
Be Specific (especially during PG's office hours) - Eliezer
http://lesswrong.com/r/lesswrong/lw/bc3/sotw_be_specific/
======
gruseom
It's easier to ask someone else to be specific, though, than it is to be
specific oneself. Sometimes people have something real, but it's instinctive
and they haven't yet sharpened or polished it. Under such conditions it's good
to evoke it out of them rather than challenging them on lack of specificity.

That may not apply as much to an investor-founder conversation, because a
founder should perhaps be expected to say what they mean unambiguously. But in
normal conversation, I think it applies a lot.

Even in the founder situation, there are genuinely talented people who lack
full articulacy as of yet. Distinguishing those from the clueless requires
discernment, and maybe even kindness. I bet the earlier stage you go, the more
of an issue this is.

~~~
evincarofautumn
It’s a matter of preference. I’d rather be challenged, even in everyday
conversation, because I just enjoy debating and getting to the heart of an
issue. The most helpful thing anyone’s done for my ideas has been to say “Shut
up. Stop _telling_ me I should care and just _show me why_ I should care”.

It’s like a good elevator pitch: tell what you’re doing, show why it matters.
Good and bad ideas get corresponding reactions—“your idea is bad and you
should feel bad” versus “shut up and take my money”, if you will. But if your
idea is “frighteningly ambitious”, then they’ll probably just say “yeah,
right” or “how‽”

For example, I’m writing the legendary “sufficiently smart compiler”; with it,
your program will run on many cores and computers as if they were one fast
one.

Yeah. Right.

So yes, it’s a shame when talent goes unrecognised, but founders and funders
need to meet each other halfway—somewhere around “fɔunders”, I guess. And
there’s no reason you can’t be kind and firm at the same time.

------
jseliger
This stood out to me: "I whispered audibly enough for a few nearby people to
hear, 'Be specific! Be specific!'" because it also applies to writing. I'm a
grad student in English lit and teach undergrads. Their writing is filled with
generalities about the work and/or author; very few have the training or
discipline to talk specifically about the work and to examine particular
sentences. So I spend a lot of time doing that in class.

Actually, most people are like this with books or movies or other things in
their lives; they'll be able to say if they liked a book, or could "relate" to
it (whatever that means), but beyond that they won't have much concrete
(another synonym for "specific). Which is okay, since they're not trying to be
professional writers or critics. But if you are trying to a be professional
_x_ (writer, critic, startup), you'd better be willing to look at details,
since details are everything.

The older I get, the more I believe details are everything. Well, maybe not
_quite_ everything, but certainly 95% of the thing.

~~~
kenrikm
I watched that onstage office hours session on Youtube and the same thing
struck me "They need to be more clear and more specific" My startup is based
in an industry that I have been working in for six years so specifics are not
the issue, it's condensing all the details down into just a few minutes.

~~~
ams6110
I always liked Spolsky's approach to this, described in his "painless
functional specs" piece, of using little stories or scenarios to illustrate
typical use cases.

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philwelch
A submission by Eliezer Yudkowsky name-dropping PG and referencing YC right in
the thick of YC application season--has any submission ever been so perfectly
crafted for HN before?

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grepherder
_> > for your brain to stop thinking about an unfinished task, you must (1)
know and trust that an external system will remind you to perform that task
when it is time to perform it, and (2) have chosen the next action taken at a
sufficiently concrete level that your brain is no longer trying to plan it out
in the background._

Wow, I do this instinctively all the time, but to be frank I feared it was
just a stupid obsession of mine and suspected it could be detrimental, that it
made me less efficient. I'm relieved to know this is an advised method of
managing your mind, even if there isn't of course much science behind it.
Anecdotally, this does help with my concentration.

------
kapilkale
This is a very valuable post for people who are applying to YC. In particular,
I think business people who haven't done as much implementation work are
particularly susceptible to this specificity problem. I certainly was (and
sometimes still am).

One concept helped me catch myself making this mistake... I read somewhere
that a good explanation gives a peer the understanding required to reconstruct
/ implement the idea themselves.

However, some people have success describing ideas broadly in certain
instances. For example, I have some friends who have had success selling
"vision" to investors, even though after they pitched me I wasn't able to
explain how their product worked at all.

~~~
Alex3917
I think the general thumb is to be very specific with seed and angel
investors, and much more broad and conceptual with VCs.

~~~
irollboozers
why is this?

~~~
Alex3917
Because usually angels care more about the product and VCs care more about the
market. At the angel stage the most important thing is whether you can create
a product people want. But by the time you get to the VC stage it's assumed
that you've already done this and have traction, so what's important is the
market opportunity.

There are of course exceptions, e.g. Fred Wilson is extremely product focused,
but if you're going in blind I think that's a decent heuristic.

------
stephengillie
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys>

------
davidmp
The analytics platform discussed in the article is <http://keen.io>

They've since been working hard to nail their product down with more
specificity. :)

------
Alex3917
Isn't this similar to what The Foundation For Critical Thinking talks about in
their Thinker's Guide series?

[http://www.criticalthinking.org/store/products/set-of-
twenty...](http://www.criticalthinking.org/store/products/set-of-twenty-one-
thinkers-guides/155)

If a person is a critical thinker then they are almost always going to be
predisposed toward rationality, and if they're not a critical thinker then no
amount of rationality training will ever sink in. I suppose I vaguely support
the goal of trying to teach people to be more rational, but I'm not sure that
starting out by trying to teach people rationality tricks is the correct
approach.

~~~
astrofinch
Can you be specific about what it means to be a critical thinker?

~~~
Alex3917
Being a critical thinker means that you have the ability to judge the quality
of thought, both in yourself and others. It also means that you're able to
generate not just opinions but reasoned thinking.

This is much different than rationality training, which focuses on teaching
people to avoid a handful of specific non-rational thought patterns that
frequently occur in certain situations. But it's not about figuring out what
hidden assumptions you have, learning to judge the quality of information,
etc.

~~~
jpulgarin
I've attended rationality sessions organized by the people behind the Center
for Modern Rationality, and they do teach about how to find hidden
assumptions, and judging quality of information.

------
tobtoh
The issues that the article covered around 'being specific' not only applies
to presenting start-up idea of course. I've seen the same issue appear in
resumes, during interviews and conducting performance reviews - all situations
where people start talking in abstract/generic terms and fail to specifically
mention their skills/achievements.

In my experience, learning how to be specific has the biggest effect on
improving your resume, interviews and performance reviews.

~~~
dmragone
It seems this is best summed up by the old "show don't tell" bit. As in
provide concrete information, not explanation. Don't tell me you're creative,
show me what you have created. Etc.

------
Drbble
One of the only valuable takeaways I got from my encounters with Objectivism
is the emphasis on concreteness when communicating ideas. Not sure how it fits
into the philosophy, but I learned the technique from an Objectivist.

------
halayli
I find it ironic that an article titled 'Be Specific' is made up of 1802
words.

~~~
BlackJack
'Be Specific' is not the same as 'Be Concise'

~~~
evincarofautumn
Concision can also hurt specificity. You can express a concept very concisely
when you elevate it to very abstract, general terms. Specific, concrete
examples often take quite a bit longer to express. This came up a lot when I
was tutoring CS: it was easy to give a precise but abstract textbook
definition of something, but that’s not useful at all to a beginner—much
better to say “you can use pointers to make a linked list and here’s how” than
“pointers are referential types used to implement non-contiguous data
structures and to reduce copying”.

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sopooneo
Here's a tip: when on stage, don't have all four people lean forward onto
their knees and huddle into themselves like frightened armadillos.

------
beza1e1
"Now explain that to me like i'm five"

