Cocktail Conversations
Blog: Decision Management Community
Neil Raden published an interesting post at LinkedIn: “Maybe I need to rethink my position on #chatGPT. Does it display humanlike intelligence? Maybe its vapid, content-free prose really is human intelligence. I described “Cocktail Conversation” in InformationWeek in 2008 as chatter one can make about a subject, and seem knowledgeable, but possess only a very superficial grasp of it.”
“My wife said her college education merely prepared her for cocktail conversation. I don’t feel that way. My education, even many decades hence, was an excellent preparation for what followed, but then, I didn’t study anthropology! Between conferences, blogs and webinars, I’m hearing a lot of cocktail conversation lately. I tried an experiment, boning up on an area of our business I knew virtually nothing about. I learned the buzzwords, acquainted myself with the names of the recognized gurus, read up on most active arguments and I learned the names of the vendors and their provenance. Then I sought out some experts and jumped in. It was disappointing it was so easy.
It’s common, to be regarded as an expert in this business when you can only make cocktail conversation. Analysts, journalists and even self-appointed gurus often don’t have the deep understanding of their topics because they never lived there. Just like chatGPT.”
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