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> Ok, done ranting. :-)

OK, I'll take it from here ;-). Me, I paused at these words:

"the intent is always to influence"

Well, yes, I suppose so. Except, perhaps, for the non-fools (actually Johnson said blockheads) who wisely spin entertaining stories for money.

But the word "influence" always reminds me of a story that my mother recounted. Many moons ago, there was a bit of social and labor unrest around our parts, and there was a general workers assembly at the factory where she worked.

One of the workers speaking at the meeting said his piece, and finished by remarking: "But this is just my opinion, and anyone who lets himself be influenced is a fool".

That simple remark still gives me pause today, when I contemplate all the "influencers" busily emulating Genghis Khan, trying to insert their ideas into as many brains as possible.

I know I said my post would probably get downvotes, but I'm glad to find someone discussing instead of downvoting. Thanks. :-) I agree that the use of the word influence instead of inform is highly suggestive.

whether it's "what the audience needs to hear" is irrelevant

A charitable interpretation of his meaning leads to the same conclusion you have. Maybe what he means is "Every talk is for an audience, and it's the speaker's responsibility to say what the audience needs to hear so they understand the point"?

100 years? How about 10 years? Our inability to predict the future works on much shorter timescales than he seems to think. Why the emphasis on 100 years?

Because he's referencing a talk given at the 100th anniversary of CalTech.

Other than that, yes, I agree, it did come off as a bit pretentious. But I feel his point, he wants to work on things that matter to him, for the time frame he defines.

I feel his point, he wants to work on things that matter to him, for the time frame he defines.

Yes, I get that that's his point--but he's not just saying he wants to do that himself, he's saying he wants to influence other people to do it. He's convinced it's so important that it's OK to skew the information he gives people in order to influence them. At least, that's what I read between the lines. (And btw, I'm not saying this is what he intended; I'm just saying that's how it comes across to me.)

Btw, as I said to ableal, thanks for discussing instead of downvoting. :-)

Why is persuasion such a bad thing? He's absolutely in the persuasion game. So is everyone else. I see it as him acknowledging that and saying "you know, this is a position of power, I have a responsibility to use it for good, as I see it". Other people have a responsibility for how they react, too, of course. No-one is an island.

In particular, anyone who designs a user interface – which guides you to do thing A rather than thing B – is in the persuasion game. They're trying to shape your behavior for - hopefully - your own good. Blackhat UX is when the converse happens.

Facts are the domain of pure math. Everything else is conditional.

Why is persuasion such a bad thing?

Because it's extremely difficult to set out to persuade someone of something and not give them a skewed presentation of the issue about which you are trying to persuade them. (IMO it's actually impossible, but just "extremely difficult" is sufficient for this discussion.) And as soon as you skew your presentation of the issue, no matter how you rationalize it in terms of "it's for their own good" or "I've spent a lot of time and effort on this, I know more than they do", etc., etc., you're still, at the end of the day, substituting your judgment for theirs. IMO that's never a good thing.

"you know, this is a position of power, I have a responsibility to use it for good, as I see it"

Why is it a position of power? Who gave it to him? And why did he take it, instead of saying, "No, I'm not going to take this power and try to use it for good. That never works. Go look up the facts and make up your own mind."

Bottom line, I simply don't accept that it has to be that way--that somebody has to have power, and so the best we can do is hope they'll use it for good. I get that it's human nature to let things be that way, I get that the alternative--that everybody makes up their own mind, period, no exceptions--is scary to many people (not to mention that it would basically break our entire media culture). But that doesn't make it right.

anyone who designs a user interface – which guides you to do thing A rather than thing B – is in the persuasion game. They're trying to shape your behavior for - hopefully - your own good.

Again, I get that this point of view is rampant--it basically defines Apple, for example--but that doesn't make it right. (And yes, I know that Apple does this because its customers pay for it. That doesn't make it right either.)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that I expect things to change any time soon. I labeled my OP as "ranting" for a reason. :-)

Facts are the domain of pure math. Everything else is conditional.

Really? Gravity is conditional? The way a microchip works is conditional? Or more to the point: is "anyone who designs a user interface is in the persuasion game" conditional? You didn't make it sound that way.

