’re saying something close enough to what they actually mean, and that social conventions don’t require them to take care to make their language as unambiguous as possible. This last part is the problem.
I think the default is something like believing that what one says is close enough to what one means, and the other person is obligated to pick up on what one means.
I think the default is something like believing that what one says is close enough to what one means, and the other person is obligated to pick up on what one means.
“If they don’t they clearly lack ingroup connections, social awareness, status and are less likely to be the kind of people that are valuable allies. I should shun them.” (For example.)
“If they don’t they clearly lack ingroup connections, social awareness, status and are less likely to be the kind of people that are valuable allies. I should shun them.”
Yup. Not consciously, of course. I wonder if, generally, speaking, people don’t instinctively distinguish between not knowing something and not caring about it. Hence ignorance of facts being conflated with stupidity about a topic, as well as the instinctive avoidance of people who don’t already know the social rules of a community.
I wonder if, generally, speaking, people don’t instinctively distinguish between not knowing something and not caring about it
That’s plausible—it would also explain way sometimes people try to increase motivation (reward, punishment, pep talks) without explaining how to do whatever it is.
I think the default is something like believing that what one says is close enough to what one means, and the other person is obligated to pick up on what one means.
I agree. I also think this is the source of the stereotypical male/female communication problem (“he never thinks about what I want” “she never tells me what she wants”), which I’ve posted about elsewhere.
Unless they’re deliberately lying, people always believe they’re saying what they mean.
I don’t think the distinction is nearly that clear.
We use euphemisms all the time. Then there is the whole courtship protocol in which the meaning of what people say is entirely different to the words but definitely not (usually) the same thing as lying. In human interactions in general people often do not say what they mean and would be frowned upon if they did, they do not always need to outright self deceive themselves in order to meet this requirement.
Absolutely agreed. My point (which seems to have been unclear, from a couple of replies) was that people equate “saying something which I expect to be interpreted as what I mean” with “saying what I mean.” Probably not on the conscious level—if you asked them, I would expect most people to admit that “do you want to come up for coffee” is not really saying what they mean—but in the part of the subconscious that has to quickly manage what’s being said in realtime.
My favorite ambiguous piece of dating vocabulary: “I think we should see other people.” Are you breaking up, or suggesting polyamory?!
My point (which seems to have been unclear, from a couple of replies) was that people equate “saying something which I expect to be interpreted as what I mean” with “saying what I mean.”
Following on from that point it is also sometimes assumed that the lack of comprehension is actually a status transaction. High status people don’t need to understand what other people are saying (when it doesn’t benefit them) - and understanding too much can be a sign of weakness. In such cases incomprehension is disrespect.
The problem, of course, is that people also systematically underestimate inferential distance.
My favorite ambiguous piece of dating vocabulary: “I think we should see other people.” Are you breaking up, or suggesting polyamory?!
Brilliant. I hope someone tries to use that line on me when we’re breaking up just so I can tease them about polyarmory. (I’m of the opinion that there is no reason breaking up can’t be fun!)
I second AD’s request for an example; I actually misread that paragraph the first time, but I think my misreading had some truth to it as well:
I’d thought you said that high-status people have less of a need to make themselves understood, i.e. they don’t need to explain themselves to people who are lower status than they are. When they do choose to, it’s with a tone of exasperation or condescension.
Which is one one of the reasons I don’t take status signalling too seriously, at least in that situation. Communicating clearly and respectfully is really important to me—both on an emotional level (I feel strongly about it) and a practical one (people need to do it all the time and you’re kidding yourself if you think it won’t help you to be good at it). Someone who acts like it’s beneath them to communicate respectfully to a given person is signalling high status, but demonstrating being some combination of “jerk” and “dumb about people,” and the latter impression wins out.
The opposite of this is an old friend of mine who somehow developed the rare ability to, in an argument invoking tech cred and lots of status negotiation, stop and say “Oh, I haven’t heard of X, what’s X?” because someone made a point he didn’t follow. It’s hugely low-status, but it’s the really productive thing to do, and he learned a lot that way. Based on what else I know about the friend, I highly doubt this is a conscious choice he made—I think he just naturally doesn’t give a fuck about status. i respect that a lot and am trying to make a habit of doing the same thing (swallow pride and ask when I don’t know something).
