PS-REP-205 · r1
REPRESENTATION
OBSERVED
ENGAGED
GENTLE ENOUGH TO ENTER
The words that get people through the door are not the words that say what they are doing.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which a subject is difficult enough to approach that the surface has to soften how it names things, and the softening carries through into the part where the person is settling what will actually happen.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
MISSING
Nothing marks where the approachable naming stops and the binding naming begins.
TIME PRESSURE
LOW
There is no hurry; that is why the softer wording carries so far.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
DEFERRED
Understating costs nothing at the door and is paid when the setting is exercised.
OPERATOR STATE
DEDICATED
The person is doing this and nothing else, and is reading whatever they are given.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALLanguage soft enough to bring someone to a consultation is language that understates what is being consented to.
FINANCETerms named plainly deter people from starting; named gently they carry into the part that binds.
PUBLIC SERVICEA service people avoid must describe itself in terms that get them in and then hold decisions of consequence.
EDUCATIONAn assessment described in reassuring terms is still an assessment when the result is issued.
AI EXP.A capability introduced in approachable language is configured in that same language.
RETAILA commitment presented as a small first step is a commitment made in the vocabulary of the first step.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
Naming the subject plainly kept people from starting at all, so the surface named it gently and they started. The trouble was that the gentle names carried on into the settings, where what was being decided needed its plain name to be understood. The work went into where the language changes and what marks the change, so that nobody was still reading the entrance words at the point where the decision was real.
The question it keeps returning to is where the plain words are owed — put at the entrance they turn away the people the thing exists for, and withheld to the end they arrive after the decisions have been made in other language.