You throw around this "that doesn't make it right" thing. I'm curious what you think is "right", in general, and from where the concept of "right" comes from.

In particular, if I make up my own mind to consider another in a position of power, why is that "not right"?

if I make up my own mind to consider another in a position of power, why is that "not right"

It's "not right" in the sense that, by giving another person the power to decide what's "good" for you, you're giving up an important part of your human potential. As I said, I get that it's human nature to do this: evolution has hard-wired this behavior pattern into our brains. Most of our closest evolutionary relatives form dominance hierarchies, which is what "considering another in a position of power" means: you're putting them above you in the hierarchy.

But we humans have the ability to consider abstractions, like a concept of "good" over and above basic survival and subsistence, that other species do not. (At least, we have no evidence that they do, and considerable evidence that they do not.) But "good" is something somewhat different for each individual; no two people have exactly the same concept of "good" (though there is obviously a lot of overlap). If you let someone else decide what's "good" for you, you're giving up the part that's unique to you, because no one else can really know what that is. Only you can really figure out how best to use the unique combination of human qualities that you have, but to do that you have to decide for yourself what your "good" is; you have to refuse to put anyone else in a position of power.

Btw, this is, of course, not original with me, though I've put it in my own words above. It's the basic idea of the Enlightenment; it's the basic idea behind the Declaration of Independence ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" means not letting anyone else tell you what "happiness" means for you).

You seem to be confused about whether you're a relativist or not. If the concept of "good" is different for each individual, surely the concept of "right" is as well.

Only you can really figure out how best to use the unique combination of human qualities that you have

Do you have anything to back up this claim? It seems very wishy-washy.

which is what "considering another in a position of power" means: you're putting them above you in the hierarchy

This is a rather one-dimensional way of looking at the world. There are all sorts of power, and all sorts of ways one can hold another in power. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the relationship between me and my local police officer. He is in a position of power, in that I've agreed to follow his directions in most cases, and it's a mutually beneficial relationship. There's also nothing wrong with the relationship between me and my Congressman. He's in a position of a power in that he creates (with others) the law of the land, and I am in a different position of power in that I vote him in or out. I can go on and on, as the world is full of complex relationships, but with respect to the subject at hand, you seem to be arguing that someone is wrong for considering a person worthy of giving advice, and putting that person in a "position of power" by allowing them to speak that advice. It seems really silly.

If the concept of "good" is different for each individual, surely the concept of "right" is as well.

To the extent that there is a difference, yes, this is true. Eating sweets may be "right" for you or me, but not for someone who has diabetes. Learning computer programming may be "right" for you or me, but not for someone whose talents and interests make them much better suited to be a plumber.

But as I said, there is a lot of overlap, and where there is overlap, people share a concept of "right". There is pretty general agreement that it's "right" not to murder people, for example.

Do you have anything to back up this claim? It seems very wishy-washy.

It seems obvious to me. Nobody else shares your experience; nobody else lives life from your point of view.

There are all sorts of power, and all sorts of ways one can hold another in power.

True, but not all of them involve influence or advice. I don't ask my local cop for advice. I certainly don't ask my Congressman for advice, although lots of people do look to their Congressman for guidance on political issues (more on that below). The cop and the Congressman are basically my agents; I've contracted them (through a very convoluted process, true) to take care of certain things that we, as a society, have generally agreed need to be taken care of. That relationship does involve giving the cop and the Congressman certain powers, yes; and not all of them are good ideas, IMO. But it's not the kind of power you're talking about (or it shouldn't be--again, more on that below).

you seem to be arguing that someone is wrong for considering a person worthy of giving advice, and putting that person in a "position of power" by allowing them to speak that advice.

It depends on what you mean by "advice". There's advice, as in "tell me what you think" vs. advice as in "tell me what I should do". The former seems fine to me; you're just seeking information. The latter does not; you're asking someone else to make a decision that you should be making yourself.

There is an important special case, though, which I alluded to above. What about appointing a specialist, so to speak, as your agent in an area where they have special expertise? That's what the cop is, basically; and the same goes for doctors, lawyers, and other experts that we hire. The same is supposed to go for the Congressman too; they are supposed to be specialists in politics, in coming up with consensus solutions to difficult issues.

