pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I thought I’d do a short one for a change, just something to think on…

“Talk to her coworkers, find out what they know”, this line is delivered by the police captain, and she’s talking to her seasoned detectives. Now we are talking about a TV drama here, and the thing that happens in a TV drama, and all over tv land, that does not happen much in life, is that a narrative has to carry the viewer, without leaving things to assumption. So this line, in real life, would not need to be delivered. We could assume that these, very experienced detectives, would already know the bread and butter of their jobs, and not need to have it instructed to them. That was for our benefit.

What if people start speaking to each other like this? I would say that it is fair to assume, and anecdotally sound for those that notice life in the same way I do, that life mimics art, meaning people start to act in the manner they see people behave on TV. It is not simply a domestic appliance, it’s does not just show you the world, it creates the way you feel about the world, to not know this about your television is rank naivety.

So we go to a meeting, or an interview, or any interaction between people. We spout information as if giving a commentary on our immediate situation, as if trying to prove credential to be there. We over explain, we use up all the oxygen. What we don’t do, is to establish first principle, to detail how we have arrived at our position. That is, unless we need to, and often it would be useful to. When in a room of people who already agree with the premise of our argument, we don’t need to start at the start, we can assume a certain amount of road has been travelled. Conversely, often the only way to successfully challenge a position, is to establish the inaccuracy of the one being argued against first, and this is never easy since it means more time is needed. Another strategy is to show that what is assumed does not necessarily follow, again that requires time.

In small groups it’s easy to be intelligent and hard to be stupid, in large groups it’s the exact opposite

This is quite a problem for a democratic society where all voices are considered to be equal.

Paul S Wilson