Some questions cause me to become totally perplexed. I’ve been asked these (or variations of these) by a handful people in the EA community. These are not difficulties or confusions that require PhD-level research to explain, but instead I think they represent a sort of communication gap/challenge/disconnect and differing assumptions.
Note that this fuzzy musings on communication gaps, and on differing assumptions of what is normal. In a very broad sense you could think of this as an extension of the maturing/broadining of perspectives that we all do when we realize “the way I’m used to things isn’t the way everybody does things.”[1] This is musings and meanderings rather than well-thought out conclusions, so don’t take any of this too seriously.
It isn’t quite an issue inferential distance, but it seems to be a vaguely similar communication error. Questions like this are surprising to me since they seem somewhat self evident, or obvious (which maybe speaks to my own difficulty in communicating well). The questions I’m thinking of are questions like
why is it important to use data and evidence for decision-making?
why do you like ice cream?
why don’t you want to do [non-standard thing]?
The use of data/evidence is something that I have difficulty justifying off the top of my head, simply because it strikes me as so incredibly obvious. I would probably respond “would it be better if we referenced animal entrails or the shapes of the clouds to make decisions?” But if pressed I would probably compare decisions made using data and decisions made without data, and see which tends to turn out better, using that as justification.[2] It would feel really weird to have to justify use of data though, like needing to justify why I prefer a 10% chance of pain to a 50% chance of pain; one of them strikes me as obviously preferably.
I like ice cream because it tastes good. While we could dive deep into the chemistry of taste and the evolutionary biology of human preferences, what me like ice cream tasty is simply the fact that I get pleasure/enjoyment from eating it. It is an end in itself: I’m not eating the ice cream as part of a plan toward some larger goal; I enjoy it, and that is all there is to it.
Asking me why I don’t want to do something has confused me on more than one occasion in the past. I’ve always thought that absence of an action doesn’t require justification, and rather that taking an action requires justification. The generic form of this is someone suggesting an activity that is expensive and unenjoyable to me, and expressing some level of surprise or concern when I decline.[3] The times people have asked me “why don’t you want to pay money to do [thing that you probably won’t find fun]” or “why don’t you want to join us in [expensive activity that you really didn’t enjoy last time you joined us],” they haven’t really been satisfied with me simply saying “I don’t like doing that kind of thing. It isn’t much fun for me.”[4]
My most stark memory of this was when I made hot chocolate, and an adult man said something along the lines of “Oh my god, you are putting water in your hot chocolate instead of milk?” as if this was something outrageous. A more internet-friendly version would be the silliness surrounding pineapple on pizza: it really doesn’t matter that other people have mundane preferences different than yours. It is mostly just reflexive in-group/out-group dynamics.
If I want to eat ice cream, should should I consider the distance, price, and quality of two different shops and base my decision on that, or should I just flip a coin to decide which ice cream shop to go to? To me, the answer is as obvious as the answer to “is astrology predictive?”
If you don’t drink alcohol, you probably get this a lot; people have often assumed I have some specific religious reason. I’m guessing that people who don’t engage in other common practices also get similar responses.
Of course, the examples I’m choosing share here tell you something about my own preferences. For a person that inherently enjoys sitting in a bar, spending money to drink alcohol, and having shouted conversations over loud music, it is quite unusual for someone to day “no thanks, I wouldn’t enjoy that.” But I’ve tried to enough bars and parties, and I’ve discovered that sitting around with a bunch of people I barely know having shallow/forgettable conversations usually isn’t really my thing. The topics of conversation that people often want to talk about didn’t really have much overlap with things that I would be interested in talking about, and the levels of performative behaviors and the affectations aren’t something that I enjoy very much. So it is no surprise that I enjoy “grown up” dinner parties/cocktail parties more than “college kid” parties with loud music. (Of course, if I had loads of money to spare, a high level of beauty and charisma, and a group of friends that regularly hung out in bars, then my preferences would probably be quite different.)