I like subverting status (showing respect even where it’s “beneath” me and admitting ignorance). That’s probably some kind of meta-status play, though. :)
I like subverting status (showing respect even where it’s “beneath” me and admitting ignorance). That’s probably some kind of meta-status play, though. :)
Communicating clearly and respectfully is really important to me—both on an emotional level (I feel strongly about it) and a practical one (people need to do it all the time and you’re kidding yourself if you think it won’t help you to be good at it). Someone who acts like it’s beneath them to communicate respectfully to a given person is signalling high status, but demonstrating being some combination of “jerk” and “dumb about people,” and the latter impression wins out.
Labeling people with different values “dumb” seems to me to be simply a factual error. Yes, people make a lot of mistakes in this trade-off, but it often is a trade-off.
Passing on the ambiguous label “jerk” to someone with different values is not communicating clearly. It is probably within socially accepted bounds, but you aspire to greater clarity. (Not that you said that you pass on the label, but that’s the implication I got.)
I have a lot of trouble not characterizing people as either malicious or ignorant when they eschew something which seems to me like its importance is self-evident … but that’s exactly the same error as someone who looks down on people for not being formally educated, or religious, or not knowing much about computers or sports or whatever else. It’s an error I know I make but I have trouble catching when I do; thanks for calling me on it.
That said, I do think there are a lot of people who genuinely do not think ever about how they communicate (including but not limited to status), because it’s not part of their natural mechanism for doing so. I also think that being aware of status and choosing to subvert it when its goals don’t match yours (e.g. learning) is more practical and effective than prioritizing it, especially when you don’t even know you’re doing it and thus haven’t consciously made any tradeoff.
In both of those cases, unlike in those of academic or religious snobbery, it’s quite possible for someone to not know there’s something they don’t know. Because of that, it seems more acceptable to me to challenge their balance of priorities, if only enough to give them the tools to make an informed decision. If someone makes a reasoned choice to value status over communication, and I don’t see logical flaws in their reasoning, I’m happy to respect that. I’ll just also probably choose not to socialize with them.
Yes, people who signal status by being jerks probably haven’t thought about their options; but neither has your friend who pursues information at the expense of status (although I still suspect the different behavior is the result of values). A common compromise is to have separate venues for pursuing information and status; if you only see one venue, you can’t tell what’s going on. It would be better to tune each interaction, but that is difficult (ie, I may disagree with “practical”). If you find it easy, you’re probably weird. Maybe it’s a result of having invested in this skill, but that has an opportunity cost that I don’t think you’re accounting for. It may be worth the cost, but it’s pretty expensive and there are fairly cheap options, like the compromise I mention above.
Going back to the phrase “dumb about people,” I expect high-status people to be smart about people. They may fail to apply it to this particular setting, but failing to explore options I would file under “dumb about strategy.” But that’s my prior—I expect most people to be dumb about strategy, so I don’t learn much from the observation.
Following on from that point it is also sometimes assumed that the lack of comprehension is actually a status transaction. High status people don’t need to understand what other people are saying (when it doesn’t benefit them) - and understanding too much can be a sign of weakness. In such cases incomprehension is disrespect.
I don’t think I’ve encountered this theory before. Can you give an example?
Taken literally, sure. But everyone knows what the teacher means, so why argue semantics?
(a) The first time I heard it, I didn’t realize what the teacher meant.
(b) What if the teacher says “It won’t be graded”?
(c) By using this expression, the teacher is tacitly imposing and enforcing a value system in which “having things graded” is desirable—a value system to which I reserve the right to object.
(d) Because people should say what they mean and mean what they say.
Unless they’re deliberately lying, people always believe they’re saying what they mean. The correspondance between verbal language and thought is not perfect; in the teacher’s head, as in those of many other commenters here, this particular example is sufficient to be clear. In yours, and some other commenters’, it is not. I don’t see any way to meaningfully determine which view is “correct.”
What you appear to mean—at least, what people tend to mean when they say that—is “people should say things in a way which is immediately clear to me.” I hope you see why this is a tall order for people who may not know you or understand how you think very well.
I don’t think this is true at all. I think such people believe they’re saying something close enough to what they actually mean, and that social conventions don’t require them to take care to make their language as unambiguous as possible. This last part is the problem.
Again,”sufficient to be clear” is not the right criterion; the right criterion is the ideal of “no possible way to misunderstand”. (Achieving that is impossible; how much less possible is it when they aren’t even trying?)
