> But if you’re talking to a performer, and they have a fake, glassy-eyed smile, and go through all the correct motions, while obviously being totally checked out, you’re not asking the right questions.
Or it's an indication you are asking the correct questions but that the person you're asking it from anticipated it and is evading. Anyone who has heard a politicians and CEOs take questions from the press know this.
> It sounds like a contradiction that someone could learn something new by answering a question. Isn’t that just spitting out something they already know?
A while back I started participating actively on Reddit's r/explainlikeimfive, and this has been my experience — explaining things I (think I) understand in ways that are accessible to laypeople really forces me to confront the sloppier parts of my understanding. If you're a technical person, it's also a great exercise in communication with non-technical people.
I view it as: each time you answer the same question you are forced to reincorporate everything you’ve learned since the last time you’ve answered it. Which makes you reassess your chain of thought and maybe come to a different conclusion. And thereby learning something new.
I think what the author actually means is the concept of social scripts + the fact that you can just break/hack them + that breaking/hacking them usually leads to interesting results (and learnings! as they've said).
Social scripts are a sharable performance optimization. They do not require much resources to run and can be simply downloaded.
Everyone relies on them to some degree sometimes, because processing new inputs in real time is simply not viable.
Because they're performance optimizations, the more stressed people are, the more likely they are to start using them.
That's worth keeping in mind when getting angry at the fact that you're currently being confronted with such a script.
Breaking it without offering an elegant alternative might not always be the ethical thing to do, however, depending on the script or user, it sometimes might.
In my experience, breaking the script goes wrong more often than well.
First you need someone who actually appreciates you deviating from the script. Most people most times are not seeking anything "interesting" in the sense you might think it
I've seen this with both famous and regular people.
e.g. a friend of mine once met William Shatner and then ran into him again a few months later. When asked "How are you doing?" Shatner answered exactly the same way at both the first and second meeting. I imagine some of this is efficiency since famous people tend to get the same questions over and over again. Tom Wilson even has a business card that answers a lot of these questions [0]
What was more surprising was seeing this in high school. I did a summer program with kids from all over the US. A few months later, I saw one of them at a sports event and, similar to Shatner, he had a canned response. He was from a well to do family and was probably on some kind of "track" to the right college etc. Was still surprising to hear.
If you are curious to see someone busting the cache, there are video compilations of Sean Evans from hot ones asking questions of guests based on deep research and them being incredibly impressed. [1]
Charisma on Command also has a great video on how to ask better question [2]
Around the time I started my compsci studies, I noticed that my friends respond to certain questions in a very predictable way. I even ended up experimenting with how I present my question and what words I use, but seldom did I manage to "bust the cache". My takeaway at the time was that friendships consist of predictable actions and conversations, and I wasn't particularly fond of it. Looking back, I don't mind it as much, and enjoy the fact that I can have a predictable experience with a person I know.
Implies that people are always fine with having their cache busted and actually want to have a genuine conversation with you. Some aren't and will react negatively if you try.
Exactly, for a busy celebrity, having a canned answer is a polite way to acknowledge a fan and give them a little thrill. They don't have time for a genuine, heartfelt conversation with everyone they meet.
I delight in asking novel and meaningful questions. I have a particularly weakness for meta questions; my favourite general-purpose one is, following some banal question: “How often do people ask you that?”
Followed immediately by: “And how often do people ask you that?”
This is normally already completely novel, but on the off chance it isn’t, you can recurse to higher meta!
Stuttering John used to do this back on Howard Stern by asking celebrities questions that were far out of the expected gamut at red carpet events. This was all for shock/comedy value, but "who are you and what makes you famous" type questions can really throw celebs off script: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0hENpnMXk
Ah, I overcame this by not using easily recognizable for the theme words but descriptions. It forces people to actually process the input.
I like how karpathy defined book reading as actually being prompting, so IMHO overcoming the defaults with people is very similar to prompt engineering as people actually always are prompting - we don’t do bit perfect data transfers over voice when speaking to each other but prompt.
For a while I have wanted to create a lookup table that maps concepts people describe using computer metaphors to their biological/ecological/??? equivalent, which in some cases might be more accurate, or at least more fresh.
In online communication you'll soon need to develop a skill for busting AI proxy which most people will have in front of their messaging ingestion pipeline.
I don't think anyone is born like that. Politicians are trained for it. I remember a podcast where they talked about Al Franken and how it was difficult to get him to stop answering questions. The goal: one, maybe two or three talking points at any given time and no matter what question anyone asks, it is your job as a politician to give a non answer and pivot to the point of the day.
Yes, I realize how easily language can be manipulated.
For example, when some people in high positions enjoy privileges, politicians will defend them by talking about their contributions, and the topic shifts from privileges to contributions. Similarly, when a few bad people emerge from a certain ethnic group, politicians will constantly emphasize these few bad people to negate the entire ethnic group and call for action against the group. The most crucial factors should be whether contributions and privileges are commensurate, and the degree of correlation between the ethnic group and individual events. But nobody discusses this.
It's especially frustrating watching congressional hearings. Since both "sides" are aware that the cameras are rolling and that they are there to score points/create soundbites (rather than actually learn from each other--god forbid) it's just both sides talking past each other and not doing the analytical work of a good conversation.
Even when I'm on one side of the argument, it's just as frustrating to hear my own side just move on to their next pre-written question/response instead of engaging with the underlying issues. I want substantive debate and discussion and possibly consensus, but that's sadly not the reality in most cases of import.
