Everybody is Smarter Than You Think

This is the third in a series of posts derived from old Facebook Notes. The original was posted on Nov. 7, 2010.

1. I am imperfect at translating my thoughts into speech that can be unambiguously parsed by an arbitrary second discourse participant.
2. Due to (1), I have frequently witnessed people respond to things I say in a manner that makes it obvious that they did not reconstruct the thought that I started with properly (i.e., they didn't understand what I was trying to say).
3. This probably makes me seem less intelligent than I actually am, especially when the misunderstood versions of my thoughts are, in fact, wrong. Either factually wrong, or indicative of an immature point of view.
4. I put a lot more thought into what I say in order to ensure accurate communication than most other people. (Although this is probably tempered by the fact that I am not neurologically typical, so I kinda have to.)
5. Due to (4), most other people are probably at least as likely as I am to have the same experience with being misunderstood. The less intelligent they actually are, the more likely this is to be their own fault; the more intelligent they are, the more likely it is to be because the other discourse participants are simply incapable of formulating the correct thought (but, of course, high general intelligence does not imply high social intelligence, so it could still easily be your own fault, insofar as not knowing your audience is your own fault).
6. Ergo, most people you talk to will seem, at least until you get to know them very, very well, much less intelligent than they actually are, because what you think is going on in their brains is a very degraded version of what they're actually thinking.

In short, language is a noisy, imperfect channel for thoughts. So give people the benefit of the doubt.

In Which Cliff Stoll Destroys Ignorance

Rarely do those who experience great stories know at the beginning how the stories are going to end, precisely because it is the banishment of high orders of ignorance[1] that makes for a great story. If you already know the end of your story, you're already there, and there is no more story. All character development and all personal growth is a matter of coming to realize the answers to questions that one previously didn't even know existed to be asked. The higher the levels of ignorance overcome, the greater the story is.

At one level, Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg[2] is the story of how an astronomer became an expert in computer security, but Cliff could have expected this; he didn't know about security from the start, but he knew he would have to learn. He knew that there were questions to be asked on that topic. On another level, The Cuckoo's Egg is about how a self-styled irresponsible kid discovered responsibility and ethics. This is the greater story, because Cliff not only had to learn the answers, and not only had to learn the questions to ask to get the answers, but had to first learn that there was a topic about which ethical questions could be asked. That realization is the fundamental weltanschauung-altering event, which Cliff Stoll struggled with throughout his pursuit of the German hacker. He knew that his views were changing; he worried about how he would be received by his "radical friends" in the "People's Republic of Berkeley"; and he worried because he knew that not only would they disagree with his new politics, but that they were basically incapable of understanding his new politics, because they did not know how to ask the questions that were the prerequisite for understanding. It is that realization, not the simple acquisition of technical knowledge, that made him a real expert in his new field.

[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=352194

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787/

Eastern Europe: A Bastion of Freedom and Democracy?

In case you haven't heard yet, while the US public has worrying about SOPA and PIPA, Europe started dealing with their own version, called ACTA. While some were allegedly taken by surprise by the massive protests against SOPA and PIPA, everyone's pretty much used to American's protesting things. But would you be surprised to hear about anti-ACTA demonstrations in Prague? Or Czech members of parliament refusing to support it "as a matter of principle", and claiming that the media "played a part in the hush-up"[1]? A Slovenian ambassador even made a public apology for having signed the agreement, claiming that she acted carelessly and in ignorance and failed in her civic duty[2]. That is a level of candor that we never expect to hear from a US politician. Admitting ignorance as the Slovenian ambassador did is the first step towards gaining wisdom. But unfortunately, admitting ignorance is socially unnacceptable around here. Everybody knows, tacitly, that no one person can possibly be an expert on everything that they would need to know to decide every issue that faces the government. We'll start to make progress a lot faster when we can get around to no longer being embarrassed by that fact.

[1] http://m.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/politics-policy/czech-euro-mps-oppose-%E2%80%98completely-wide-mark%E2%80%99-acta

[2] http://boingboing.net/2012/02/03/slovenias-ambassador-apologi.html