Red Light Green Light

I have never heard of this approach before, but it sounds flipping great. I will now look for arguments that I can start and then later solve with this method. Winners all around!

I wish it was a common practice to ban certain words from difficult conversations. But whenever I suggest it people just talk past me as though I've said some weird thing.

There's facts and opinions, but also definitions, and too often disagreements boil down to a different definition of a single word. Ban that word and say what you mean and the disagreement may suddenly be gone.

Edit: I wrote this before reading the second paragraph. :) I'll leave it as an alternate way of saying the same.

Let me ask, has anyone successfully "tabooed" certain words, or do people not understand the purpose of doing so?

> first being specific about what we agree upon.

Or even just trying to define the goal you are trying to accomplish. I've seen many disagreements on software projects because people's definition are completely different. The arguments are just a symptom of a deeper problem that no amount of careful discussions are going to fix.

Tangentially related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem

>Many intense arguments can be diffused by first being specific about what we agree upon.

Exactly. Whenever I have the inclination to get into an argument about politics, I try to start by finding a common premise, in order to find where the problems or disagreements start. And eventually, I find that we have similar goals where you wouldn't expect sometimes, but are coming at it from completely different sets of facts that guide us to different conclusions.

This is one of those things "rationalists" do that doesn't always make sense. It is possible to tell someone to "taboo their words" to obstruct someone, in order to make it hard for them to discuss something whose meaning you know very well. It's also possible to tell someone to taboo their words because you want to nitpick an imperfect definition--regardless of whether the flaws in thde definition are relevant to the current argument.

So often I see engineers get sucked into arguing something based on a buzzword that they either believe the system they are building needs to conform to, they think other people (outside the company) care about, or because it agrees with their pre-conceived design notions.

Nuking words interrupts this, I often ban the words "scalable", "Automated", "platform", and "system". It forces the conversation back to specifics such as "Ability to handle X requests per second supporting Y users", "Process requires x, y, z steps rather than a,b,c steps", "service supports use cases A, B, C"

This might not be the right place to ask..

How to find value from LessWrong? I see people derive value from it, but when I visit it, it’s not obvious

A great word to taboo in hardware tech is "performance".

I once witnessed a very heated argument among a group of programmers discussing some code on a microcontroller. Half of them thought the performance was abysmal. The other half thought the performance was great. To everybody it was obvious to see what the performance was, why were the other half being so bone-headed about it?

Turned out the first group were trained mechanical engineers, the second were trained software engineers. For the first group, "performance" meant how closely the motion of the device attached to the microcontroller tracked the optimal path. I.e. the performance of the function approximation that the microcontroller code was doing. To the second group, it meant how fast the code ran. This was completely irrelevant to the first group, since as long as it managed to run 1000 times per second (which it easily did), nobody cared how many nanoseconds there were to spare each cycle. Why are you even talking about that? The performance is shit, we need to improve it and who cares if it takes a few more CPU cycles.

People should do this with the word "decentralized".

This is a great idea. Not just for tech discussions; I think some political discussions would also be much improved if we could taboo certain words. Some people get too hung up on certain -isms without explaining what specific policies they're talking about.

Without properly-defined terms, where the participants agree on definitions, it's impossible to have a rational discussion grounded in logic.

Or just ask "what do you mean by X".

Of relevance, the adjective "clean": https://www.steveonstuff.com/2022/01/27/no-such-thing-as-cle...

I've often remarked at how common it is to hear two people talking about completely different things using the same words, thinking they're both understanding each other. Communication could be something that we think we're better at than maybe we actually are.

The one thing that was drummed into my head in grad school was to define your terms. I often ask students "How much is 'most?'" as in "most people think X." Technically 50.1% would be "most" but when I say "most" I generally think closer to 75% or more. So people could think they are disagreeing over whether "most people think x" is true but they are really disagreeing over the definition of "most."

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Maybe she meant that there was a lot more research needed before she understood him.

I mean, it’s obvious in retrospect. If you’re the type of person who read the first half of this story and immediately went “Ah, I know what the problem is, the kid’s looking at the other signal!” then kudos to you for not needing this advice ever again, but I suspect the vast majority of folks could do with being reminded of common sense things from time to time.

