Just now changed the title of this discussion to:
Making Coaching a Professional Discipline Instead of Snake Oil
A healthy discipline has a standardized vocabulary shared by its practitioners even when practitioners have different viewpoints.
When the Royal Society was founded, the first thing its founders did was
to create a procedure for reporting findings.
They stated that spoken presentations and written reports be in a prose style that was plain and descriptive. Verbal effects designed to arouse emotion were to be avoided.
Part of what created modern professionalism was agreement on procedures for written and verbal communication and development of standardized writing styles and standardized
vocabulary and symbols (eg for mathematics, periodic table of the chemical elements, etc)
Imagine a group that has assembled on understanding that they are to play a baseball game and the umpire arrives nd says it will improve the baseball game and raise group consciousness to play the game using a football rather than a baseball.
How many of us would regard this as disruptive rather than productive, eh?
One cannot play a proper game of baseball unless everyone has agreed on the rules before the game begins.
It is very difficult to ensure professionalism and create an improvable body of knowledge unless practitioners *agree* and "share* a standardized vocabulary, just as baseball players have developed and share a set of rules and a terminology.
Someone who walks into a professional community using definitions and jargon that are discordant with accepted professional usage and who consumes an entire group's time by sowing confusion is someone who is refusing to be collegial. They're bringing a football into the ballpark.
And - that is the problem with Werner Erhard's products. His jargon and word gaming aim to disrupt shared norms for communication.
Anyone who tried to turn a World Series playoff into a football game would get his ass pounded.
But word peddlers can get away with this crap unless we call them on it.
Making Coaching a Professional Discipline Instead of Snake Oil
A healthy discipline has a standardized vocabulary shared by its practitioners even when practitioners have different viewpoints.
When the Royal Society was founded, the first thing its founders did was
to create a procedure for reporting findings.
They stated that spoken presentations and written reports be in a prose style that was plain and descriptive. Verbal effects designed to arouse emotion were to be avoided.
Part of what created modern professionalism was agreement on procedures for written and verbal communication and development of standardized writing styles and standardized
vocabulary and symbols (eg for mathematics, periodic table of the chemical elements, etc)
Imagine a group that has assembled on understanding that they are to play a baseball game and the umpire arrives nd says it will improve the baseball game and raise group consciousness to play the game using a football rather than a baseball.
How many of us would regard this as disruptive rather than productive, eh?
One cannot play a proper game of baseball unless everyone has agreed on the rules before the game begins.
It is very difficult to ensure professionalism and create an improvable body of knowledge unless practitioners *agree* and "share* a standardized vocabulary, just as baseball players have developed and share a set of rules and a terminology.
Someone who walks into a professional community using definitions and jargon that are discordant with accepted professional usage and who consumes an entire group's time by sowing confusion is someone who is refusing to be collegial. They're bringing a football into the ballpark.
And - that is the problem with Werner Erhard's products. His jargon and word gaming aim to disrupt shared norms for communication.
Anyone who tried to turn a World Series playoff into a football game would get his ass pounded.
But word peddlers can get away with this crap unless we call them on it.