Fantastic insight from Neil deGrasse Tyson about how important it is to be sensitive to someone’s current state of mind when you are trying to teach or persuade. You don’t teach with facts alone. You have to understand how those facts/thoughts are received by the person on the other end. And to do that, you have to understand what’s already in their head and how those ideas got there. Teaching is about bringing facts and external sensitivity together to have impact. This is powerful stuff and a great lesson for everyone.
rdo
on 05 Apr 12Or … if you don’t agree you can just f*ck off! Brilliant juxtaposition.
EH
on 05 Apr 12Hah, and Dawkins (per New Scientist) nods to “opinionated software.” ;)
joe larson
on 05 Apr 12Tyson is brilliant, and I fully agree with him… this applies from preschool through age 99… meet them where they are and lead them from there
radex
on 05 Apr 12Yeah, I’m sure DHH does not agree ;)
Newman5
on 05 Apr 12Is deGrasse explaining empathy?
Def: the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
A good teacher has empathy for her students in order to “understand how those facts/thoughts are received by the person on the other end.”
teaching is hard work, very hard work for this very reason.
Justin Reese
on 05 Apr 12@JF: Sincere question from someone who enjoys and respects your and 37signals’s methods and mantra: do you personally attain to this form of influence, and do you think you’ve been successful at it? How about 37s as an organization? You, 37s, and DHH have all been accused (and guilty) of strongly and unapologetically making controversial statements. Does posting this mean you regret doing so, or in retrospect wish you had softened the message?
Not trolling, genuinely interested. You posted this video, and seem to be self-aware, so I assume you’ve at least considered these questions. Thanks!
Asif
on 06 Apr 12I don’t agree with Tyson, rather I agree with the Dawkins.
I think sanity should prevail and we should develop a habit to judge reality by bare facts. People are shown unnecessary empathy and sensitivity towards their irrationality and stupidity, therefore they are addicted to it and demand it more and more. Consequently, people still believe in absurd theories which results in events like 9/11, even in 21st century.
radex
on 06 Apr 12@Asif — as much as I like Dawkins, Tyson has a fair point. Irrational people will become hostile to the truth when shown the bare facts. Most people are just no good at admitting they are wrong.
el
on 06 Apr 12Feynman also talked about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y
Blographia Webmastery
on 06 Apr 12Great company. Very inspiring. Great blog. Very interesting.
FYO I’ve added your feed to Blographia
Bloggers of the World United
Grover
on 06 Apr 12This has been my problem with folks like Dawkins from the start. People rarely are interested in hearing what you have to say when you start by making it clear you think they are idiots.
The only people who listen to someone like Dawkins are those who already agree with him.
JF
on 06 Apr 12Justin: I think we should always be learning about how to get better at delivering our ideas with more impact. It’s easy to think impact means harder/louder, but that’s often not the best path. It may satisfy the screamer, but who likes being screamed at? So I think Dr. Tyson makes an important point. I’ll learn from it.
Miguel
on 06 Apr 12I can’t agree more with Tyson’s approach/explanation. Having said that, the New Scientist’s editor logic to persuasion may also work.
Mike G
on 06 Apr 12I’m pretty sure this just boils down to being a good politician. When in the South address them as y’all. When in Detroit talk about cars. Etc.
KazooGuy
on 06 Apr 12I’m impressed with Asif’s clarity regarding empathizing with irrational folks – a group that seems to be holding sway in Tehran and Kansas at the moment. There’s a tendency to nod and smile and move along when people talk about their own inner dialog as if it were God talking to them. They need to hear from those of us who consider this the road to delusion, and that teaching children to act this out is cruel. Dawkins expresses this brilliantly, if at times harshly. But Tyson may offer a path out of this dalliance with delusion for those people who need the encouragement but can still consider letting other points of view influence them.
condor
on 06 Apr 12@Mike G, it has to do with actually caring about how the person you’re talking to can learn, this isn’t a debate strategy. Empathy isn’t a checklist.
GeeIWonder
on 07 Apr 12There’s a place for both points.
Some people are simulating intellectual involvement but in reality have just locked on to dogma, even if of their own creation . Let’s steer clear of the big and timeless ones and go for some local examples one might hear: ‘Simple is all you need’ – ‘School’s a waste of time’
Educating is good. But there’s different kinds of educating. And putting some dogma up against a structured argument can be misleading to a wider audience by providing some artifical degree of equivalence between the two. Then put a time limit on it. If this sounds familiar, it should. It used to be called ‘Crossfire’.
In topics that require the audience bring some degree of independent study, as some things in science or a discussion of civil liberties might, then the degree of artifice may be effectively completely obscured. A ‘Dawkins’ sound bite seems intended to shed some light a little and motivate people who are in play to the aforementioned independent study/critical thinking.
Sadly there’s also a tipping point at which the now sound bited idea becomes the new dogma, which is only better than the previous one in that presumably it is based on more recent science/news/literature/whatever.
Mike G
on 07 Apr 12@condor
Do you think Neil DeGrasse can empathize with someone that thinks NASA and space exploration should be abandoned? I wouldn’t think he could. In that case, using empathy does become a tool on his checklist to prove his point.
aliasneo
on 07 Apr 12I’ve been teaching programming @ university for about 10 years, mostly to first-year students and non-majors with zero background in computing (arguably the most important audience we need to reach).
I can confirm that what Tyson said is the key. I guarantee that if you are unable to connect with students at an emotional level, and to tailor your presentation of materials in a way beginners can digest and find memorable… then students won’t care and will just write off our craft as esoteric “engineering” that’s out of reach. This is a fucking national tragedy.
I currently work as a front end developer @ Google in NYC but am seriously interested in how technology can (or can’t) help this. Dawkins suggests that the issue is with the teacher, not the tools or the material (and I fully agree with him). But maybe tools can help with the student-teacher interaction. I just tumblr’d about it, happy to get more dialogue going esp. with those interested in this space. http://www.tumblr.com/blog/aliasneo
John
on 09 Apr 12Wow – wow – looks funny – both of them! :) I would just say that hosting a show and saying so many things on TV can make many people amuse – but in real life it is a completely different ball-game all together. Teaching is something that requires many traits which reminds me of “The Mediocre Teacher Tells, The Good Teacher Explains, The Great Teacher Inspires” .
kitsfootball
on 10 Apr 12kitsfootball i like it！！！
Sites for Sale
on 12 Apr 12I think that it so right to put an influance of state of customers minds on the table when our customers are actually dealling the proccess. The persuation devilery will be much more powerfull this way. But how can we actually could know what the are really fealling besides guessing?
This discussion is closed.