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Comment by tomtimtall | Hacker News Reader

Is it really too much to expect the American adult population be receptive to communication above that targeting preschoolers?

It would even matter if Fauci was talking to the anti-van population as if they where children. The reason they aren’t listening is not due to them not understanding the message of being scared of drains.

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I don't know. The rules seem to revolve around simplicity in communication. I've always found it powerful that, although every member of the US Armed Forces is expected to have a 12th grade level of knowledge, all of our military manuals are written to a 7th grade level.

Choosing simplicity is not necessarily degrading. Speaking to people with the same kindness, conscientiousness, and simplicity exemplified by Mr. Rogers' brand might not be such a bad thing.

This isn't to disagree with your points. I agree that American adults ought to have facility with communication that falls outside of these ideals, and I don't think these edicts would obviate any or all of the problems we have today. But I do think there's a reason to value such communication, and it would be interesting to see it applied to the communication of public affairs.

The most effective marketing copy is often written at a 5th grade level. Some who have studied copywriting have found the reverse correlation between sales figures & grade level to be the highest of anything they could measure in terms of the copy itself.

It backfires though when you go with things like "Masks don't work" in the name of achieving an end and not actually communicating a simplified version of the truth like "Masks are scarce and the majority of the public doesn't use them correctly, so save them for the professionals, for now".

Dr. Fauci in March. “When we get in a situation where we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks. We're not there yet, but I think we're close to coming to some determination. Because if, in fact, a person who may or may not be infected wants to prevent infecting someone else, one of the best ways to do that is with a mask, so perhaps that's the way to go.” [1]

His 60 Minutes interview, also in March. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

There is a reason for the heavily campaigned “My mask protects you. Your mask protects me.” A mask’s benefit is in preventing an infected person from infecting others much more so than protecting an uninfected person from unmasked infected people. Masks come with risks. People tend to touch their face more while wearing masks, and contracting the virus by touching your face is a primary infection mode. People tend to relax other more effective protection methods when wearing a mask, both unconsciously and due to a false belief in the protective capabilities of a mask.

With a pandemic where the virus is spreading via asymptomatic people, masks are effective with largescale adoption for “herd immunity” effect. So telling people with a false confidence that their mask is not protecting them the way they think it does is true. Telling people that masks are not advised right now when there is not enough supply for the prophylactic effect is true. People choosing to deliberately misinterpret what was communicated is the real problem.

[1] https://www.axios.com/anthony-fauci-masks-coronavirus-f77c30...

"This Side Toward Enemy"

Should start putting that on smartphone screens.

To be fair, under stress and lack of sleep intelligence does go down and it only takes one mistake.

The Greek poet Archilochus said "We don't rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training." Everyone imagines how they would do everything right when the adrenaline has been dumped into their system and lives are on the line, but that just doesn’t happen. When it really counts, we don’t perform better. We perform much worse. Most of what makes Special Forces special is that they train, a lot. Then they train some more.

I've read many accounts of first time in combat. The usual experience is "my brain froze, but my training kicked in and saved my life".

It is not too much to expect, and then there is the hurdle of actually communicating without sending us off into trauma/Trauma, childhood- or otherwise. It is only recently that I’m even aware that I’m predominantly emotion-driven, acting/reacting before considering, and that’s largely thanks to The Blindboy Podcast and his summaries and examples of Rogerian psychology, cognitive behavior therapy, and transactional analysis.

Here I was thinking my extensive education, travel, and employment conferred “adult” status, only to realize I’m likely emotionally stuck in various unresolved traumas from infancy to my teenage years. Thankfully I (believe I) can rewrite my life-scripts towards adulthood (acceptance of responsibility for my actions, +?).

My feeling is that, expectations acknowledged, Fred Rogers’ style of communication is sorely underused in the US.

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