musing

[ajva]

Random pensification sparked by a comment from josh_the_cat in adjectivemarcus's journal.

It's really annoying when people go on and on about a subject you know a lot about, and they quite clearly know very little and are wrong about many things, but you have to listen to them because 'everyone is entitled to their opinion'. I had this experience yesterday, when I was in a debate with someone about the implications of the BBC threatening to pull its channels from BSkyB. Now, this is my job. But they didn't see that as a reason that I might be any more right than them. It used to piss me off no end also when people would give advice about music and the band. Fucking endlessly. Everyone's pet subject, you see. 'You should send a demo tape to record companies'. 'You should dress like X'. 'You should play a festival'. 'You need to sharpen your sound'. I really used to hate that.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Some fields get this worse than others. I know that lawyers get this pretty badly, while I suspect that microbiologists have this problem less often (though I won't be surprised if thekumquat and asrana correct me on this point).

I'm convinced that crypto suffers particularly badly. Sometimes when I tell people I do crypto with a living, their eyes light up, and they tell me that they have taken an interest in the subject recently themselves. However, they aren't saying this as a prelude to asking me some sort of question, or trying to gain from my knowlege. No, they're about to launch into telling me about the great idea they've had, without the inspiration of reading so much as a sentence from the actual literature about the field.

Despite realising on one level that at least one person does this sort of thing for a living, it is as if they imagine they are the first person to try giving the subject any serious thought at all. The reply I compose in my head goes something like this:

"Your ignorance on this subject is complete, but you are fortunate to be in the presence of someone who unlike you knows something about it. How could you imagine that your so-called ideas would be of any value? Why is it still you who is speaking? Shut up and listen and I shall graciously replace your clueless imaginings with actual knowledge."

For some reason, though, I get called "arrogant" when I say things like that...

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

Good answer. :) I may quote it next time it happens to me.

This isn't exactly the same thing, but I'm reminded of it, the dangers of sounding off on a subject without discerning the level of experience of the audience at all:

Man at The Anvil: "I've been training slaves for five years ... everyone on the SM scene knows gay men are the best dominants ... I expect this all looks a bit frightening to you, I understand how it is for newbies ... I trained a priest once."

[Okay, so I was dressed as a sub and there on my own. All I'd said was that I'd been to SM Bi the previous week.]

Him: "Um, what's that scar on your arm from?"
Me: "My last Master branded me¹."
Him: "Ohmigod! Why did you let him do that - didn't it hurt?"
Me: "Why do you think?"
He went pale and walked off.
¹ Not true.

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Naughty Marcus!


J

[conflux.livejournal.com]

I have a horrible feeling that I may have once mentioned something like this to you. I seem to remember wondering out loud to you if neural network techniques could be usefully applied to encryption. In my defence I do know a lot about neural networks, if rather less about encryption. Some early self learning networks were based on code-book theory which was originally developed for combined encryption and compression applications, or so I was lead to understand by a certain very famous Hungarian prof.

Oh yes, and my job has recently involved me implementing an encryption scheme that uses SSL but I just plugged in existing code - I didn't develop any of the actual encryption algorithms myself.

Mind you, from my experience at Cambridge, sometimes if you actually want an expert in a field to explain something to you, the best way to get them to do it is to show how clueless you are so that they can have fun correcting you. Also, from the other side, if you don't let clueless person talk first then you don't know where the gaps in their knowledge lie and can spend ages explaining something they already know.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

If it's that early in the history of self-learning networks, the work you're talking about may predate the very existence of an open cryptographic scientific community, which first started to come about in the mid-1970s.

And I'm all in favour of the learner speaking first, so long as it's not to tell me about their great new idea. The worst of it is that it's usually a very awkward, inconvenient, slow, hard-to-analyse solution to symmetric encryption, a problem for which we already have very clean, convenient, fast and straightforward to analyse solutions. I don't use the word "insecure" because they are usually "not even insecure" in the same way that it's better to be wrong than "not even wrong".

if only!

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

In mindless minds, microbiologist=scientist=someone who knows everything about every possible science there is.

So obviously when I was doing a PhD in cell/molecular/developmental/neuro/onco/histo biology, which admittedly with my MA and MSc in Random Biochem Stuff means I can blag my way through and/or provide a fairly informed opinion on many a biomed-related discussion, my mum would phone me regularly, quote a random New Scientist headline at me, and then say "So what's all this about then?"

Fortunately my opinion or lack thereof wasn't important, as within a sentence I'd be hearing all about how terrible and unnatural it/scientists/the Government/the Americans/the organ transplant was, with varying degrees of complete inaccuracy. I still don't think she believes me that bacteria aren't plants (which she was taught in high school in the late 50s), which is about the only one I've tried to persue. life's too short to try most of the rest of it, which tends to depend on the religion of the day (catholic, buddhist or aetheist).

My favourite:
Mum has acquired hifi with CD player, and invites me to put a CD on.
"But not one of your CDs. I don't know what's on them."
"How about this one; you said you liked it a couple days ago."
"No! I don't want any of your CDs in my machine. They've probably all got viruses from that disgusting heavy metal stuff you listen to and I don't want to get ill."

Yes, she really did think that heavy metal bands have diseases which are transmitted via the CD and CD players to other people. Shortly after she pointed to an article on computer viruses and said "Told you so."

Re: if only!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

have your mum and adjectivemarcus's mum met?

Re: if only!

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think it was before LJ that we came up with the idea of "Big Mother" - a reality TV programme where various of our parents (my mum, adjectivemarcus's, the_maenad's, baratron's, and various other contenders) get locked in a house for the summer.

Thing is, they'd probably get on fine, whinging about the world going to pot and the ingratitude of their children...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

So where's the problem? So long as you never let them out, everyone's happy!