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apsurdtoday at 4:07 AM3 repliesview on HN

Agree with the problem but this list reads like a vent.

Communicating effectively is the central problem of all humanity!

This vent criticizes developers for not knowing how to listen. that's why it comes off condescending. The root problem is that people don't know what they don't know.

The best communicators are translators. People listen because the message becomes self evident in their understanding.

It's hardly a breakdown because everyone is acting like a toddler with their fingers in their ears.

This is ironically why we reach for systems and engineering. The system can build in gap detection and frameworks for translation. It's not perfect and creates its own problems but scolding each unit human to listen better does nothing for the collective environment: the team, the company… the system.


Replies

huswepcctoday at 5:50 AM

Passing on what an ancient greybread told me. He said look at it as a Noisy system (signal is always lower than noise no matter what you do) with bounded chimps inside it.

Bounded meaning there are upper limits to what anyone can do. And there are upper limits to how frequently model updates of the chimp brain can happen per unit time. And the limits of a group are much lower. At the extreme end Large institutions once they settle on a model of reality can take decades to radically update it. Even if all signs say reality has totally changed.

So with those constraints in mind decide what you want to spend your energy and time on.

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raincoletoday at 5:30 AM

Yeah. It's just some random self-help piece. But slightly worse, as at least self-help books would provide some examples.

thaumasiotestoday at 6:01 AM

> Communicating effectively is the central problem of all humanity!

If that were true, there'd be something about it in the Bible.

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