There is no "our side" and that's the problem. There are issues with a clear majority 80% plus voters agree on and steadily over decades and yet veto points (filibuster, committee chairs, holds) plus donor capture means a motivated minority with money can block majority-supported policy indefinitely.
You can always have arguments with philosophy or case law or whatever that for example carried interest loophole is good for America but overwhelming majority of US Americans support scraping it. Why haven't been able to do that? How many people benefit from this loophole? (Estimates are just a few thousands of people who benefit, not millions in a country of over three hundred million). Similarly, the IRS Direct File system was a modest improvement over the status quo. Why was it scrapped? How many people benefit from this?
Remember SVB? Remember how everyone who opposed TARP suddenly supported bailing out SVB depositors just because now these were companies in which they had invested?
The point is there can't be a real debate when the outcome of the debate determines your paycheck.
Often they will just talk around a question too. They will be asked if they will give everyone free ice cream if elected, and they will just talk about how great ice cream is, how important ice cream is, etc, but never actually answer the question.
This is a basic survival skill in politics, and not just for scandals.
Let's take Bernie Sanders, because he's well-known in Vermont for being happy to go off-script and actually talk to people. During my only personal conversation with him, he was delighted to discover that a small, local event actually served excellent chicken. (Apparently politicians eat a lot of rubbery chicken.)
But at that same event, Bernie was approached by a woman asking some conspiracy-tinged question. And he very gracefully deflected and changed the topic. I think that just about anyone who interacts with the public is likely to pick up some version of this skill eventually.
Or it's an indication you are asking the correct questions but that the person you're asking it from anticipated it and is evading. Anyone who has heard a politicians and CEOs take questions from the press know this.
A while back I started participating actively on Reddit's r/explainlikeimfive, and this has been my experience — explaining things I (think I) understand in ways that are accessible to laypeople really forces me to confront the sloppier parts of my understanding. If you're a technical person, it's also a great exercise in communication with non-technical people.
I think what the author actually means is the concept of social scripts + the fact that you can just break/hack them + that breaking/hacking them usually leads to interesting results (and learnings! as they've said).
Social scripts are a sharable performance optimization. They do not require much resources to run and can be simply downloaded.
Everyone relies on them to some degree sometimes, because processing new inputs in real time is simply not viable.
Because they're performance optimizations, the more stressed people are, the more likely they are to start using them. That's worth keeping in mind when getting angry at the fact that you're currently being confronted with such a script.
Breaking it without offering an elegant alternative might not always be the ethical thing to do, however, depending on the script or user, it sometimes might.
First you need someone who actually appreciates you deviating from the script. Most people most times are not seeking anything "interesting" in the sense you might think it
Also, if you'd notice that happening: a good sign you're wasting your time talking to that person.
In a good conversation both (or more) participants get something useful/interesting/funny out of it.
e.g. a friend of mine once met William Shatner and then ran into him again a few months later. When asked "How are you doing?" Shatner answered exactly the same way at both the first and second meeting. I imagine some of this is efficiency since famous people tend to get the same questions over and over again. Tom Wilson even has a business card that answers a lot of these questions [0]
What was more surprising was seeing this in high school. I did a summer program with kids from all over the US. A few months later, I saw one of them at a sports event and, similar to Shatner, he had a canned response. He was from a well to do family and was probably on some kind of "track" to the right college etc. Was still surprising to hear.
If you are curious to see someone busting the cache, there are video compilations of Sean Evans from hot ones asking questions of guests based on deep research and them being incredibly impressed. [1]
Charisma on Command also has a great video on how to ask better question [2]
0 - https://www.upworthy.com/back-to-the-future-actor-has-a-hila...
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Endmr-93KOY
2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHyYlFCaXPM
... and people loving it.
Recently I had a person say a lot without really saying anything because most likely they didn't want me to have some (business related) information.
It's important to be mindful that if there is a cache, there's probably a reason for it.
Same goes for politicians, though there it becomes much more problematic.
If you got this with people that are actually close, there would be a problem.
But only if they're open-minded. I've met many smart people who would rather sound smart than bust their cache.
Followed immediately by: “And how often do people ask you that?”
This is normally already completely novel, but on the off chance it isn’t, you can recurse to higher meta!
https://youtu.be/ZOZYl0aLxDY
I like how karpathy defined book reading as actually being prompting, so IMHO overcoming the defaults with people is very similar to prompt engineering as people actually always are prompting - we don’t do bit perfect data transfers over voice when speaking to each other but prompt.
What word would you use for this?
For example, when some people in high positions enjoy privileges, politicians will defend them by talking about their contributions, and the topic shifts from privileges to contributions. Similarly, when a few bad people emerge from a certain ethnic group, politicians will constantly emphasize these few bad people to negate the entire ethnic group and call for action against the group. The most crucial factors should be whether contributions and privileges are commensurate, and the degree of correlation between the ethnic group and individual events. But nobody discusses this.
Even when I'm on one side of the argument, it's just as frustrating to hear my own side just move on to their next pre-written question/response instead of engaging with the underlying issues. I want substantive debate and discussion and possibly consensus, but that's sadly not the reality in most cases of import.
I'm surprised there isn't a term for doing that.
Let's take Bernie Sanders, because he's well-known in Vermont for being happy to go off-script and actually talk to people. During my only personal conversation with him, he was delighted to discover that a small, local event actually served excellent chicken. (Apparently politicians eat a lot of rubbery chicken.)
But at that same event, Bernie was approached by a woman asking some conspiracy-tinged question. And he very gracefully deflected and changed the topic. I think that just about anyone who interacts with the public is likely to pick up some version of this skill eventually.