That was supposed to be how the US government worked: it was supposed to be a republic, where people elected representatives who were supposed to have better than average knowledge and judgment about politics. That means the representatives are not really giving advice or guidance; they're not telling you how to vote. They're just doing the job they were hired to do; and if you don't like the job they're doing, you vote them out.

But now every political issue has to be decided by popular consensus--not just consensus of the representatives, but consensus of all the people. And so now people look to their politicians to tell them what to think, instead of exercising their own independent judgment about how well their politicians are doing their jobs. In other words, the fact that people expect politicians to give "advice" and guidance is a sign that the system is broken.

He's also in a room that is more likely to contain someone who will change the course of progress than most rooms are.

The audience matters. ;-)

He's also in a room that is more likely to contain someone who will change the course of progress than most rooms are.

True, but not relevant to the argument I'm making. The fact that his attempt to influence people might well have more leverage because of his audience doesn't make influencing people, as opposed to informing them, any more right than it would otherwise be. In fact, it might make it even worse.

Look at it this way: his basic argument is that humanity's most valuable asset is ideas. The more good ideas we have, the better. And the best way to spread ideas is replication--people learn them from other people. So he's basically saying that influencing people is good because it helps to spread good ideas.

But here's the thing: in a sane society, good ideas don't need help to spread. They spread naturally, because people are not fools. If you have a good idea, use it. In this case, instead of telling people how important he thinks it is to develop good tools for thinking, he should just do it--develop tools for thinking that he thinks are good, and use them to do some superior thinking. If he's right, people will naturally adopt the tools because they can see that the tools work.

But when you add "influence" into the mix, you now have created a second way for ideas to spread, one that does not depend on whether or not they are actually good ideas. If people start thinking, hey, this guy is a mover and shaker, a "thought leader", someone I should listen to, they will spread his idea even if it's not a good idea. So influencing people, persuading people, in fact will have the opposite effect to the one he thinks: it's not needed to spread good ideas, but it can help to spread bad ideas that would otherwise die out. And if his audience contains people who are more likely to spread whatever ideas he persuades them to spread, the damage done by a bad idea is even greater.

I think we just have to disagree here. In my mind, if you think something is a legitimately good idea, then you're almost obligated to try to influence others to take it on.

Ideas do, in my experience, need help to spread. Particularly if they are unorthodox ideas. There's a resistance to ideas that live outside the box, they aren't automatically accepted by people just because they're good.

I work really hard at evaluating ideas that are new to me based on their merits. But it's sometimes extremely difficult to do. And,to be completely blunt, most people don't make the effort, even if they're otherwise intelligent.

In my mind, if you think something is a legitimately good idea, then you're almost obligated to try to influence others to take it on.

In other words, you think that just your opinion that it's a good idea is sufficient to justify influencing others, even if you haven't actually tried it? You don't feel any obligation to test it yourself first, to see whether it's really a good idea or whether you were mistaken? How does that square with this:

I work really hard at evaluating ideas that are new to me based on their merits. But it's sometimes extremely difficult to do.

In other words, you admit it's very difficult to evaluate new ideas, but yet you think you're obligated to try to influence others to adopt them without having tried them yourself first? Wouldn't it be much more sensible to try the idea yourself first, since it's so difficult to evaluate it on its merits just by looking at it?

There's a resistance to ideas that live outside the box, they aren't automatically accepted by people just because they're good.

I do disagree with this as you state it, yes. I would say there is resistance to out of the box ideas that have not been demonstrated to work. And the way to overcome this resistance is to demonstrate that the idea works, instead of trumpeting how good it is before you've tested it yourself.

most people don't make the effort, even if they're otherwise intelligent.

Yes, that's true. And I would say it's because people's time and energy are limited, and they already have enough to do with it without adopting this new idea that you say is so great, but you have no evidence to back it up.

Edit: I should add that I put a key qualifier in my statement about good ideas spreading naturally: I said it happens that way in a sane society. I do not think we currently live in a sane society, and the reason why is that in our society, the second method of spreading ideas has crowded out the first one. People don't evaluate ideas based on whether they've been demonstrated to work; they evaluate them based on who is saying they're good ideas.

