23-Overly-Presumptive-Listening.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <!-- Basic Meta Tags -->
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

  <!-- SEO Meta Tags -->
  <meta name="description" content="Comprehensive AGI Risk Analysis">
  <meta name="keywords" content="agi, risk, convergence">
  <meta name="author" content="Forrest Landry">
  <meta name="robots" content="index, follow">

  <!-- Favicon -->
  <link rel="icon" href="https://github.githubassets.com/favicons/favicon-dark.png" type="image/png">
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://github.githubassets.com/favicons/favicon-dark.png" type="image/png">

  <!-- Page Title (displayed on the browser tab) -->
  <title>Comprehensive AGI Risk Analysis</title>
</head>
<body>
   <p>
   TITL:
      <b>"Overly Presumptive Listening", or</b>
      <b>"Everything is made of Nails"</b>.
      <b>By Forrest Landry</b>
      <b>Sept 28th, 2022</b>.
   </p>
   <p>
   ABST:
      How very intelligent people
      sometimes tend to listen too presumptively,
      in their own context, from their own POV,
      and applying their own 'tried and true'
      familiar intellectual tool-sets --
      ideas/concepts/heuristics --
      that they do not allow sufficient space and time
      for the speaker/presenter to construct
      wholly new modes and methods of understanding.
   </p>
   <p>
      That the skill of learning quickly
      can sometimes prevent them
      from learning at all.
   </p>
   <p>
   TEXT:
   </p>
   <p>
         > If all you have is hammer,
         > everything nail.
             -- anonymous.
   </p>
   <p>
      Some number of years ago,
      a friend named Jordan Hall
      introduced me to this concept called
      "The Omega Principle".
      The basic idea was that some things,
      some ideas, concepts, notions, feelings, etc,
      are actually really really hard to explain,
      and/or describe at all,
      and that the effort needed
      on the part of the one attempting
      to be describing of that new idea/etc
      was large and significant enough,
      that the listener had to be actively involved,
      doing all that they could
      to make less the difficulty.
   </p>
   <p>
      As mentioned elsewhere (&1),
      there is a significant difference in effort
      (and of available conversational bandwidth)
      needed on the part of a presenter of something
      than there is on the part of the listener(s).
      There is moreover, a significant level of risk
      differential associated with certain topics.
      The asymmetry of significantly greater risk
      inherent to the position of being the presenter
      relative to the lessor risks to the listeners
      is also at extreme variance,
      not to mention the risks of social standing
      associated by doing so, etc.
   </p>
   <p>
      Sometimes, the combination of
      inherent conversational asymmetry
      and the sheer difficulties involved
      in crossing a gap of far inferential distance,
      especially of these happen to also be combined
      with strong adverse conversational
      intentions, motivations, and incentives,
      inclusive of strong self identification/ego,
      particularly when one has strong investments
      into the (proposed) working idea space,
      such as having academic or degrees,
      significant social or professional standing,
      or other significant emotional,
      business, or political reasons
      for wanting something,
      some proof or idea or project,
      to come out a specific way.
   </p>
   <p>
      All of these issues combine
      to make the possibility
      of communicating something
      new, different, or unexpected
      a lot harder,
      or maybe even impossible.
      This essay
      will consider only one of these aspects --
      that which has been noticed to be associated
      with particularly high intelligence listeners.
      This specific pattern
      has so far been observed
      so very frequently
      as to be and become
      the basis of this writing.
   </p>
   <p>
      Let us suggest, by way of example and metaphor,
      that I am talking to somebody really smart
      and happen to mention
      that I have figured out how to build
      some fairly exotic object named "Q" (&3).
      Perhaps they show some excitement,
      and so they ask me:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "how do you build Q? --
         > I am really interested to learn! --
         > please tell me now".
   </p>
   <p>
      The person seems to be some sort of builder,
      and thus specifically knowledgeable in some way,
      and maybe they can help with future projects?
      Perhaps I even have some time,
      and moreover sometimes even enjoy
      sharing about such things,
      and so either right then,
      or maybe we even schedule a future meeting
      specifically so that I can go over
      the design and building of a Q.
