Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5!szabo From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Newsgroups: comp.groupware Subject: Re: 2 comments Message-ID: <20994@crg5.UUCP> Date: 22 Jan 91 10:49:46 GMT References: <214@buster.ddmi.com> <115@intrbas.UUCP> <20815@crg5.UUCP> <126@intrbas.UUCP> <872@agcsun.UUCP> <20921@crg5.UUCP> <20964@crg5.UUCP> Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc Lines: 111 In article wex@dali.pws.bull.com (Der Grouch) writes: >In article <20964@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: > For a technical discussion, I find the most serious objections by > looking at the most serious evidence put forward to support those > objections. > >Oh, piffle! You do no such thing. You look at the objections brought, >listen to the tone of voice used to present them, evaluate that against the >history you have of technical, social and personal interaction with the >person making the objection, then you form an opinion as to the >"seriousness" of the evidence. *Then* you weight the seriousness. Oh piffle! I recognize tone of voice, history of personal and social interaction, and other emotions for what they are: typically irrelevent to the technical matter at hand. I can and have exchanged large amounts of technical information (in e-mail, news, source-code control, and bug tracking groupware) without ever having met the person or had any sort of emotional interaction. Similarly, I can read scientific journals, judging them on technical merit without knowing or caring one whit about the emotions of the person when the were writing the paper. If in fact I know the person, I usually go into "filter emotions" mode so that I can exchange the information needed without noise. I save my emotions for non-technical social occasions where they are appropriate. > ...it may be of interest to certain parties to communicate that > emotion, but it is not in the interest of the group as a whole and will > lead to a political rather than technical solution. Furthermore, the > emotional communication diverts attention from the technical communication, > leading to even poorer results. > >Depends on what you consider a "poor" result. You appear to believe that >there is the One Great Truth out there and your Job is to Discover it. This >kind of idiocy came into fashion with the Victorians; I rather thought we'd >gotten over it. "Idiocy"? Thank you for providing more evidence that shows how emotions get in the way of technical communications. Now for some facts: when I debug code there are correct and incorrect solutions. This is also true (albeit statistically instead of logically) for other forms of engineering and hard science. >In the real world, the politico-social process is *extremely important* even >in the Discovery of Truths (like physics, which we may suppose to be an >approximation of the real world). In more fuzzy areas like building >computer products (which I naively assume you do), that process becomes even >more important. Assuming that this is true (you again provide no evidence), "extremely important" != "productive". I have consistently found in my career that my and my fellow's emotions and technical communications do not benificially mix. > I am interested in discussing the facts and uses of groupware, not a silly > contest to see who can get the most red in the face. > >You missed my point; perhaps if you'd seen my gestures you'd have gotten it. I want to see evidence, not hand-waving. :-) >Let me say it again: you are, at this moment, interpolating a huge amount of >information that has been stripped out of the bare text I must send you. >You have to hope that you get most of it right or you end up over- or >underreacting. I am not "reacting" to your post, I am thinking about it. >Perhaps you interpolate an angry tone of voice and decide >this discussion is not worth your time, so you ignore my posting(s) and miss >out on an interesting topic. I don't know for sure what your "tone of voice" is, nor do I care. I am looking for facts that support your position -- examples of emotional groupware being used to enhance the productivity of a technical project. >The point of all that is to say that rather than leaving it to guesswork to >fill in this missing information, we would all benefit from having the >"real" raw data there to analyze or ignore as we chose. Your gestures and tone of voice would just distract me: that is not the information I need. Whether you are being serious, angry, silly, sad, or whatever doesn't tell me anything about whether you are right. >.... > Hate to tell you, but most of the research of which you speak is > *written down* not in sound or video. > >Yes, and a bloody shame too! Chomsky, for example, is a mediocre writer at >times, but can be a terrific speaker. I understood some of his ideas *much* >better after I attended one of his lectures and saw his diagrams and >sketches. Or try to imagine how well you'd understand fractals if you'd >never seen a Mandelbrot or Julia set rendered. Self-similarity is much >better demonstrated by allowing a user to zoom in a section of such a >rendering than it is by any number of words. Thank you for some examples. However, these are examples of technical graphics, not sound or video. I agree that technical graphics are important for many applications. This has little to do with communicating emotions. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter...