Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: evaluation out of context

Author:David McCusker
Posted:7/15/2000; 10:40:23 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 7/14/2000
Msg #:18663 (In response to 18656)
Prev/Next:18662 / 18664

Patrick Giag: We are not given much in the way of context - what are they talking about?

I was wondering about that myself, whether this might have been a low point. But I have a couple reasons to think differently. First, I saw a lot of communications meetings at Apple, and a panel looking as dismal as this happened very rarely. I remember a lot of continuous eyes-up at Apple. Perhaps MS rarely has large internal communications meetings, and these folks have little idea how bad this looks.

My second reason for dismissing an out-of-context interpretation is the following New Yorker article my father sent me in June: http://www.gladwell.com/2000_05_29_a_interview.htm

However, part of the point of this article is that folks tend to overlook the significance of context. So I'm really sending mixed messages here. Maybe the moral of the story is that you can judge what is happening in this picture, but it's hard to judge what this means in some other context inside Microsoft at other times. However, the following excerpt is interesting, and I hope it convinces folks here to read the entire article:

Gladwell.com: The observers, presented with a ten-second silent video clip, had no difficulty rating the teachers on a fifteen- item checklist of personality traits. In fact, when Ambady cut the clips back to five seconds, the ratings were the same. They were even the same when she showed her raters just two seconds of videotape. That sounds unbelievable unless you actually watch Ambady's teacher clips, as I did, and realize that the eight seconds that distinguish the longest clips from the shortest are superfluous: anything beyond the first flash of insight is unnecessary.

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