This makes it sound like “clear to me” is a highly idiosyncratic criterion. There is such a thing as objectively less ambiguous language.
The basic issue here is people not thinking carefully enough while they’re speaking. It’s really a question of quantity of thought, not style of thought.
I think they believe they’re saying what they mean, but what you say is what’s actually happening. More generally, I think you’re talking about how people should act, and I’m talking about how they do act, which is making it sound like we disagree more than I believe we actually do.
Yes, and I stand by that—even though, as you say, there is such a thing as objectively less ambiguous language. Which parts need to be less ambiguous in order to guarantee understanding varies from person to person. Even if the truth is so simple that people who aren’t neurotypical require, on average, less ambiguity than neurotypical people do, that doesn’t mean you can communicate with all of them exactly the same. Which parts you can fudge depend on the previous experience of the specific individual you’re addressing. If I say, “Hey, did you see the less wrong thread about grading?” you would know what I meant, but someone unfamiliar with LW would be entirely justified in calling that sentence confusing. Someone who’s, say, a weaver, might go off on entirely the wrong mental path.
By that logic, I think it’s absolutely reasonable for a teacher above the first grade level to assume that all of their students are generally familiar with the mechanics of grading and potential penalties for late assignments. Of the two intepretations of the disputed statement, “you will receive a score of 0” is much more plausible than “you will be freed from having to do the assignment” to anyone who’s been in academia for any length of time. I agree with you that the chosen wording could be, objectively, clearer; I do not believe there was sufficient reason to expect it would be misinterpreted that it was negligent not to be clearer. If I ask you to “make me a sandwich,” I don’t expect you to be tripped up by the real grammatical ambiguity and wonder if I would like you to put me between slices of bread. I expect you to go with the plausible choice.
I do agree with you that most people don’t think very much about how they communicate. This frustrates me a lot, because it’s something I think about a lot and which is important to me. But I don’t find this fact as inexcusable as you appear to. Shortcuts and built-in amibiguity are a part of, as far as I know, every human language. In almost all situations, they resolve without conflict. Very few humans have ever had reason to consider that their use of language is insufficiently ambiguous. (When ambiguity does result in conflict, we assume by default that the other person is wrong, misunderstanding or stupid—which is not good or useful, but happens, and reinforces our belief that the way we communicate is fine.) Could most people benefit from learning to communicate better? Absolutely! But they don’t know that.
Being upset that humans speak ambiguously is a little like being upset that humans shake hands. You’re free to dislike it, and choose not to engage in it, but actually being unhappy every time it happens is going to get exhausting. A more productive thing to do in both cases would be to educate people about what’s wrong with it and how they can do better … in a communication style, of course, which they will find compelling and convincing, even if you wouldn’t.
Which is why, if you give me a few years, I’ll have a degree in this.
ETA: Skipped something I think was important: While I do agree that we should strive to be clearer in our communication, I don’t think it’s feasible or even a good idea to try to be as unambiguous as possible all the time. Thinking carefully about everything you say is difficult and tiring, and it takes a long time. Optimizing for unambiguity would be a sacrifice of mental energy and communication throughput which I don’t think it’s worth, given that the system really does work most of the time. In my experience, it’s easier and more useful to try to optimize for the specific understanding of the person you’re addressing, which may include being less ambiguous but almost certainly includes choosing particular ambiguities that the listener is likely to understand as intended. This still uses some mental energy, but not as much (at a guess, that’s because it’s a more natural thought pattern), and it doesn’t sacrifice throughput because you’re just choosing your shortcuts more carefully, not abandoning them altogether.
Both the original discussion of this and the current one, not to mention numerous other discussions about other things, exemplify the following pattern:
I point out that phenomenon X is bad. Then, instead of replying with “I agree”, or “I agree that it’s bad, but don’t think it’s as bad as you do” or even “I agree with you about how bad it is now that you’ve pointed it out, but wouldn’t myself have bothered to raise the issue”, people come up with elaborate justifications, rationalizations, or explanations of X, which (I hypothesize) are basically intended to signal distance from “anti-X fanaticism”. The parent comment is yet another example of this.
