This has obviously been a fun thought-exercise for many of you, but I think what's at heart here, the "skill" we're eager to develop via exercise, is just plain old good communication. In the entrepreneur example, the failure is not his inability to BE more specific, when asked. The failure is that he doesn't already KNOW he hasn't been specific enough. So, the skill we need is not how to muster specificity when Paul Graham asks for it. What we want is simply to be able to communicate abstract ideas clearly in the first place.
This has obviously been a fun thought-exercise for many of you, but I think what's at heart here, the "skill" we're eager to develop via exercise, is just plain old good communication. In the entrepreneur example, the failure is not his inability to BE more specific, when asked. The failure is that he doesn't already KNOW he hasn't been specific enough. So, the skill we need is not how to muster specificity when Paul Graham asks for it. What we want is simply to be able to communicate abstract ideas clearly in the first place.
All these consci... (read more)