   </p>
   <p>
      I prepare for the conversation --
      the upcoming meeting with someone thoughtful --
      by thinking about all of the steps
      that take us from whatever raw materials
      that are, or may happen to be, on hand
      to a well defined and finished Q instance.
      Unfortunately, what I didn't know
      going into the conversation/meeting,
      that the other person
      is also very skillful at working with --
      and reasoning with --
      hammers and nails;
      ie; tools (concepts, heuristics, ideas)
      that they know really well
      and are very comfortable with.
      All of them have served him, the listener,
      so well and so faithfully
      to solve so many and widely varied
      important and practical real world problems
      in the past,
      that to use anything else
      feels to them to be 'unthinkable'.
      That not only the destination
      was currently beyond the imaginative capability,
      (ie; without in person facilitated assistance)
      but that also even the 1st steps used
      as a conveyance and means to get there
      were also beyond the current imaginative capability,
      (though maybe there is some hope still?).
   </p>
   <p>
      How was I to know, in advance,
      that talking with someone of "actual expertise"
      would in itself become more likely a problem,
      than an actual help in moving forward to Q?
      Perhaps, somewhere along the way
      of my giving a 1st (for them) summary
      of the sequence of steps needed for Q,
      that I happen to need to suggest
      a transitional sub-project task,
      which I know to be a kind of temporary scaffolding,
      pursuant to the overall aim of building Q:
   </p>
   <p>
         "We will need to attach a thing of type X
         to something of type Y --
         and we will need to have it there briefly
         to enable the next step of our work".
   </p>
   <p>
      Given this setup, it can be expected
      that my conversational partner
      might latch onto the metaphor or image
      of attaching a board to a wall,
      or maybe of hanging a painting,
      and so will quickly and naturally present
      that they already have a good working solution
      to that sort of problem:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "Great, I know all about how to do that:
         > We can use a 16-penny nail.
         > Lets move on --
         > I am a bit rushed for time (sorry!) --
         > perhaps please tell me the next step, or:
         > Why does that attachment matter?".
   </p>
   <p>
      They do this while visibly picking
      their well worn toolbelt
      and then grabbing a box of nails
      from a local nearby bookshelf.
      This leaves me in the position
      of having to say:
   </p>
   <p>
         "please put the hammer down"...
   </p>
   <p>
      And before I get a chance to say more,
      they will ask:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "why? --
         > what is the problem?
         > this always works".
   </p>
   <p>
      At that point, I might attempt to begin
      to explain that we will need (somehow)
      a very different functionality and outcome
      than what can be obtained in that way,
      using those sorts of (conceptual)
      tools and techniques.
   </p>
   <p>
      As part of suggesting an alternative method,
      Perhaps I pick up, or point to
      a nearby screw, if there is one handy --
      maybe I even hold one up as a demo
      and suggest that we will need these instead.
      They say:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "what is that thing?".
   </p>
   <p>
      and I tell them
   </p>
   <p>
         "it's a screw"...
   </p>
   <p>
      And it always happens, nearly immediately,
      before I have even had a chance to even try
      to say anything further,
      they interrupt again with:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "so it's like a nail? --
         > whats with those ridges!? --
         > that will not work at all well as a nail --
         > way too much friction to be practical!.
   </p>
   <p>
         > Also, I know what I am talking about;
         > I have been to nail school,
         > and I have my PhD,
         > and I have worked in industry
         > for some 32 years now.
         > Surely, you as an new arriving outsider
         > do not expect to have so much hubris
         > as to tell anyone in this community
         > what a 'better nail' should be?".
   </p>
   <p>
      And I have to say something like:
   </p>
   <p>
         "no -- its different.
         You can put it in,
         and then later,
         you can take it back out again".
   </p>
   <p>
      I had maybe intended to say something like
         "Some things can be assembled with nails,
         but some other things cannot be,
         and there are some advantages to using screws..."
      but before I can get to any of that,
      I am interrupted again:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "So what --
         > I can take a nail out again too.
         > That is what the claw part of the hammer is for.
         > Have you no understanding
         > of the usefulness of nails and hammers?
   </p>
   <p>
         > You clearly know nothing
         > about good nail design.