Folks, there just isn’t any need to defend the teacher here—unless you actually want to take the position that saying “I won’t grade it” is preferable to saying “you will receive a score of 0“ (and if anyone is tempted to take that position in reply to this comment, be forewarned that I simply won’t believe you’re being honest unless you say something genuinely surprising, that I hadn’t thought of). I did not say I was still confused by the teacher’s meaning, and I do not need an explanation of the fact that human language is imprecise in general, and of the reasons people say the ambiguous things they do. I’m not stupid, and I’m not even autistic. I’m aware of the social conventions that are operative here, and I’m not proposing that teachers speak to their students in Lojban. All I’m doing is expressing disapproval of the fact that some teachers say “I won’t grade it”, and proposing that they say “I will give it a score of 0” instead. This is really pretty simple; in particular, it would require much less effort on the teacher’s part to implement this suggestion than you spent writing the parent comment. It’s an easy, low-cost net-improvement on the world.
Agreeing with a “fanatic” doesn’t make you a fanatic. You’re allowed to agree with me and yet not feel as strongly about the matter as I do. You don’t need to signal your distance by presenting superfluous rationalizations of the bad phenomenon. In fact, you don’t even need to point out that you don’t feel as strongly as I do—because simple agreement carries no implication that you do feel that strongly!
No one really disagrees with me here; if you doubt this, ask yourself whether anyone would protest that a teacher who actually said “you will receive a score a 0” should instead have said “I won’t grade it”! Rather, the dialectic pattern of apparent disagreement is due to the fact that my original complaint violated two social rules: (1) it was tangential to the post; and, more importantly (2) it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief—something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, “rational” people.
So, while I appreciate your concern with communication, and don’t want to discourage you from further pursuing your efforts in that area, I am obliged to point out that your comment—like those of many others—didn’t communicate anything to me other than resistance to my strength of feeling.
I just dropped in to agree with this: “it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief—something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, “rational” people.”
I care about lots of things that are not themes of LW. I get a pretty negative reaction whenever I express such feelings—even when I don’t think I’m being particularly fanatical. I don’t believe it makes you foolish to have strong opinions or preferences about a variety of things.
May I ask for an example or two of times when you’ve expressed feelings about non-LW themes and been met with negativity?
It was on IRC, when I got a bit political and ranty. I was very mild, by my standards, but I do tend to slide into vendetta-mode, which this crowd doesn’t like.
(There is a useful place in the psyche for hate; it makes you feel like you matter.)
Ah, that would explain why I was having trouble thinking of times I’d noticed that happening :)
Disagree. My hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists and really annoying coworkers doesn’t feel very useful to me, and makes me less able to react in a way consistent with my overall values.
If cultivating a hatred of Scientology and dumb conspiracy theorists makes you less likely to become a Scientologist or dumb conspiracy theorist, wouldn’t it be a rational self-modification to make to ensure that those undesirable self-modifications don’t come to pass?
I can strongly disagree or disapprove of a position or person without bringing hate into it. eg. back when I was pseudo-religious and kept kosher, I was fine with seeing and smelling pork products and listening to my friends go on about how tasty pork products are, because I was completely confident in my choice not to eat them. No emotional bolstering required. In the case of Scientology et al. it’s even easier to be confident, because I would have to undergo brain damage or some kind of severe personality modification before their beliefs would look plausible.
Also on a more pragmatic note, humans aren’t good at separating people from their opinions. If you cultivate a hatred of Scientology and then meet someone who used to be a Scientologist but left, there’s a very real chance that I would feel dislike for them purely based on their past affiliation, and that’s not a behaviour I want to endorse.
Personality modification is exactly how cults and affective death spirals work. ;)
Right, but why would I want to undergo that kind of modification to join in something that I already find completely stupid and implausible? It would be like trying to convince myself that I’ve always wanted to be a circus clown. My prior for becoming a Scientologist is just so low that I can’t see how trying to cultivate an emotional response could decrease it any further.
Maybe, but if you were less informed about their methods, you might be surprised how easily they might be able to suck you in.
As a rule I don’t think hatred is very often a useful emotion to cultivate. Even if I decide before hand that a position is so bad that it deserves hatred, calculating calmly and rationally, after I have hatred towards a group it clouds any rational evaluation of them. It’s possible I was missing important evidence when I first came to that conclusion, but having hatred makes me less likely to re-examine the evidence and decide they’re not hate worthy. Maybe they change how they act subsequently, once again I will struggle to re-evaluate my position.
Further, even if I knew for sure that neither of the above situations could happen, hatred is generally not a useful emotion because it:
Clouds insights on myself I could gain from these groups. Perhaps particular decisions or beliefs they made or acquired led to their current status. I could learn a valuable lesson of what to avoid from that, but hatred makes it more likely that I will view them as other to me, and not want to acknowledge that I could make similar mistakes, and so should be wary of them.
