Necessity of Describing Things Exactly for Conveying Information to Other People
Difficulty of Accurately Conveying Information to Other People
When we describe things for other people to receive, there is a difficulty we don't face when we describe things for ourselves to receive.
Which is?
Each of other people has his or her base knowledge that is different from ours, and descriptions are understood based on the receiver's base knowledge.
Of course. . . . And what?
Well . . .
If you fancy that you can describe things as everybody understands the description, it's a delusion. If you want to do that, you will have to start the description from zero on the premise that the intended receivers are infants.
I understand that. We have to specify the target receivers, and describe things adjusted for those receivers. A book that claims that everybody can understand it easily is a fraud. If it's really so, it will be an intolerably long book.
Or the contents are of a quite low level.
Anyway, what I say is that even if we intend to limit the intended receivers, it's very difficult to adjust descriptions to those intended receivers.
Oh. How?
Well, for one thing, we specify the prerequisite knowledge for our descriptions, but we can't specify it thoroughly enough. For example, we may require basic knowledge of, say the Java program language, but what are basic? My basics aren't the same with someone's basics.
That will be so.
Besides, words in languages aren't defined unambiguously enough, and they can evoke different notions in different persons.
Ah, if the definitions of terms aren't agreed on by the describer and the receivers, information can't be conveyed accurately.
Agreeing on them perfectly is practically impossible.
Yes, it is.
And if we try to describe things based on only the prerequisite knowledge, that isn't an easy thing to do, honestly. We somehow tend to describe things as we can understand, not as the receivers can understand.
Why do you tend to do so, somehow?
Well, after all, we can't be another person. So, we can't personally check whether the receivers can understand our descriptions or not. In fact, when we check our document whether it's understandable or not, we tend to read it and say, "Oh, I can understand this! This must be fine!"
It's matter-of-course that you can understand it, because you had understood it before you read it.
. . . Yes. However, as we can't return to the state before we understood it, it's very difficult to simulate the experience the intended receivers will have in reading our document.
Probably, trying to simulate the experience is a wrong move: such a simulation seems practically impossible.
Hmm, well, pretending not to understand what I understand may be extremely difficult.
You can pretend in the meaning that you show the appearance of ignorance to other people, but that doesn't suffice for our purpose; you have to really create the state of ignorance in your brain as long as you read the document.
That's impossible, at least for me.
Well, there is a well-known tactics that we reread the document after some time, I mean, after we have forgotten much of it.
That's a useful tactics, certainly, but as we don't forget to so conveniently become in the ideal state of the intended receivers, the reward will be limited. I mean, that tactics doesn't seem to be something we should solely rely on.
I see. Anyway, accurately conveying information to other people contains intrinsic difficulties, and we have to do it methodically.
Yes. It isn't something that can be accomplished by just wishing our descriptions to be understandable to the receivers.
Obligations the Describer Should Undertake
If we, as a describer, don't specify the prerequisite knowledge, the potential receivers won't be able to judge whether the document is suited for them or not.
Obviously, they won't.
If we fail to accurately convey information to the receivers who fulfill the prerequisite, they will be angry for being induced to waste their time.
I can't predict whether they will be angry or not because that's a matter of their dispositions, but certainly, they will waste their time. As specifying the prerequisite knowledge is our pledge that we are going to let our descriptions understood by the receivers who fulfill the prerequisite, if we violate the pledge, the receivers will have the due reason to protest.
So, I think, it's our obligations as a describer that we specify the prerequisite knowledge and accurately convey information to the receivers who fulfill the prerequisite knowledge.
Receivers will also have to have the ability to comprehend logical reasoning.
They will. I'm not concerned with people who don't have that ability.
We will also have to specify what potential receivers can get from our document.
We will. Otherwise, how can they judge whether they should bother to read our document?
OK. If we don't undertake those obligations, we will be very unkind to the receivers or the potential receivers.
As far as I look at Earthian affairs, a root of some great evils is that describers don't undertake those obligations. There are some people, especially politicians, who say things, are criticized, and insist that they didn't say the words in the meanings understood by the receivers, but said in other meanings, in which almost only they can understand.
As though receivers are to be blamed for not understanding things in meanings almost only the speakers can understand?
Yes.
I wonder for what purposes they are speaking. Or I should wonder to whom they are speaking. If they are fine if only they themselves can understand their words, can't they just write, kindly, those words in their diaries instead, please?
The don't have due consideration for the potential receivers. If they speak to some intended receivers, please clarify whom they speak to and speak as those receivers can understand; if not, please don't speak at all or at least let us know that they are soliloquizing!
Well, in many cases, they really meant what were understood by the receivers, and are just making excuses. Anyway, as the notion that describers should undertake obligations isn't established as a social norm, such excuses aren't regarded as disgraces.