> "Consider things from others' viewpoints." Of course.

Difficult to do, isn't it?

You're not wrong, but this ability is not common. Our viewpoint is the core to many fundamental issues, which makes us "both right" which leads to endless arguments because we're both optimising for different things.

A really good example is how one "hears" the news. Some people hear "how this affects me", others hear "how this affects everyone else". There's talk of a minimum wage increase, do you think "yay, more money for them", or do you think "my taxes are going to go up to pay for this."

You see this disconnect every time a customer is upset with a business. They imagine that a business optimises for the customer, whereas a business optimises for the business.

Like when a business is acquired and disappears. Users see this as bad, but owners see it as "I got paid".

I mean it is a quote from a guest on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Not exactly a font of anything other than received wisdom and LinkedIn platitudes.

For me, the takeaway is pretty deep:

Other peoples world views are valid.

It's so easy and so human to criticize other people's views, filtered through my own world view. But then I'm really only criticizing own interpretation of their view.

For me, this is a lesson that almost can't be repeated enough, because I tend to slip into forgetting about it.

But good for you if you find it obvious and banal :)

Yeah, posts like this getting a lot of upvotes makes me feel like I don't understand how humans operate these days anymore.

My takeaway (and something I've been thinking about regarding precision in communication) is that people often believe to be talking about the same thing, yet will be talking about different things.

This is super frequent, especially in more heated discussions, and it leads me to want to look at writing things precisely, even the banal stuff, so that we can actually figure out what is going on. This is especially helpful in the "I can't believe you actually think that" cases

I think its pretty common, especially when building software for other people, to make all manner of invalid assumptions. This is a nice, succint story to demonstrate how easily things can get over our heads. To ground it a bit -- if people aren't buying your product, or aren't using your feature the way you expected, you try to understand them. But if they or the world don't make sense, you might need to more literally get into their shoes to figure out why. How often on HN do we see people complaining that what someone does makes no sense. Whether another political party, upper management, non technical people, etc. Its actually the main thing that drives me away from HN at times, because those comments never go anywhere substantive.

Yes, but that's not how we _learn_. You can read all the succinct bullet points of advice you want, but seeing a lesson explained through the eyes of an engaging story is a strictly better way of _ingesting_ said lesson and makes you more capable of actually pattern matching situations where it is appropriate.

"Consider things from others' viewpoints" is a summary of the lesson, but you could have told that to the mother in the story all day long and she wouldn't have grokked how to apply it to her situation, or even that she would benefit by doing so!

It is banal but people often forget about banal things.

Especially in technical discussion where they are focused on "important things that everyone should already understand".

Then it turns out that simply asking to clarify assumptions helps a ton.

Something the IQ measurement is actually kind of helpful for is being able to tell if a person is likely to be able to mentally model, understand the abstract and hypotheticals, or empathize intellectually with others.

If you can model what someone else may think, what someone else thinks someone else may think, or understand "what ifs", your IQ will almost certainly measure higher than 80. An example of the opposite is asking, "had you done this instead, what would have happened?" and receiving a response like "that's not what I did".

I have encountered people in functional corporate roles whose ability to grasp beyond what is directly in front of them was exactly why they held their positions. They were highly competitive of and motivated by metrics, no longer or unable to see how things done differently might produce different results ("that's not how we do it"), and generally didn't have a grasp of how their or their department's work fit into the company - they just knew it did. However, they often had a few great interpersonal qualities, like projecting confidence or leadership, patience and self-control in arguments, not easily being flustered or becoming nervous, or having a consistently positive demeanor.

When I think about privilege and justice, I include the existence of people different from me, which means I have to be aware of and understand who they are and what they are like. There's more than one right way to be or live, and it often comes as a shock to some that their communities, classes, and societies are so effective at insulating them from what people different from them are like, only highlighting simple, shallow, or visual differences instead.

My takeaway is that if the number of people this was helpful to was a surprise, your standard of common is too narrow.

I still remember the moment I realized (maybe at age 5 or so?) that even the cars coming toward us on the left side of the road were driving on the right side of the road from their perspective.

