zlacker

>>tagoll+(OP)
I think the problem is that people, even smart people, lack critical thinking skills or don't apply them. It's not the scale that makes the nuanced communication not work, it's the scale that makes you notice it. You could have the same communications with smaller groups and you'd have the same results, you just wouldn't be as likely to get negative feedback indicating it.

It's also ironic to me that someone would try nuanced communication on Twitter, a platform whose very design discourages it. You can't do nuanced communication in 280 characters, but you can do vitriol just fine. So they do the tweet storm which turns off anyone who isn't incredibly interested in what you're saying.

>>mattma+Jp
> I think the problem is that people, even smart people, lack critical thinking skills or don't apply them.

I agree, but I think it's more nuanced than this: smart people can regularly be observed being unable to think critically during conversations (particularly on certain topics), yet the same people can think critically writing code. Assuming this is true (it's certainly quite true), it seems to me that differences between these two contexts causes the mind to behave differently.

>>mister+jE
Also there is a certain lack of training in clear thinking with words and ideas that are not emphasized in STEM curriculum but are emphasized in the humanities. I took a fair amount of history and literature in college, and while they lack the clarifying reality of equations and axiom systems, the practitioners of such fields are quite good at dissecting statements and pulling out the subtleties of human language based communication. A group of upper level literature students would I think pick up on more nuance than a group of CompSci students. They are also exposed to a lot more nuance in their regular reading and work.

>>lansti+Lc1
It was several years after I left university before I gained a real appreciation for a course that was made mandatory at the time: History of Science.

At the time I was forced to take the course, it felt pointless to me, but after reading Thomas Kuhn’s book (SoSR) several years later, I can look back and connect the dots.

Learning about the history of science was meant to punctuate a widely held myth, that our civilization has been progressing linearly and cumulatively. Kuhn found that the way textbooks are written create the illusion in the mind of the student that scientific advances have been linear and cumulative, rather than being interrupted by paradigm shifts, as old approaches are abandoned in favor of new ones.

Nuance comes down to being able to view an issue from multiple perspectives, that in a lot of situations, there is often more than one (correct) answer.