         > That 'screw' of yours
         > is completely impractical --
         > it simply will not work.
         > Nails have been used
         > and are well understood
         > by engineers around the world".
   </p>
   <p>
      To which I try to say:
   </p>
   <p>
         "In this specific case,
         I am very quite sure
         that we definitely need
         something very different
         than a nail, in this case".
   </p>
   <p>
      I sense that they bristle
      at my implied claim to any sort of authority
      contrasting to their own established credentials.
      Yet the whole point of the conversation
      is that maybe I do know something
      about a longer range plan for a Q --
      that was the question I was responding to,
      for which this entire digression and discussion
      is only necessary so as to enable
      a further downstream step I know of --
      a step that simply will not be possible otherwise,
      making this minor conceptual point
      into something now of a critical path feature.
   </p>
   <p>
      Given that the entire point of the conversation
      was for them to actually understand
      that larger flow towards a Q,
      that I am feeling like I should have
      been given, by them, actually,
      at least some real tacit permission
      to present things in my own way,
      in my own time,
      at my own speed,
      and to my conversational convenience,
      not theirs --
      that I should be able to do this project
      with the tools and means and methods
      that I have come to know to be necessary
      through the experience of having already
      done so previously.
   </p>
   <p>
      Is their belief in the value of their time
      so much greater than any recognition
      of the value of my contribution of my time,
      in person, to explain to them, for them,
      at their unique personal convenience,
      and at the expense of irreplaceable heartbeats,
      moments taken from the context
      of my own life, to assist theirs,
      so completely discounted by them?
   </p>
   <p>
      All of these thoughts pass through my mind
      in a mere second to two,
      but I am not fast enough.
      While I am taking a moment to pause
      and to to think about how
      I might re-align the conversation,
      and the values, and to set something of
      a more appropriate understanding
      of where we each are coming from,
      they preempt the conversation again:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "Why re-invent the wheel --
         > my tools can do whatever your tools can --
         > this whole conversation is a waste of my time --
         > you clearly do not know anything
         > about standard fasteners, do you?
   </p>
   <p>
         > Lets move on, and assume that thing X
         > is nailed to thing Y.
         > Why is that important?".
   </p>
   <p>
      At this point, I am at something of an impasse.
      To move forward, I will need to explain
      that the sudden forces associated with
      the action of nailing itself, in any form,
      is too much, and for sure will cause problems --
      making certain steps, in certain materials,
      strictly impossible ("that cannot pass!").
      Small, fragile, and brittle things
      tend not to respond at all well to impacts,
      and moreover, to be able to remove and separate
      gently is a key aspect of an enabling transition
      necessary to get a specific later outcome.
   </p>
   <p>
      Given the way the conversation has gone so far
      I do not even know if the other person
      will have the necessary patience,
      let alone some sort of emotional,
      or conversational, or value discipline.
      There simply is not any real allowance
      of the kind of conversational bandwidth
      to achieve many or even most
      of the many necessary and overlapped
      conversational objectives
      which are now pending.
      Maybe I should have not met with them?
      However, they have asked
      why that specific sub-outcome is important,
      and I am already here, in meeting,
      and in order to characterize that,
      I actually need to define it,
      if I am going to try to proceed
      for this existing meeting,
      and maybe salvage the outcome.
   </p>
   <p>
      I will have to get really creative
      and succient with next step transitions,
      and say a lot in a really compact way,
      covering a lot of ground
      while also making the essential ideas
      maximally simple and obvious:
   </p>
   <p>
         "We will need to have X attached to Y
         in a way that involves a minimum of force
         and yet allows us to also remove it later
         also with a minimum of total force applied.
   </p>
   <p>
         One way to achieve this,
         is to work with an instrument or tool
         that can apply a twisting motion to the screw.
         This tool, commonly called a "screwdriver"
         will maybe end up looking, to you,
         a bit like an ice pick
         with a specially shaped tip".