Your comment was the top one and it encouraged me to just click through to the article and... I just don't get it after the first paragraph. Indeed, colour blindness? But that doesn't make you "know" it wrong, that makes you not be able to tell (afaik). So then... the kid was either joking, had learned it the wrong way around, or tied the name 'red' to the bottom position perhaps.

... turns out it's a localization problem. If you're sitting too low at the front of the queue, you'd see the overhead traffic light often better than the drivers do. I didn't think that this must, of course, be another USA-localization story and the traffic lights are elsewhere over there (across the crossing I guess).

> used to driving at confusing intersections where it's not clear which light applies

and I guess that explains why there are different systems. Why not change them around in the USA as well? It's not as if people could be confused and look at the wrong lights, as the others' lights are simply not visible when the lights are all on the side nearest to the lane(s) they apply to.

That's funny since I am older, and I sat in the front seat of the car my entire childhood; there were no car seats. When my mother had to make a sudden stop she'd hold out her arm to keep me in place. I remember being dazzled by the arrival of a light with 5 signals (yellow and green arrow and circle) and begging to stay in the intersection to watch them all cycle.

wow, I am exactly opposite. I didnt realize until I read the full story. I am in my 40s and didn't have car until I was in my 20s and actually rarely sat in one because of abundant public transport at the place where I grew up.

Isn't this just another example illustrating her point?

I don't think it's an age thing, I think it was just bloody obvious. So much so that I suspect that story was embellished a lot of dramatic effect. ie the author figured it out themselves quicker than they claimed to but it wouldn't have been as dramatic read if it was the literal sequence of events. Another oddity was the suggested age: 3 years old is very later to be teaching your kids the different between red and green.

Also worth baring in mind that the story happened roughly 20 years ago and I certainly can't remember every conversation I had with my family 20 years ago.

Something about the context--this is a short article posted to HackerNews--makes it easier to realize. I already had a feeling that the story was leading to the adult being wrong somehow.

I got a similar teasing because I used the word "lightricity". Too too long ago to really know where/why my brain locked into that word. Lights=>electricity=>lightning, it all gloms together.

When my daughter was 5 she told me off for driving too fast to school. She was annoyed that whenever I drove fast she would be late for school.

Earlier today I mentioned to my first grader that when I was a kid we didn't have an ice maker in our freezer, and we just used ice cube trays, instead. He sat there for a minute, stumped, and finally asked, "so what made the freezer cold?"

It took me a minute to figure out what he meant, but finally I realized that he thought the way our freezer worked was that we had a machine that made ice, and the freezer was cold because it was full of ice. It's really easy to reverse cause and effect when you can't see what's happening.

I think it would be worthwhile to ask "why do you think that?" on some confident correct assertions as well. Will help with collaborating on developing the child's use of rationality in case they're right for the wrong reasons, and also to avoid overly associating being asked why with being wrong.

Note that (AFAIK), for adults, "why" can get you the wrong response (puts people on the defensive), so (AFAIK) it's recommended to use "what" instead (which tends to get at the "why" you wanted in the first place) -

"why do you think that?" -> "what led to you thinking that?"

:shrug: It works, sooooo.

This why I evaluate future coworkers (interviewer or interviewee) on the speed at which we can align mental models. I have worked with some great engineers with whom I felt like bashing my skull in trying to get them on the same page, and some very middling engineers with whom I was immediately able to understand. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I would rather work with someone I can communicate with than an unapproachable great.

This makes me recall the time I was riding on the bus, and there was a little boy (maybe 4 years old) with his mum. The little boy was proudly reading the numbers off the other buses he saw drive by.

"7, 23, 5, 86," the boy proudly stated. Then a bus numbered "5X" came by.

"What's that?" The boy said, pointing in confusion.

"That's the bus number!" his mom said.

"X is a number now?" the poor kid asked in a painful tone. You could just hear his understanding of the world crumbling around him.

Yes, this seems like a really "low-effort" post for an otherwise very technical and demanding audience.

The post adds value because it's significantly easier to consume than a timestamped link to a podcast.

> it implies you're leading a team that simply can't see the reality

If everyone on the team has the same level of visibility into everything, there is insufficient specialization and/or utilization.

The child in the analogy wasn't blinded from seeing the light ahead. He could theoretically access that information. But in practice, he didn't, and that lead to a miscommunication.

