Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In your experience what percentage of "[more/better] communication" as a diagnosis or remedy in a social context is an effective or appropriate one? I think it's uncommon these days.
One common example of this phenomena goes something like above. If you're still not picking up what I'm laying down consider the following:
More Communication the platitude, tool, and HR seminar is a lie. In contexts where More Communication is a social lubricant, language to demand conciliatory notions or more respect from the powers that be, why can't we just ask for that? Who decided we should wrap "communication" into such things? Stakes vary between context, but the mechanics of communication are important. Most people are shit at communicating, and even those who hold an unusually innovative communication super power are still shit at communicating with someone competent. We shouldn't be muddying that precise failure up with population level memes.
Napoleon didn't deploy the More Communication meme after the Battle of Aspern-Essling, did he? Maybe he did. Even so, I maintain that More Communication is too overloaded and watered down. A meme that can mean an apology is in order, the radio failed and no one sent a runner, management sucks, or no one is going to be holding the bag for the latest fuck up-- this must be a warcrime against autists. Whoever made the Communications B.A. what it is has a lot to answer for at the Hague.
There's a genuine tendency to use it as an excuse, in the same way that postmortems sometimes devolve into 'our systems weren't sufficiently hardened against threats'. And there's a worse tendency to use it as a handwave, where genuine disagreements are just thrown away as insufficiently explaining or incompletely persuading people of The One Truth -- this latter option is both common to HR and to a certain browbeating political speaker.
But there is a steelman where a frustrating number of system failures occur despite the information existing, and even being recorded, but not being available or visible to the people who need it. The aviation contexts are the best-known: you get someone helping out and being interrupted half-way through and a few screws get left unturned and then everybody's dead, or where a big gradient in pilot experience leaves a first officer unwilling to challenge a pilot even if there's something clearly wrong. It pops up at smaller scales and dumber directions nonetheless. I've spent three hours in a meeting trying to figure out who owned a specific firewall, and the problem was that half of the people in the meeting didn't think we were even trying to identify the owner, but instead trying to go through the process assuming someone else owned it and they were being consulted about security ramifications. That is a thing that happens, pretty often.
But you can't just motion around More Communication if it also means just assuming people will just agree with you if you shout at them more.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link