   </p>
   <p>
      I am realizing that to mention anything about
      "inclined planes" wrapped around cylinders,
      and accounting for the penetrating forces
      of the screw tip by pre- drilling
      a properly sized hole,
      and moreover how there is
      an entire body of thinking about that ratio,
      what kind of drill bit is used,
      how the drill operates and the forces it involves,
      all of which end up being very important too --
      but all factors like these
      are clearly well beyond what can be discussed now.
      I am noticing that I am pleased that
      I maybe figured out a conversational way
      by which I can maybe skip
      all of these other involved details,
      saving a <b>lot</b> of conversational time.
      This good feeling ends up being short lived.
   </p>
   <p>
      Unfortunately, while I am reflecting on this,
      they interrupt again, though I get the sense
      that they are attempting to follow my reasoning
      and at least seem more polite about it:
   </p>
   <p>
         > "So it is like a hammer,
         > except that there is less mass,
         > and there is no claw.
         > I still do not get why the head
         > is to be shaped like that --
         > that makes no sense at all".
   </p>
   <p>
      At this point, I am feeling rather frustrated:
      how can you ever expect to understand
      what something <b>is</b>
      if all you are willing to do
      is to talk about what it <b>is not</b>?
      I had figured that they might relate to 'ice pick'
      without getting stuck there --
      do they have no curiosity about "more than" ideas?
      Maybe we can popup to a meta level
      and review where we are in the conversation:
   </p>
   <p>
         "I need you to slow down,
         understand what I am trying to build here,
         inclusive of the tools used to build it --
         how to make them, what they do, etc.
         Please do not expect this to resemble
         anything you already know".
   </p>
   <p>
      But clearly they are already really uncomfortable
      in dealing with what is presently unknown to them
      and moreover, are probably questioning whether
      or why they should even give me the time of day,
      given how 'unreasonable' and 'demanding' I am being.
      I am risking adding conversational stress
      by attempting to transition to a meta level process
      requiring them to be able to maintain distinctness
      of the now two levels of operating conversation.
      Will they have enough discipline to manage that?
      Clearly I have already lost nearly all "social cred"
      with them, since my concepts 'do not make sense'
      even at the beginning, and maybe worse later,
      and this conversation has already gone on,
      on something that seems irrelevant and irritating
      far too long.
   </p>
   <p>
      We <b>both</b> notice
      that the listener still has no real idea,
      no feeling for or about the larger ida,
      as anything getting anywhere near
      to how to actually "do a Q", etc.
      Perhaps he/they think the entire thing
      is some sort of delusion on my part?.
      I may know better, but <b>they</b> have, so far,
      no way of knowing that, <b>yet</b>.
      There simply has not been enough time
      or space (or energy) allowed for
      in understanding even some
      of the way-points along the way --
      let alone giving some form of 'sufficient reason'
      for them to make the journey at all.
      If it was not for the social proof
      of someone who has already made the journey,
      they would probably have bailed already.
   </p>
   <p>
      Fortunately, that person was also attending,
      and having heard and noticed this pattern before,
      along with a previously completed description
      of how to get a Q,
      and thus having more perspective
      suggests:
   </p>
   <p>
         > Perhaps there is a need
         > to setup and show the contrast
         > as in "how they are thinking right now"
         > and "how this next bit is different?"
         > or perhaps by deeply exploring that one thing,
         > and then saying "this is where it fall short", etc?.
   </p>
   <p>
      At first, this seems like a good idea.
      After all, I do actually know what a hammer is,
      and I have used one, many times before,
      sometimes for some projects.
      And so I <b>could</b> potentially try to explain
      how I can relate to a hammer and nails perspective,
      to show them that I understood them,
      and accepted them, and that I agreed
      that there were real world situations
      in which nails were easy to use and useful
      fasteners for all manner of applications.
      But not <b>this</b> application, and for real reasons
      that might only become clear later,
      once a lot of other important stuff
      which far downstream of this point
      was also understood.
   </p>
   <p>
      I notice that my having to show them repeatedly
      that I see and understand "how they are seeing X",
      which simply consumes available conversational bandwidth
      as it converts their listening to me,
      as a conversational context,
      to my having to listen to them,
      as a context, consuming more time,
      and then show and prove to them, and affirm,
      that I have actually understood their point of view --
      which does absolutely nothing towards
      conveying any of my new ideas or proposals to them.