So there are actually two reasons why "there's a resistance to ideas that live outside the box"; in addition to the one I gave above (that there's a resistance to out of the box ideas that haven't been demonstrated to work), there is also a second reason: there's a resistance to ideas that are "out of the box" in the sense that they come from a source that isn't on the list of "approved" sources for ideas. The second reason could apply even to an idea that has been demonstrated to work. But even in that case, the reason for trying to get the idea adopted should still be "this idea has been demonstrated to work", not "I think this is a good idea, even though I'm not on your list of approved sources for ideas".

"You don't feel any obligation to test it yourself first, to see whether it's really a good idea or whether you were mistaken? "

Well, no, I didn't say that.

Not explicitly, no, but it certainly seemed to me to be strongly implied. You didn't say "If you have tried an idea and found it to work well, I think you have an obligation to get others to try it too." You just said "If you think something is a good idea". My point is that, to put it bluntly, just "thinking" it's a good idea is worth very little by itself; it certainly isn't enough to obligate you to try to get others to adopt it. You need a lot more than that.

>Every talk is for an audience, and it's the speaker's responsibility to say what the audience needs to hear. > >Wait, what?

I don't think he means what you're inferring. I don't think he's trying to skew anything or anyone, but instead emphasizing for all of his talks, he's trying to present a message in a way the audience should understand it. It's not about deceiving any more than a beginner's programming book (with simplified examples) deceives a beginner. It explains what they need to know, on their terms.

See the other comments downthread. If he had used the word "inform" instead of "influence", for example, I might buy your interpretation. But "influence", to me, means he's taking it upon himself to decide what to present based on "what the audience needs to hear", instead of deciding what to present based on the subject matter--what needs to be presented to enable the audience to understand. Yes, this is a judgment call: as I said in my OP, your mileage may vary. But that's how I read it.

Bret is trying to get people to see what he sees because he knows it will lead to a leap in humankind's ability to transfer knowledge.

He sees a way to amplify the world's ability to learn and understand. This transformation in how to design and present content will accelerate learning by making the impenetrable accessible.

He's making this his life's work, and it's clear he has spent countless hours pondering and working it. A hallmark of a genius is a rare and valuable perspective -- a unique mental model -- that has been built up over time through long periods of deep contemplation. As a result, these rare and valuable perspectives enable you to see what few (if any) have seen before.

Bret sees a lever that will amplify human understanding, and he knows how to get there.

The difficulty is transferring his mental model to others because the gaps in understanding are often too great. We might get a glimpse of what he sees, but it will be only a sliver until we have explored what he's explored from every angle and have reconstructed the model in our mind.

Part of the challenge is showing others how to get to this golden lever, but the first step is to others to recognize its significance so they are inspired to begin the journey. This is what he meant by influence. However, inspiring others to take action can be hard when they begin with only a fuzzy notion of what he sees.

But notice the premise of his talk is about providing a solution to this problem. By fundamentally redesigning our interfaces to knowledge, it will be easier for one to transfer their mental model to others -- he states this premise at the beginning. His talk provided a glimpse into what's possible -- to help people snap out of fixed mindsets and point them toward a path beyond incremental improvement. The examples he provided weren't the end game -- they are just the beginning -- meant to whet our appetite.

Seeing his work and watching his presentations, you feel his passion and know he lives with these ideas ruminating in the back of his mind everyday. He has explored them farther than almost anyone else in the world.

Shinichi Mochizuki is another recent example of someone exploring an idea and following it out to a place no one else can see.

Mochizuki spent years working on a proof for the ABC conjecture (http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/11/03/abc-proof-too-to...). Mochizuki posted four papers for the proof on his website, but he has yet to publicly engage the mathematics community.

During this process, he invented his own language -- he was in a mathematical world no one had seen or conceived before -- so his papers have been impenetrable to the world's top mathematicians. The gaps in understanding are too great.

When Bret said he decided to present on "what the audience needs to hear", I suspect he's starting slow by giving them a glimpse of what he sees, rather than trying to distill everything into an hour talk. He's trying to influence people to think beyond their preconceived notions of what's possible. He's trying to get them to think different -- to inspire their work by illuminating a path that leads to transformative understanding.

