I'm borrowing this from the bond thread as it might serve as a useful example/exercise/illustration ...
... of this and this.jacob wrote: ↑Wed Nov 01, 2017 10:42 amPPS: Think of this as a poker game (note: I don't care much for poker, so I'm probably missing some poker-specifics). When you first start to play, you learn the rules and the various hands (cf. duration, terms, various yields i.e. YTM, and pricing). Next level, the probabilities of the hands. Next, the change of the probabilities based on cards seen and bids. Next, you start playing the players (the tells). Next, playing the players based on what you know about them (risk tolerance, bank roll, ...). Most of the time, players will be unaware of higher levels. There will be a kind of fish/shark relationship in the game.
Another way of looking at it is (cf. Dreyfus)
1: Low #information, where information = factoids, urls, ...
2: High #information
3: Low #knowledge, where knowledge = organizational structure of information
4: High #knowledge
5: Low #wisdom, where wisdom = organizational structure of knowledge
6: High #wisdom(*)
We can group these into three according to focus: Information/facts (I), knowledge (II), wisdom (III).
(*) Not in the Dreyfus model .. but the concept exists in the [conscious/unconscious] x [competent/incompetent] model.
Knowledge (3,4) is what's required for knowing whether a piece of information, a fact, is relevant or irrelevant. Knowledge is also required for differentiating between information and misinformation. Part of why misinformation campaigns work so well is that the average person holds almost no knowledge.
With experience, it's possible to tell whether a question is of the I, II, or III variety. There's meta-information being revealed by how the question is being asked.
The wider the gap between the level of the question and the level of the one answering it, the more energy is required to bridge the gap. This is because of the size of the explanatory structure that needs to be considered by the person answering the question. So there's a cost associated with the question that's being paid by the person answering it.
A question that's request for wisdom(5) but phrased in a way that suggests the possession of high information without basic knowledge(2) (seeking explanations for esoteric exceptions is a dead giveaway) is a high-cost question (cost 5-2=3). This is why the professor turns/turned their back. It's just too much (especially if it has happened a dozen times before). If it was a management situation instead of an intellectual one, it would be blown off with a "this decision is way above your pay-grade". For questions the meta-answer is more that "there's a million things you need to know before you can understand the answer to the question you're asking".
OTOH, if the question [about wisdom] was asked in a way that indicates high knowledge/structure or even low knowledge/structure, it's more likely to get a good answer.
Kinda goes back to the idea that
- the most rewarding person to ask is whoever is one level further ahead
- the most rewarding person to answer is whoever is one level behind
- the most rewarding person to debate is whoever is at the same level