Why?

But Mostly Why exists to address the ways communication failures and associated analytical lapses confound our good intentions, benefit bad actors, and otherwise impede progress. Quite apart from any of the social or psychological benefits of better understanding one another, the ability to clearly articulate our meaning seems a clear precondition for consistent success in any collaborative endeavor. The wonders and horrors of modernity suggest an appalling gap between humanity's capacity for meaningful communication of carefully considered ideas and the level of rigor we actually employ most of the time.

Inadequate explanatory power can create and magnify animosity or paper over areas of legitimate disagreement—neither tendency appears likely to yield durable, positive outcomes. Worse yet, the profusion of LLMs inevitably bake in this lack of clarity. Judicious use of AI can be a great way to tackle some communication issues, but reliable alignment requires we express ourselves accurately and precisely in both prompts and training data. And that hardly constitutes the only way emerging technologies and current affairs increase the urgency of improving our epistemological habits.

In the absence of ubiquitously perfect self-expression and theory of mind, greater understanding requires a willingness to ask and answer comprehensive "why" questions. Demanding that strangers "explain themselves" (or sit still for your explanation) may be a faux pas, but societal inertia seems to have set the bar for those with authority and influence far too low. Why does anyone merit our attention, resources, respect, or vote if they cannot or will not adequately explain their words and actions? Such a requirement should rarely prove onerous to a thoughtful leader, whose claims and decisions would not exist in the absence of preceding analysis.

However, recognizing that effecting any societal reorientation poses enormous challenges, But Mostly Why necessarily amounts to a patient effort to build norms and combat fatalism. The world overflows with evidence of our ability to reason and communicate with others, regardless of background—expecting leaders to do more of the same hardly seems radical, let alone utopian. If we accept the prosocial defaults, doing anything less appears almost willfully negligent.

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