Some questions cause me to become totally perplexed. I’ve been asked these (or variations of these) by a handful people in the EA community. These are not difficulties or confusions that require PhD-level research to explain, but instead I think they represent a sort of communication gap/challenge/disconnect and differing assumptions.
Note that this fuzzy musings on communication gaps, and on differing assumptions of what is normal. In a very broad sense you could think of this as an extension of the maturing/broadining of perspectives that we all do when we realize “the way I’m used to things isn’t the way everybody does things.”[1] This is musings and meanderings rather than well-thought out conclusions, so don’t take any of this too seriously.
It isn’t quite an issue inferential distance, but it seems to be a vaguely similar communication error. Questions like this are surprising to me since they seem somewhat self evident, or obvious (which maybe speaks to my own difficulty in communicating well). The questions I’m thinking of are questions like
why is it important to use data and evidence for decision-making?
why do you like ice cream?
why don’t you want to do [non-standard thing]?
The use of data/evidence is something that I have difficulty justifying off the top of my head, simply because it strikes me as so incredibly obvious. I would probably respond “would it be better if we referenced animal entrails or the shapes of the clouds to make decisions?” But if pressed I would probably compare decisions made using data and decisions made without data, and see which tends to turn out better, using that as justification.[2] It would feel really weird to have to justify use of data though, like needing to justify why I prefer a 10% chance of pain to a 50% chance of pain; one of them strikes me as obviously preferably.
I like ice cream because it tastes good. While we could dive deep into the chemistry of taste and the evolutionary biology of human preferences, what me like ice cream tasty is simply the fact that I get pleasure/enjoyment from eating it. It is an end in itself: I’m not eating the ice cream as part of a plan toward some larger goal; I enjoy it, and that is all there is to it.
Asking me why I don’t want to do something has confused me on more than one occasion in the past. I’ve always thought that absence of an action doesn’t require justification, and rather that taking an action requires justification. The generic form of this is someone suggesting an activity that is expensive and unenjoyable to me, and expressing some level of surprise or concern when I decline.[3] The times people have asked me “why don’t you want to pay money to do [thing that you probably won’t find fun]” or “why don’t you want to join us in [expensive activity that you really didn’t enjoy last time you joined us],” they haven’t really been satisfied with me simply saying “I don’t like doing that kind of thing. It isn’t much fun for me.”[4]
My most stark memory of this was when I made hot chocolate, and an adult man said something along the lines of “Oh my god, you are putting water in your hot chocolate instead of milk?” as if this was something outrageous. A more internet-friendly version would be the silliness surrounding pineapple on pizza: it really doesn’t matter that other people have mundane preferences different than yours. It is mostly just reflexive in-group/out-group dynamics.
If I want to eat ice cream, should should I consider the distance, price, and quality of two different shops and base my decision on that, or should I just flip a coin to decide which ice cream shop to go to? To me, the answer is as obvious as the answer to “is astrology predictive?”
If you don’t drink alcohol, you probably get this a lot; people have often assumed I have some specific religious reason. I’m guessing that people who don’t engage in other common practices also get similar responses.
Of course, the examples I’m choosing share here tell you something about my own preferences. For a person that inherently enjoys sitting in a bar, spending money to drink alcohol, and having shouted conversations over loud music, it is quite unusual for someone to day “no thanks, I wouldn’t enjoy that.” But I’ve tried to enough bars and parties, and I’ve discovered that sitting around with a bunch of people I barely know having shallow/forgettable conversations usually isn’t really my thing. The topics of conversation that people often want to talk about didn’t really have much overlap with things that I would be interested in talking about, and the levels of performative behaviors and the affectations aren’t something that I enjoy very much. So it is no surprise that I enjoy “grown up”
dinner parties/cocktail parties more than “college kid” parties with loud music. (Of course, if I had loads of money to spare, a high level of beauty and charisma, and a group of friends that regularly hung out in bars, then my preferences would probably be quite different.)