than interactively understanding it and agreed on the recommendation
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Understanding 63
than interactively understanding it and agreed on the recommendation
that it was safe to return. Clearly they did not understand the ambiguity
otherwise they would have realized they did not have enough information
to form a conclusion. This is the tragedy of lack of understanding. If they
had known how little they knew, they could have deployed a spy satellite
to take pictures of the damage - one was available nearby and would
have taken a few hours to re-task — but they did not.
Ed Tufte served on the second shuttle disaster commission and
provided an analysis of the disaster. He views slides as a poor medium for
communicating complex problems and thinks documents are far better.
The danger with slides is they force you to simplify information in a way
that destroys the essence of the information. His analysis of the failure of
communication at NASA formed a major part of the final report on the
disaster. Later he coined the paraphrase “All Power corrupts; PowerPoint
corrupts absolutely” Good communication benefits from stories and
narrative, not bullet points and graphic fluff. Instead of using bullet
points, speak! After all, we have evolved for 250,000 years to understand
language, but only 25 to read PowerPoints. ’
If you write presentations, Ed Tufte’s book The Cognitive Style
of PowerPoint is compulsory reading. He argues that much of the
information you want to communicate is complex and interconnected.
PowerPoint or any similar presentation software encourages you to
simplify it into hierarchical bullets. The format implies simple causal
relationships where none exists. This is dangerous. Communication
should convey understanding — which is very important — and not just
information. What, you ask, is the difference?
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015753
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