Is generally not very pleasant. Hating people can increase stress, especially if I come into contact with them or mention of them often.
Diminishes the power of any warnings you may try to deliver to people regarding them. Trying to dissuade someone from joining them, or trying to warn people about some heinous action the hated group is undertaking is a lot harder if people are going to dismiss you because of your hatred.
nah, I stand by this.
When you can do something for the better, being rational helps. When you can’t—when somebody can or has hurt somebody you care about, and there’s not a damn thing you can do—there’s no point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly. You may as well hate, because it at least gives you a sense of loyalty when more impressive actions are impossible.
I never wind up hating anybody I know personally. Not permanently. They always seem to do something to remind me of their humanity. I actually wish I were more adversarial. It seems to give people a terrific glory buzz.
There is nothing intrinsically irrational about hate. Indeed being rational can both make your act on your hate more effectively and actually encourage you to hate when doing so furthers your goals. But that’s an entirely different matter to “not point trying to get the details right or consider the situation fairly”.
If you aren’t trying to get the details right or act fairly while making political rants why on earth would you expect LW to be particularly accommodating?
(I am willing to believe that LW is not accommodating of expression of strong feeling even when not acting as you advocate here. It is a perfectly plausible bias for LW to have and I can see downsides to it. Another bias (or the same one generalised) is regarding not acting as though you have strong feelings about an issue that there is a social consensus about. People turn their brains off when it comes to cryonics avocation and utilitarian existential risk prevention, for example. ie. Not proselytising is labelled ‘murder’.)
Ok, fair enough. By local standards I was engaging in bad behavior.
(It still puzzles me why it’s important to try to be right about everything. Surely it’s not necessary for everyone to be correct about waterbirds in Antarctica or something. Why do we care so much about being right here?)
Hypothesis: Take a group of 30 12 year olds, randomly divided them into two groups and give one group the name “Less Wrong” and the other arbitrary and unrelated name then observed the group interaction over a period of a week, both free form interaction and while performing some suitable tasks. The “Less Wrong” group will forge an identity in which they rigorously hold themselves to high intellectual standards while the others may be belligerently irrational or contemptuous of all things intellectual. (Consequences may be long lasting. I don’t expect ethics approval! ;) )
If someone makes unfair and inaccurate political diatribes against water-birds in Antarctica then I will likely choose to correct the inaccuracies and defend the honour of the poor maligned water-birds even though I am otherwise neutral on the subject.. That is a natural egalitarian response against grabs for political power in my tribe (by a group of which I am not a part). Yet if another person with a hate filled passionate bias against water-birds in Antarctica were to come along they will just see people apparently advocating said birds without knowing the context. They may assume that LessWrong is a group of chauvanistic Antartican water-bird lovers and feel unwelcome or maligned.
Part of living in a system that’s a bit democratic is that it’s good if you promote accurate political beliefs among the population.
Even if you don’t change your behavior based on your beliefs politicians do change their behavior based on public polling. Politicians don’t always react to public opinion but it’s certainly incorrect to say that they don’t care about the results of polls.
Democracy works really well when people get outraged over the right things. It doesn’t work when people are outraged over made up drama.
Holding accurate political beliefs is a bit similar to voting. If one individual refuses, it’s no problem. Promoting social standards that prevent people from voting is a problem.
I have nothing against your strength of feeling, though I am a bit surprised at how strongly you resist having that feeling resisted. So let us get back to the original question, but lets come at it from a different direction. Let us ask why the professor chose to express himself with the words “I won’t grade it”, rather than “I will give it a failing grade”.
It is doubtful that this wording was chosen so as to confuse or annoy you. My guess would be that the professor assumed (incorrectly, it turns out) that both phrasings would be interpreted the same. So why would he chose to say “I won’t grade it”? Well, which statement sounds more like the professor imposing an arbitrary burden upon the student? And which sounds more like the professor refusing to be imposed upon by students? Which makes the failing grade appear as resulting from something the student did, and which makes it appear to result from something the professor did?
Statements have meanings at several levels. At the level of simply communicating the policy, yes, ambiguity should have been avoided. But at the level of communicating the reasonableness of the policy, the professor preferred to seem reasonable rather than arbitrary. It is often best to simply tolerate this kind of moral-positioning subtext in language, unless you are deconstructing some text for an English lit class.
