> Another way to see that noticing the right details is hard, is that different people end up noticing different details. My brother and I once built a set of stairs for the garage with my dad, and we ran into the problem of determining where to cut the long boards so they lie at the correct angle. After struggling with the problem for a while (and I do mean struggling, a 16’ long board is heavy), we got to arguing. I remembered from trig that we could figure out angle so I wanted to go dig up my textbook and think about it. My dad said, ‘no, no, no, let’s just trace it’, insisting that we could figure out how to do it.
"...different people end up noticing different details"
If this can happen with something as relatively simple as building stairs, might it also happen in more complicated scenarios like interpersonal or inter-cultural/national relations, politics, etc?
> I kept arguing because I thought I was right. I felt really annoyed with him and he was annoyed with me. In retrospect, I think I saw the fundamental difficulty in what we were doing and I don’t think he appreciated it (look at the stairs picture and see if you can figure it out), he just heard ‘let’s draw some diagrams and compute the angle’ and didn’t think that was the solution, and if he had appreciated the thing that I saw I think he would have been more open to drawing some diagrams. But at the same time, he also understood that diagrams and math don’t account for the shape of the wood, which I did not appreciate. If we had been able to get these points across, we could have come to consensus. Drawing a diagram was probably a good idea, but computing the angle was probably not. Instead we stayed annoyed at each other for the next 3 hours.
Considering the amount of detail in the world, it shouldn't be too surprising that two people can look at the same thing and see dramatically different things. Often the two parties can realize how the collaboration went off the rails after the fact. But what happens the next time such a scenario arises - can they recognize in realtime that the same thing is happening again, and consciously step in and prevent another derailing of collaboration?
In my experience, not only is the answer usually no, but even if one of the parties does happen to be aware enough at the moment, and points out the "obvious" fact of what is happening again, just like last time, the conflict will still not resolve, almost as if there is something occurring at the neurological level that prevents it.
> Before you’ve noticed important details they are, of course, basically invisible. It’s hard to put your attention on them because you don’t even know what you’re looking for. But after you see them they quickly become so integrated into your intuitive models of the world that they become essentially transparent. Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive? How about the details and insights you have that led you to be good at the things you’re good at?
While some skills (riding a bike, playing tennis, etc) can easily be integrated such that one can conduct them with extreme skill completely intuitively, others (interpersonal communication) seem highly resistant to the same level of integration.
It seems common for people to say "So what?" when this phenomenon is pointed out, likely because it's so obvious when being discussed in the abstract sense. But the "so what" is that: in practice, in realtime, this prior knowledge seems near impossible to be intuitively accessed. And not only that, it often seems like it is near ~inaccessible to the conscious mind - if it is pointed out, acknowledgement of a current manifestation of the phenomenon will be refused, typically via anger or silence.