Presumptive Listening

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TITL:
   *"Overly Presumptive Listening", or*
   *"Everything is made of Nails"*.
   *By Forrest Landry*
   *Sept 28th, 2022*.

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.

That the skill of learning quickly
   can sometimes prevent them
   from learning at all.

TEXT:

> If all you have is hammer,
      > everything nail.
          -- anonymous.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

> "how do you build Q? --
      > I am really interested to learn! --
      > please tell me now".

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.

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?).

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:

"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".

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:

> "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?".

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:

"please put the hammer down"...

And before I get a chance to say more,
   they will ask:

> "why? --
      > what is the problem?
      > this always works".

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.

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:

> "what is that thing?".

and I tell them

"it's a screw"...

And it always happens, nearly immediately,
   before I have even had a chance to even try
   to say anything further,
   they interrupt again with:

> "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!.

> 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?".

And I have to say something like:

"no -- its different.
      You can put it in,
      and then later,
      you can take it back out again".

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:

> "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?

> 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".

To which I try to say:

"In this specific case,
      I am very quite sure
      that we definitely need
      something very different
      than a nail, in this case".

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.

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.

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?

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:

> "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?

> Lets move on, and assume that thing X
      > is nailed to thing Y.
      > Why is that important?".

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.

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.

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:

"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.

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".

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 *lot* of conversational time.
   This good feeling ends up being short lived.

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:

> "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".

At this point, I am feeling rather frustrated:
   how can you ever expect to understand
   what something *is*
   if all you are willing to do
   is to talk about what it *is not*?
   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:

"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".

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.

We *both* 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 *they* have, so far,
   no way of knowing that, *yet*.
   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.

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:

> 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?.

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 *could* 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 *this* 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.

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.

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.

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.

: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.

The "How X might relate"
   to something of what they already know
   is only important *after*
   there has been a chance to encounter/experience X in itself,
   at least a little bit.

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!?.

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 *seeming* --
   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.

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.

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
   *without* distributing or entangling
   any of the existing magnets!.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 *maybe* use *some*
   of those existing bodies *sometimes*
   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 *looks* the same
   is actually the same --
   everything must be tested, cautiously.

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.

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?
   *All* 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.

Yet I continue to notice
   that I am still asking people
   to put the hammer away
   the whole time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is this underlying tension:
   people do want to understand things,
   *and* 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.

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.

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 *especially* 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What can be noticed, at least by me,
   who is especially and definitely *not*
   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.

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
   *in their own native form*
   at least once, in some commons description,
   *then*, and only then,
   can people attempt,
   if people still want to,
   to see if their existing understandings
   can be *increased*
   by the application of
   their already known tools.

:Notes:

- 1; ie; see the list of (@ conversational asymmetries /ai_alignment_1/three_questions_out.html)
   as described in the 2nd question.

- 2; I first encountered the notions of
   mistake theory and conflict theory
   at (@ link https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/)

- 3; that 'Q' is as a metaphor for an AGI proof.

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   and/or on related matters, use this address:

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