   </p>
   <p>
      Yet the fact is
      that a screwdriver doesn't resemble a hammer.
      Not at all.
      Not in any useful way.
      Each is its own thing,
      and trying to understand one
      in the terms and language of the other
      is a false premise, in both directions.
   </p>
   <p>
      On this approach,
      I can predict
      that I will spend all of my time
      simply confirming what they already know,
      and as soon as I even attempt say
         "I want to point to something different/outside of that" --
      that they still have not actually made
      any new headway
      for new grounds/basis of understanding.
      I notice that all of the effort to show compatibility
      ends up being a complete waste of time,
      for it simply confuses the issue:
      screwdrivers are not understood in terms of hammers,
      anymore than a hammer
      is to be understood in terms of screwdrivers.
   </p>
   <p>
   :hy2
      People can get stuck
      in the metaphors that they know,
      and so cannot take in new different metaphors.
      No matter how much I go over existing metaphors,
      it simply does not going to really be any help
      in providing provision to receive/learn
      and come to know/integrate
      new metaphors/ideas/concepts/tools.
   </p>
   <p>
      The "How X might relate"
      to something of what they already know
      is only important <b>after</b>
      there has been a chance to encounter/experience X in itself,
      at least a little bit.
   </p>
   <p>
      I can imagine a neutral observer asking:
         > Ok, so then: How do you explain anything at all,
         > when to do so, you are required to
         > explain everything else,
         > all at once first!?.
   </p>
   <p>
      The problem is not just the possibility
      of a significant inferential distance,
      it is also the significant volume of new concepts
      that will be needed to traverse the inferential distance
      that will also need to be covered
      (depending on each listener uniquely).
      With increased conceptual volume to be covered,
      the chances of at least one of them being --
      or at least <b>seeming</b> --
      fairly similar to concepts they already know
      to the confusion of everyone,
      greatly increases.
      It is this seeming conceptual similarity
      that makes the total distance traversal problem
      so much worse.
   </p>
   <p>
      When describing this aspect,
      another metaphor comes to mind:
      It is a bit like having a table top surface
      with magnets evenly spread all about,
      so that any falling iron filings,
      falling from above,
      from any above position at all
      over the table surface,
      will immediately be attracted into
      at least one of the magnets --
      none of the falling filings
      will ever just land on the table.
   </p>
   <p>
      In effect, this is a metaphor for
      a well constructed conceptual net --
      a heuristic that works really well
      for accounting for and integrating
      any new incoming perceptions/concepts/etc.
      To extend this metaphor,
      perhaps I somehow notice
      that the actual table surface
      is lot bigger than it seems initially,
      and that moreover,
      the field of existing magnets
      does not cover all of the surface.
      To show that there is more "space"
      beyond the field of magnets already placed,
      I will need to slide a new magnet through
      this field of existing magnets
      from the near side (where things are familiar)
      to the far side (where the new space is),
      so as to place the new magnet
      in a new position.
      And I will have to do this
      <b>without</b> distributing or entangling
      any of the existing magnets!.
   </p>
   <p>
      So there is this table, with magnets,
      and I am trying to be dragging or sliding
      some other new magnet through
      this now minefield of the existing ones,
      and I am trying to get this thing
      to a new place, a specific location.
      Maybe that final placement is definite,
      for some other reason, maybe coordinated
      with other existing magnet receivers,
      and I need to get a fairly strong magnet
      to a rather specific place
      to achieve some specific outcome.
      However, the stronger and more powerful
      the new magnet/concept I am using,
      the worse the "stickiness factor" is.
      The mere fact of attempting to
      get it through the field,
      gets much much harder,
      the stronger the conceptual forces involved.
   </p>
   <p>
      This ends up being a rather good metaphor
      for trying not to get new learning
      caught in the tools/concepts
      that they are so used to using.
      the ones that they know well.
   </p>
   <p>
      It is not just the inferential distance --
      it is something about the path
      that is needing to be taken to get there.
      If all proposed paths are already overrun
      with existing well defined well known
      and well and frequently used concepts,
      that the action of
      attempting 'to learn and understand' new things,
      each of which will for sure each have
      its own special type of gravitational pull
      becomes especially complex.