Bret is trying to get people to see what he sees because he knows it will lead to a leap in humankind's ability to transfer knowledge.

No, he's trying because he believes it will lead to a leap in our ability to transfer knowledge. He admits he doesn't know, because nobody knows what will be important in 100 years.

My question is, what if he's wrong? Consider:

(1) If he's wrong, then so are all the people he's expended all this effort to influence. It's not just him going down a wrong path, it's everyone he's convinced to share his vision. Epic fail.

(2) If he's right, why bother expending all this effort to influence people to see what he sees? Why not just use what he sees to actually do what he describes? He has an idea for building better tools for thinking? Great! Go build some and show how they're better. If he's right, he won't need to influence people; the benefits of his approach will be obvious. But, if he's wrong, it will only be he that's wrong; other people will not have wasted their efforts on a blind alley as well.

My question is, what if he's wrong?

"All models are wrong, but some are useful." -George Box.

Models get refined over time. Only the omniscient see the entirety. Newton had an incomplete picture of gravity, but it put us on the path.

It's the fundamental shifts -- the leaps in thinking -- that illuminate new areas to explore.

If he's right, why bother expending all this effort to influence people to see what he sees?

Have you ever been inspired by a great teacher? Great teachers begin by inspiring their students.

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." --Albert Einstein

"We expert teachers know that motivation and emotional impact are what matter." -- Donald Norman

He admits he doesn't know, because nobody knows what will be important in 100 years.

The residual impact from communicating your insights can last well beyond 100 years, especially if you provide new puzzle pieces that fill in our gaps of understanding, connect domains, and contribute to a more complete picture.

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." --Henry Adams

Someone who did not try to communicate their understanding would be doing a disservice to us all. You never know what pieces someone else may be missing.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

Sure, but all this means is that you and I should both have used the word "useful" instead of "wrong". It doesn't materially change what I said: he doesn't know his ideas will be useful, he just believes they will, and the impact if he's wrong about that is still just what I said.

Have you ever been inspired by a great teacher?

Sure, but he didn't use the word "inspire". He used the word "influence". The great teachers that inspired me didn't tell me what to work on; they just told me I had a lot of potential and I should find something good to do with it. What he's saying is a lot more specific than that.

Someone who did not try to communicate their understanding would be doing a disservice to us all.

Again, he's not just communicating his understanding (which I agree is beneficial). He's trying to get people to do something different than they would have done otherwise. He doesn't just think "this stuff would be useful for others to know". He thinks "people should devote their time and energy to this thing I believe in". That's a very different matter.

So you're pro-"inspire" but anti-"influence"?

Not to go all Webster on you, but the primary definition of inspire is to influence:

  in*spire

  verb (used with object)

  1. to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting
     influence: His courage inspired his followers.

  2. to produce or arouse (a feeling, thought, etc.): 
     to inspire confidence in others.

  3. to fill or affect with a specified feeling, thought, 
     etc.: to inspire a person with distrust.

  4. to influence or impel: Competition inspired her to
     greater efforts.

  5. to animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the
     like, does: They were inspired by a belief in a better
     future.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inspire

BTW: You do realize your entire thread has been an argument of influence, advocating your point of view?

So you're pro-"inspire" but anti-"influence"?

When appropriately defined, yes. See below.

the primary definition of inspire is to influence

Ah, you would rather continue to play word games than actually address the substance of my argument. But sure, I'll play.

I could quibble with your claim that the primary definition of inspire is to influence, since in that definition, "influence" is used as a noun, not a verb. But that's really a side issue, because you didn't bother to ask me in which sense I was using the word "inspire" (or "influence", for that matter), or to take into account the context in which I used the words. That context should have made it evident that senses #2 and #3 of "inspire" are the ones I meant, and those do not mean the same as "influence" as a verb.

I suppose, for the record, I should also make explicit that I am using "influence" in sense #8 of the dictionary definition, taken from the same dictionary you used:

8. to move or impel (a person) to some action: Outside factors influenced her to resign.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/influence

You do realize your entire thread has been an argument of influence, advocating your point of view?