You didn’t just do that.
You said that the teacher’s words don’t match their meaning.
Explanations may be a poor way of promoting beliefs, but belief in that fact would discourage your claim that the teacher’s statement has a precise meaning.
I think newerspeak’s take is pretty good. It quite late (and rather temporarily) that you switched from discussing lack of clarity, especially the need to learn a new idiom, to discussing what is bad about the phrasing. (except that I strongly object to newerspeak’s use of “wrong phrasing.”)
I don’t understand. That was the phenomenon in question.
You can (like newerspeak, with the well-chosen username) think that the choice of idiom has bad consequences. I might agree, but only contingently on my political beliefs about education. But to say that an idiom is wrong is a category error.
I disagree with that interpretation, perhaps because of a meta-ambiguity about which of two questions we’re discussing:
Which of two example wordings should the teacher have used?
Was there anything wrong with what the teacher said?
These are obviously related but by no means the same. You seem to be assuming that the dispute is about the former (which, as you say, we all seem to agree on); my understanding was that it is about the latter. Specifically, I interpreted you as believing that the teacher’s wording was so unacceptable as to warrant correction, and this is what I disagreed with and presented arguments against. I suppose that, yes, that means we were arguing about your strength of feeling, but that’s exactly what I was trying to do. If I seemed to claim that I was arguing about anything else, that was a miscommunication.
I appreciate that you made a point of distinguishing between disliking the nature of this particular discussion and disliking this kind of feedback from me in general.
ETA after discussing in IRC: Also, you seem to be relying on the premise that less ambiguity in language is universally better, and for the reasons outlined in my previous comment I don’t think it’s that simple.
My assumption is that if A is preferable to B, then there is “something wrong” with B. The level of “wrongness” implied by this mere fact depends on how preferable A is to B, which in turn depends (among other things) on how easy A is to implement.
To which I ask: why?
I use a fan to keep my room cool. An air conditioner would do a better job, but what I have is a fan. I don’t see anything wrong with using a fan.
For the same reason anybody argues about anything—I disagreed with you, and was looking to either convince you of my reasons or learn new facts which would convince me of yours. But you seem not to want to argue about this, and it’s rapidly becoming more stressful than enlightening, so I’m happy to drop it.
Now that I think about it, the real point I should have made is that getting noticeably angry on the Internet about language usage is sort of low-status (only the first level above using poor spelling and grammar); the second level is to let such things pass, and the third is to remark wittily on bad usage (or only remark openly on it when it has bad externalities).
My original response, in retrospect, was clearly meant to signal second-level sophistication. This one is, perhaps, attempting the fourth level (going meta on questions of language usage).
I disagree.
I think the default is something like believing that what one says is close enough to what one means, and the other person is obligated to pick up on what one means.
“If they don’t they clearly lack ingroup connections, social awareness, status and are less likely to be the kind of people that are valuable allies. I should shun them.” (For example.)
Yup. Not consciously, of course. I wonder if, generally, speaking, people don’t instinctively distinguish between not knowing something and not caring about it. Hence ignorance of facts being conflated with stupidity about a topic, as well as the instinctive avoidance of people who don’t already know the social rules of a community.
That’s plausible—it would also explain way sometimes people try to increase motivation (reward, punishment, pep talks) without explaining how to do whatever it is.
It can work that way. Or “If I keep repeating the same words, they’ll get it.” Or “If I yell at them, they’ll get it.”
I agree. I also think this is the source of the stereotypical male/female communication problem (“he never thinks about what I want” “she never tells me what she wants”), which I’ve posted about elsewhere.
I don’t think the distinction is nearly that clear.
We use euphemisms all the time. Then there is the whole courtship protocol in which the meaning of what people say is entirely different to the words but definitely not (usually) the same thing as lying. In human interactions in general people often do not say what they mean and would be frowned upon if they did, they do not always need to outright self deceive themselves in order to meet this requirement.
Absolutely agreed. My point (which seems to have been unclear, from a couple of replies) was that people equate “saying something which I expect to be interpreted as what I mean” with “saying what I mean.” Probably not on the conscious level—if you asked them, I would expect most people to admit that “do you want to come up for coffee” is not really saying what they mean—but in the part of the subconscious that has to quickly manage what’s being said in realtime.
