Coping 14: Specificity
Coping is short posts (normally on Fridays) about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 14, the importance of specificity in productive dialogue.
At the moment, this one is mostly triggered for me by discussions about "AI," but it also applies in other areas. Nebulous conversations about big categories can be frustrating. Without a solid idea of what's concretely being discussed, and without the ability to be sure that there are some shared definitions, it can be hard to have productive dialogue. A vague box that can include just about anything is a handy tactic, deliberately used by those who don't want their actual activities challenged or their arguments rebutted in practical ways. Specificity is one antidote to this.
I'll stick with the "AI" example, because it's a popular one, and I've just come out of a mildly-frustrating week of conversations about the potential role of "AI" (whatever that is) in society. When we don't, cannot, or refuse to specify the object of our discussions in a meaningful and operationalizable way, we create not only a gap in our communication, but also in our shared imagination. Using vague terms like "AI" allows one person to be thinking about the Terminator, another to be talking about a chatbot, and a third to be on computer vision-assisted garbage sorting. These are three different things which currently fall under one marketing umbrella. An attempt to have a conversation when these three disparate uses of the same term are implicit in the minds of the various discussants is not only unproductive, but yes, frustrating, and also potentially polarizing. Each person is coming from a different, but un-articulated position, with a different object in mind, and different values assigned to their understanding of the object.
The way to escape this conversational bind is specificity. Resist the urge to talk about the umbrella terms unless there's a possibility of ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Insist (even if it's not very cozy or pleasant) on talking about actual specifics. Don't talk about the umbrella term, but about concrete and practical instances. Drill down, define terms, and refuse the kind of discourse that is designed to lump useful things in with harmful ones, utility-washing the harms while diluting the potential good.
