octopod comments on How to Seem (and Be) Deep - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 October 2007 06:13PM

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Comment author: octopod 18 August 2010 04:08:07PM 2 points [-]

<quote>"I know transhumanists who are unable to seem deep because they are unable to appreciate what their listener does not already know. If you want to sound deep, you can never say anything that is more than a single step of inferential distance away from your listener's current mental state."</quote>

This is extremely interesting to me because I am such a person; I have had significant difficulty throughout my life with uderstanding the existing state of other people. I've luckily found a mate who is much better at it than I am, and can therefore pull me aside if necessary to tip me off that I'm talking at cross purposes with my interlocutor. However, this is my own problem to solve.

What I want to know, though, is this: Is "a single step" of a particular reliable size, or do people take differently sized steps?