My favorite ambiguous piece of dating vocabulary: “I think we should see other people.” Are you breaking up, or suggesting polyamory?!
Following on from that point it is also sometimes assumed that the lack of comprehension is actually a status transaction. High status people don’t need to understand what other people are saying (when it doesn’t benefit them) - and understanding too much can be a sign of weakness. In such cases incomprehension is disrespect.
The problem, of course, is that people also systematically underestimate inferential distance.
Brilliant. I hope someone tries to use that line on me when we’re breaking up just so I can tease them about polyarmory. (I’m of the opinion that there is no reason breaking up can’t be fun!)
I second AD’s request for an example; I actually misread that paragraph the first time, but I think my misreading had some truth to it as well:
I’d thought you said that high-status people have less of a need to make themselves understood, i.e. they don’t need to explain themselves to people who are lower status than they are. When they do choose to, it’s with a tone of exasperation or condescension.
Which is one one of the reasons I don’t take status signalling too seriously, at least in that situation. Communicating clearly and respectfully is really important to me—both on an emotional level (I feel strongly about it) and a practical one (people need to do it all the time and you’re kidding yourself if you think it won’t help you to be good at it). Someone who acts like it’s beneath them to communicate respectfully to a given person is signalling high status, but demonstrating being some combination of “jerk” and “dumb about people,” and the latter impression wins out.
The opposite of this is an old friend of mine who somehow developed the rare ability to, in an argument invoking tech cred and lots of status negotiation, stop and say “Oh, I haven’t heard of X, what’s X?” because someone made a point he didn’t follow. It’s hugely low-status, but it’s the really productive thing to do, and he learned a lot that way. Based on what else I know about the friend, I highly doubt this is a conscious choice he made—I think he just naturally doesn’t give a fuck about status. i respect that a lot and am trying to make a habit of doing the same thing (swallow pride and ask when I don’t know something).
I like subverting status (showing respect even where it’s “beneath” me and admitting ignorance). That’s probably some kind of meta-status play, though. :)
Yep, it’s countersignaling.
Labeling people with different values “dumb” seems to me to be simply a factual error. Yes, people make a lot of mistakes in this trade-off, but it often is a trade-off.
Passing on the ambiguous label “jerk” to someone with different values is not communicating clearly. It is probably within socially accepted bounds, but you aspire to greater clarity. (Not that you said that you pass on the label, but that’s the implication I got.)
You’re right, of course.
I have a lot of trouble not characterizing people as either malicious or ignorant when they eschew something which seems to me like its importance is self-evident … but that’s exactly the same error as someone who looks down on people for not being formally educated, or religious, or not knowing much about computers or sports or whatever else. It’s an error I know I make but I have trouble catching when I do; thanks for calling me on it.
That said, I do think there are a lot of people who genuinely do not think ever about how they communicate (including but not limited to status), because it’s not part of their natural mechanism for doing so. I also think that being aware of status and choosing to subvert it when its goals don’t match yours (e.g. learning) is more practical and effective than prioritizing it, especially when you don’t even know you’re doing it and thus haven’t consciously made any tradeoff.
In both of those cases, unlike in those of academic or religious snobbery, it’s quite possible for someone to not know there’s something they don’t know. Because of that, it seems more acceptable to me to challenge their balance of priorities, if only enough to give them the tools to make an informed decision. If someone makes a reasoned choice to value status over communication, and I don’t see logical flaws in their reasoning, I’m happy to respect that. I’ll just also probably choose not to socialize with them.
I agree with pretty much all of that.
Yes, people who signal status by being jerks probably haven’t thought about their options; but neither has your friend who pursues information at the expense of status (although I still suspect the different behavior is the result of values). A common compromise is to have separate venues for pursuing information and status; if you only see one venue, you can’t tell what’s going on. It would be better to tune each interaction, but that is difficult (ie, I may disagree with “practical”). If you find it easy, you’re probably weird. Maybe it’s a result of having invested in this skill, but that has an opportunity cost that I don’t think you’re accounting for. It may be worth the cost, but it’s pretty expensive and there are fairly cheap options, like the compromise I mention above.
Going back to the phrase “dumb about people,” I expect high-status people to be smart about people. They may fail to apply it to this particular setting, but failing to explore options I would file under “dumb about strategy.” But that’s my prior—I expect most people to be dumb about strategy, so I don’t learn much from the observation.
I don’t think I’ve encountered this theory before. Can you give an example?