The child wasn't seeing something that wasn't real. The child was looking at a different light. The miscommunication occurred because neither realized that they were looking at different lights.

I don’t think the story takes a position on who is right at what level (and, in fact, it sounds like the story teller herself concedes that leadership should be digging into why their teams are saying “red light” when it’s a green light).

I think the story should be ingested as “we don’t know why someone else can’t obviously see what we see; that problem itself warrants investigations perhaps before any conversation about what to do next.”

As it turns out, our company is currently having this problem: the market and employees of my company are screaming at the leadership to not follow through on a business plan, but leadership has their head buried in the sand and are bound and determined to move ahead because all they see is green lights.

And sure, there’s enough anecdotes out there about people zagging when everyone else zigs, but I think an unspoken prerequisite to those anecdotes is that you at least made sure you understood why they were zigging.

Funny, I remember as a child wondering how my parents knew how to get where we were going. I saw the green lights on the dash (and couldn't see the signal lever from the backseat) and just thought that the car was smart enough to give them directions.

The amount of on-demand kids content these days makes this even trickier now. I frequently have to explain to my kids that no, I can't play that song again because this is the radio and we can't control what it plays.

Even in countries with zero child deaths due to traffic, children need to have some traffic sense, and that's part of what helps keep the accident rate low. Cars exist and a child running into the road unexpectedly can still be injured by the safest possible car driven by the safest possible driver. Learning to cross the road is a basic skill children benefit from learning.

Having traffic sense also gives them more freedom and a better roaming range. My son was very traffic conscious from a young age, so I could let him run ahead on the pavement and freely run around small parks near roads. Other parents held their kids close because they were constantly worried they would run into the road. My son started walking to school at age 7 as he knew how to cross roads. These things gave him a lot of trust & freedom early on than other kids don't have.

As someone with a child the same age, I see it very differenly.

The way I explain it is that traffic lights, roads, crossings, etc, are a mechanism by which society co-operates. Everyone's trying to do something a little different, and if we work together and buy into a shared understanding then we can all do what we want to do. That's a really positive thing. We can all get on with what we need to without resorting to ideology which isn't relevant to the task at hand.

Also, I think it's important for children to learn about everything around them, to see how the world works. It's irresponsible to leave a black hole of knowledge. Especially for things that can be dangerous. Mine knows all about volcanoes, dinosaurs, power tools, chisels, hammers, etc. And he's learned how to interact with at least some of those safely.

Otherwise it's quite literally learned helplessness!

A 3 year old shouldn't be in traffic unsupervised of course, but it can't hurt to help them understand what's going on around them. Even at age 3, kids are interested in that stuff. And eventually they do have to learn this, and by the time they're old enough to be in traffic unsupervised, they should already know it. So you start early.

I'm always amazed at kids ability to quickly build hypotheses and communicate them. The one you mentioned is actually a great one and I wish people wouldn't stop doing that after they grow up. I find it very similar to what actual scientist do on the frontiers of knowledge, where no one really knows, what correct really is - yet.

I wonder how the kid would react, if they saw the bottom of the canal in summer somehow -- missing the ice

It was the first thing I noticed as well, the blame. It was like "blame the husband" was the terminal state of sorts, solving the issue somehow.

Of course the anecdote is about changing the perspective, but I think there's an obvious elephant in this room as well

You could argue if incest is morally bad then so is procreation when you have negative inheritable traits and know about them. It gets ugly pretty quickly from there though.

Interesting. It's 신호등(shin ho deung) and 信号灯(shin go tou) in Korea and Japan. Both literally meaning signal(信号, 신호) light(등, 灯), so I would have thought Chinese would use something similiar (I can see 灯 is being used). I wonder why that happened. Maybe because red is an auspicious color? Or maybe because the word may have originated from Japan and they wanted a different word? or maybe simply because that's what people started to call it and it stuck?

What often helps is if you frame it in a way that shows you as the less knowledgeable person, that way people tend to feel less "attacked".

For example: "I didn't understand X, could you explain (again) what you mean by that?"

But in the end, I guess the more important thing is to build up enough trust between the teams, that one isn't constantly driving the attack/defense line, but can openly talk about ideas and see questions as clarifying, rather than attacking.