I think what the author actually means is the concept of social scripts + the fact that you can just break/hack them + that breaking/hacking them usually leads to interesting results (and learnings! as they've said).
Social scripts are a sharable performance optimization. They do not require much resources to run and can be simply downloaded.
Everyone relies on them to some degree sometimes, because processing new inputs in real time is simply not viable.
Because they're performance optimizations, the more stressed people are, the more likely they are to start using them.
That's worth keeping in mind when getting angry at the fact that you're currently being confronted with such a script.
Breaking it without offering an elegant alternative might not always be the ethical thing to do, however, depending on the script or user, it sometimes might.
Implies that people are always fine with having their cache busted and actually want to have a genuine conversation with you. Some aren't and will react negatively if you try.
Stuttering John used to do this back on Howard Stern by asking celebrities questions that were far out of the expected gamut at red carpet events. This was all for shock/comedy value, but "who are you and what makes you famous" type questions can really throw celebs off script: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0hENpnMXk
Ah, I overcame this by not using easily recognizable for the theme words but descriptions. It forces people to actually process the input.
I like how karpathy defined book reading as actually being prompting, so IMHO overcoming the defaults with people is very similar to prompt engineering as people actually always are prompting - we don’t do bit perfect data transfers over voice when speaking to each other but prompt.
I don't think anyone is born like that. Politicians are trained for it. I remember a podcast where they talked about Al Franken and how it was difficult to get him to stop answering questions. The goal: one, maybe two or three talking points at any given time and no matter what question anyone asks, it is your job as a politician to give a non answer and pivot to the point of the day.
Yes, I realize how easily language can be manipulated.
For example, when some people in high positions enjoy privileges, politicians will defend them by talking about their contributions, and the topic shifts from privileges to contributions. Similarly, when a few bad people emerge from a certain ethnic group, politicians will constantly emphasize these few bad people to negate the entire ethnic group and call for action against the group. The most crucial factors should be whether contributions and privileges are commensurate, and the degree of correlation between the ethnic group and individual events. But nobody discusses this.
Often they will just talk around a question too. They will be asked if they will give everyone free ice cream if elected, and they will just talk about how great ice cream is, how important ice cream is, etc, but never actually answer the question.
In online communication you'll soon need to develop a skill for busting AI proxy which most people will have in front of their messaging ingestion pipeline.
Terminology is a bit weird.
I think what the author actually means is the concept of social scripts + the fact that you can just break/hack them + that breaking/hacking them usually leads to interesting results (and learnings! as they've said).
Social scripts are a sharable performance optimization. They do not require much resources to run and can be simply downloaded.
Everyone relies on them to some degree sometimes, because processing new inputs in real time is simply not viable.
Because they're performance optimizations, the more stressed people are, the more likely they are to start using them. That's worth keeping in mind when getting angry at the fact that you're currently being confronted with such a script.
Breaking it without offering an elegant alternative might not always be the ethical thing to do, however, depending on the script or user, it sometimes might.
Perhaps it's cultural, but when people do that I take it as them not wanting to have that conversation - that is fine.
Recently I had a person say a lot without really saying anything because most likely they didn't want me to have some (business related) information.
It's important to be mindful that if there is a cache, there's probably a reason for it.
Implies that people are always fine with having their cache busted and actually want to have a genuine conversation with you. Some aren't and will react negatively if you try.
> It lets the person you are talking to have novel, original thoughts, rather than repeating the thoughts they’ve had before.
But only if they're open-minded. I've met many smart people who would rather sound smart than bust their cache.
Stuttering John used to do this back on Howard Stern by asking celebrities questions that were far out of the expected gamut at red carpet events. This was all for shock/comedy value, but "who are you and what makes you famous" type questions can really throw celebs off script: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0hENpnMXk
Ah, I overcame this by not using easily recognizable for the theme words but descriptions. It forces people to actually process the input.
I like how karpathy defined book reading as actually being prompting, so IMHO overcoming the defaults with people is very similar to prompt engineering as people actually always are prompting - we don’t do bit perfect data transfers over voice when speaking to each other but prompt.
Some politicians are impeccable; if you ask them thorny questions like scandals, they always throw out a new question to change the topic.
I don't think anyone is born like that. Politicians are trained for it. I remember a podcast where they talked about Al Franken and how it was difficult to get him to stop answering questions. The goal: one, maybe two or three talking points at any given time and no matter what question anyone asks, it is your job as a politician to give a non answer and pivot to the point of the day.
Yes, I realize how easily language can be manipulated.
For example, when some people in high positions enjoy privileges, politicians will defend them by talking about their contributions, and the topic shifts from privileges to contributions. Similarly, when a few bad people emerge from a certain ethnic group, politicians will constantly emphasize these few bad people to negate the entire ethnic group and call for action against the group. The most crucial factors should be whether contributions and privileges are commensurate, and the degree of correlation between the ethnic group and individual events. But nobody discusses this.
Often they will just talk around a question too. They will be asked if they will give everyone free ice cream if elected, and they will just talk about how great ice cream is, how important ice cream is, etc, but never actually answer the question.
I'm surprised there isn't a term for doing that.
It's not slick, but I've always labeled this as; answering the question they want to answer (rather than answer the question that was asked).
Isn’t that just dodging the question?
In online communication you'll soon need to develop a skill for busting AI proxy which most people will have in front of their messaging ingestion pipeline.
I have section in my notes app of things people repeat, most commonly its executives hitting the cache they're all repeating each other.