      To switch to another metaphor,
      that being a presenter is a bit like
      attempting to launching and navigate a rocket
      deep into interstellar space,
      through some sort of unknown territory,
      and to create a path
      that does not get it caught
      in any other (concept class) planetary orbit.
   </p>
   <p>
      The difficulty of finding a path through
      increases very quickly with an increase
      in the number of dense gravitational bodies,
      and the degree to which both the number and position
      and specific motions of all of them
      is a-priori nearly wholly unknown
      to the presenter.
      Finding ones way through all of this blind
      is not likely to be successful,
      yet there is no other way to explore/experiment.
      Each person, each specific listener,
      is like their own custom galaxy
      with their own arrangement of concepts and language
      all of which will shape the overall outcome.
      (or in terms of the previous metaphor,
      their own arrangement of magnets on the table).
      For each such person (for anyone who is intelligent)
      they have their own language, familiar concepts, etc,
      and thus, for each one, as a special case,
      the presenter must try
      to construct an exact trajectory,
      making allowances, for no mistakes at all,
      to find a kind of stable path
      through all of the other things already present,
      without getting caught in any single orbit,
      or in the gravitation pull of any one
      of the existing previously learned ideas.
      Any mistakes or minor issues discovered early
      will for sure shift completely
      the ultimate trajectory,
      with failure ever more likely.
      While the ultimate "place"
      you are trying to get them to see,
      is maybe somehow 'the same'
      in some sort of overall absolute universal sense,
      the path to get there is unique for each person,
      and is always at least simply other than
      the places that they already know.
      Else why bother with the communication
      of anything new in the 1st place?
   </p>
   <p>
      In some cases, the existing bodies,
      as centers of gravity,
      can be used as way-points to navigate through.
      This can happen,
      as long as the overall path
      does not get stuck in any one prior.
      A presenter can <b>maybe</b> use <b>some</b>
      of those existing bodies <b>sometimes</b>
      to allow the rocket to pass through.
      Fortunately, not all personal conceptual maps
      are so completely different from one another
      that there are no recognizable way-points at all.
      However, one must be careful:
      in no case can it be assumed
      that what <b>looks</b> the same
      is actually the same --
      everything must be tested, cautiously.
   </p>
   <p>
      Moreover, despite all of these difficulties,
      it is very frequently even more unlikely
      that the person you are talking with
      will far too often
      NOT have any appreciation
      of the effort -- of your effort,
      on their behalf,
      and that the extensive efforts
      that you must make, for them, uniquely,
      and on their personal unique behalf,
      so as to ensure that the overall distortive effects
      does not become a barrier to the needed transit.
      The net effect is that the "prover" of Q,
      will spend significant time --
      time that cannot be recovered or re-used
      for any other purpose --
      will do so moreover without any thanks
      or expression of gratitude on the part
      of the listener/receiver, at all.
      There is a large scale ambient cultural expectation
      that as a teacher/presenter,
      that you are expected and required to have
      near infinite patience, give near unbounded time,
      and moreover to show all relevant listeners
      complete and total emotional patience/understanding.
      Yet there is, in current cultural reciprocity,
      no expectation that the "student"
      will make any effort to account for your process,
      your own emotions and feelings, personal ideals,
      invested time, effort, and value, at all.
   </p>
   <p>
      Imagine trying to explain to any contemporary
      of Newton how Einstein was a "correction" to Newton,
      but only if applied under certain very specific
      types of otherwise very extreme circumstances?
      Or worse, to anyone who had studied physics
      to the point of having a PhD in the late 1800s,
      the kinds of concepts that QM would have be
      relevant towards the end of the 1900s?
      <b>All</b> of these "new" concepts
      would have seemed the most absurd sort of gibberish
      to anyone who was an accredited, accomplished
      practicing engineer and/or academic professional.
      There is literally no way at all
      that any of them would have had the patience
      to take in such odd approaches, unusual tools,
      and/or seemingly misguided ways
      of doing things which were already well understood.
   </p>
   <p>
      Yet I continue to notice
      that I am still asking people
      to put the hammer away
      the whole time.
   </p>
   <p>
      For it is the case,
      in regards to AGI developments,
      that the situation is actually quite extreme:
      x-risk considerations demand more of concepts,
      and of our ethics, in any social relation.
      And the Q proof is made of screws, and not nails.
   </p>
   <p>
      It is simply the case that the kinds of concepts
      that will get us from what we think that we know
      to what we actually need to know
      are simply different in kind
      than a lot of things
      that people tend to use typically
      for most more ordinary sorts of problems.
   </p>
   <p>
      In effect, in any explanation
      of the overall design,
      and method of making,
      that I might have to describe both the tool,
      and the manner of using it,
      before the notion of a different outcome
      of having used it
      would even make sense.
      Yet if that tool,
      well even before I have finished describing it
      is taken out of my hand,
      used in some other way than I intended it,
      as if to make it "like something else",
      then no real conveyance of understanding
      has actually occurred.
   </p>
   <p>
      If I am working on something fragile or small,
      such as a brand new understanding
      the impact of a hammer will destroy it.
      With screw, I can manage force more closely,
      and can therefore construct different things.
      And for some other things,
      even a screw is not the right tool.
      Sometimes a new kind of problem
      needs a new kind of tool --
      to get a new kind of outcome --
      and people might not have seen that before,
      in this space.
      Yet overall, it is my job to convey that,
      somehow, to see the far picture.
   </p>
   <p>
      I have to construct the tools for them
      to even begin to understand at all.
      If you take the tools I am using
      and turn them into something else
      then I cannot use them anymore
      for what I needed them to do --
      my time spent constructing them
      is wasted when you preemptively
      take them out of my hands
      and twist them into
      what you already believe/know.
      I need a chance to use the tools
      as I constructed them
      for the purposes I built them to serve.
   </p>
   <p>
      People are sometimes trying to understand
      and they are doing so so hard
      that they are latching into their worldview,
      which means that they cannot load/understand
      the worldview I am attempting to convey.
   </p>
   <p>
      There is this underlying tension:
      people do want to understand things,
      <b>and</b> they are used to learning things
      in the ways that have worked
      so well for them in the past.
      Yet to learn something new,
      it may inherently involve even
      new methods of learning,
      new methods of patience and listening.
   </p>
   <p>
      People will sometimes say that they understand
      the things that you have previously said,
      and maybe they even wanting to believe it,
      but there will still always be this tension
      between what you have actually said,
      and the things they want to connect those
      ideas to in their own minds.
   </p>
   <p>
      When working with larger inferential difference,
      I am effectively asking them --
      requiring them --
      for them to be uncomfortable for far longer,
      and far more deeply,
      than they may be typically used to.
      This is <b>especially</b> the case
      if they are already very intelligent.
      It is in the space of that fluidity
      that I am attempting to be building
      the thing that needs to be made.
   </p>
   <p>
      It is admitted that there can be this
      very uncomfortable feeling of "adrift"
      on the listeners part, real discomfort,
      while all of this is going on.
      Metaphorically, they might feel that they
      are floating adrift in the middle of the Atlantic ocean,
      not having any idea at all why they are there,
      knowing that it is actually uncomfortable,
      and not knowing whether there is any point
      to the exercise at all.
      How are they to readily believe
      that maybe, with these new tools,
      that I am bringing up the equivalent of
      a conceptual submarine underneath them?
      The bigger the object being moved,
      and the more mass displacement,
      the more it will probably take time --
      more time adrift in the discomfort,
      while the needed tools are moved
      into the place where they are at.
   </p>
   <p>
      The net result is that, as the presenter,
      I will end up being required
      to account for and imagine
      the (maybe intense) emotional experience
      of the person who is currently
      listening, even if they are pulling into
      some sort of using hammer and nails construct.
      Tensions and discomforts above
      will shape the conversational process.
      As such, in return for accounting
      for their feelings/emotions/experience,
      it is not at all unfair for me to ask
      that I can also be given some allowances,
      on their part, for my feelings
      of tension and effort and time:
      that they will at least
      consider and acknowledge
      that I am using different tools and techniques,
      and that I may actually have at least
      some real and valid reasons for doing so.