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to make this play. :-) Fortunately, it's easy to refute since I just gave the dictionary definition of "influence" in the sense I've been using the term. I'm not trying to move anyone to any action; I'm just trying to explain why the post bothered me enough to rant about it, and then to clarify my position in response to questions and counterarguments. I don't want or expect anyone to drop what they're doing and devote time and energy to something else as a result of what I say. If anything, I hope that people will be less likely to do that in response to "influence", as a result of what I say.

Did you bother to ask Bret in which sense he was using the word "influence"?

Fair question. No, I didn't, because I had no way to do so; I don't know him, there's no way to comment on the article linked to in the OP, and he doesn't appear to be posting here on HN.

So all I had to go on was the linked article and the context of how he used the word "influence" in it. I have said, several times, that my reaction is my personal judgment and that others' judgments may differ. (I also said I agree with his general point that tools for thinking have much more impact than particular solutions to particular problems.)

And as regards the substantive question: do you disagree that he is trying to move people to take actions that they would not otherwise have taken? That he is trying to get people to spend time and energy on developing tools for thinking, instead of something else?

No, I do not think he's trying to twist anyone's arm -- that's not his style. Have you watched his videos?

"Inventing on Principle" http://worrydream.com/#!/InventingOnPrinciple

"Media for Thinking the Unthinkable" (MIT Media Lab) http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable

He's making the case that when information is presented in a way that enables you to visualize and interact with it, then it makes it easier understand and develop intuition because you're better able to "explore it from every angle" (he's referencing Feynman here), and for that reason, it's a worthwhile endeavor.

"It's not quite true that Feynman could not accept an idea until he had torn it apart. Rather, the idea could not yet be part of his way of thinking and looking at the world. Before an idea could contribute to that worldview, Feynman wanted to turn over the idea, to see why it was true, from any angle that he could find" (http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard-feynman-t...).

If you've only read this blog post, watch the two videos above, and see if you still have the same impression.

I do not think he's trying to twist anyone's arm

I agree he's not explicitly trying to twist anyone's arm; he doesn't say "do this". But he's making clear that he has a strong opinion. See further comments below.

Have you watched his videos?

I have now--I had only really briefly skimmed them before. I'll comment on them in reverse order to the order you linked to them, because, ironically, if you'd only given the link to the second one (Media for Thinking the Unthinkable), I'd be more inclined to revise my impression; but the first one (Inventing on Principle) contains some elements that the second one doesn't.

I agree with his general point in the Media video, although I would state it slightly differently: our representations of systems constrain how we think about them. For any given representation of a system, there will be some thoughts about that system that are "unthinkable" using that representation. So it's good if we can find multiple representations of systems, particularly important ones. (Feynman once said that any theoretical physicist who is any good knows several theoretical representations for exactly the same physics.)

I also agree with his point about representations constraining how thoughts can be communicated; his example of a well-written paper still being incomprehensible because the authors had no other way of talking about their findings than dense mathematical jargon is a good one, and his reworking of the paper is a good illustration of how changing representations can greatly help in understanding an idea.

He also makes a key admission at the end of the Media video, which I did not expect after reading the article that started this thread. He admits he doesn't know what "the new medium" will be. In the article, he says we don't know what is going to be important in 100 years, but he appears to be saying we can still, right now, know what tools to build to help our children to see it. At the end of the video, he seems to be saying that's not the case--he doesn't know what tools to build, but he's dedicated to searching for them. Fair enough--if that were the only video I had seen, I'd say you were right, he's not proselytizing, he's just informing.

But in the Inventing video, the stance he takes is quite different. Much of the underlying material is the same; but there are two key points that aren't there in the Media video. First, he says he views creators being constrained by their tools as a moral wrong. At that point (about halfway through the video), he says he's not trying to make everyone believe that--he's only trying to show that you can believe that. But at the end of the talk, he explicitly contrasts his view--find a principle, find something you think is morally wrong, and fix it--with taking the path that is "laid out for you" by parents, teachers, corporations, whatever; he says "you can choose to sleepwalk through your life, but you don't have to." That's proselytizing. And as far as I can tell, his audience in that talk is at least partly students, so proselytizing makes me even more uneasy than it would in a talk for a general audience.

So bottom line, I agree his overall position is more complex than I made it sound in my original post upthread; but I still think he's trying to influence people as I was using the term, and it still makes me uneasy.