      I hope that they will allow for and expect
      that these (maybe currently opaque) reasons
      will become clear to everyone
      in some appropriate future time.
      However, in the interim, I can still ask,
      I can still need them
      to have some real actual patience
      and understanding on their part,
      and maybe even some emotional space,
      for me and them
      to understand this new space
      in the same way I do,
      and thus to know and allow for
      what I am having to map and account for:
      the way in which they themselves work,
      as best as I can --
      and thus to also allow for
      at least some real application of
      the efforts I must make on their behalf.
   </p>
   <p>
      The personal/social risk to me, when doing this,
      is that as soon as I start trying
      to account for their emotions, feelings, etc,
      there is (inherently) ego involved,
      and thus the possibility
      of my being manipulated emotionally.
      This because they have investment
      on how they see things,
      and what outcomes become possible
      via the channel of invested hopes and dreams.
      As soon as those topics/aspects become involved,
      the conversation can very easily get heated,
      with the net result
      that I will have ended up letting go
      of any possible conversational authority
      to define something about the outcome,
      that I may have provisionally previously had.
      Ie, the conversation becomes a failure.
   </p>
   <p>
      Moreover, there is a risk
      that their attempts to pull things
      back into comfortable known metaphors
      is due to motivated reasoning --
      ie, they are wanting to support
      their already prior reasons,
      presumptions, and outcomes
      that they reach the desired conclusions
      in ways that they can again deploy.
      This disturbed the future conversational field,
      for all potential future participants.
      These situations are actually adversarial,
      and expression of a conflict theory
      rather than a mistake theory (&2)
      of communication.
   </p>
   <p>
      This, along with the general observation
      that people will not, and cannot ever
      be made to understand anything
      that their paycheck depends on
      their not understanding --
      basically means that there is no assurance
      that the inferential distance can be crossed.
      I must consider that maybe
      no actual path exists --
      that only a social illusion or signaling
      of there being an involved listener,
      and that I should not have been involved at all.
      That motivational aspect
      can very strongly,
      though maybe invisibly,
      distort all real outcomes,
      and this too must be watched for
      on the part of any proposed presenter.
      However, such motivational considerations
      are beyond the scope of this essay,
      and will perhaps be considered elsewhere.
   </p>
   <p>
      What can be noticed, at least by me,
      who is especially and definitely <b>not</b>
      an educational theorist --
      and who moreover, given the current culture
      of near total devaluing of any notion 
      of teacher and/or teaching
      that to be a teacher is probably one of
      the very worst jobs one can have --
      approximately of less value socially, 
      than being a trash picker --
      at least they are recycling!
      The implications that this has for
      civilization, particularly in regards to
      inter-generational knowledge transfer
      has yet to be fully determined.
      In any case, 
      teaching has to be separated from politics
      and more fully valued,
      if culture and civilization is to endure.
   </p>
   <p>
      If there is actually a mutual intention
      to arrive at someplace new --
      some new understanding (a new Q!) --
      it will be necessary for listening people
      to at least try to not pull that newness
      into their existing mindsets to quickly.
      This is Rule Omega --
      that every participant contribute,
      to the best of their ability,
      whatever aid and assistance to the speaker
      that we may all figure out
      how best to convey needed and necessary ideas.
      The inferential difference will need to be crossed.
      Once that has been done,
      and the ideas were genuinely encountered
      <b>in their own native form</b>
      at least once, in some commons description,
      <b>then</b>, and only then,
      can people attempt,
      if people still want to,
      to see if their existing understandings
      can be <b>increased</b>
      by the application of
      their already known tools.
   </p>
   <p>
   :Notes:
   </p>
   <p>
      - 1; ie; see the list of (@ conversational asymmetries /ai_alignment_1/three_questions_out.html)
      as described in the 2nd question.
   </p>
   <p>
      - 2; I first encountered the notions of
      mistake theory and conflict theory
      at (@ link https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/)
   </p>
   <p>
      - 3; that 'Q' is as a metaphor for an AGI proof.
   </p>
</body>
</html>