People live with two kinds of knowledge.
One is knowledge about what, and the other is knowledge about how.
1) Knowledge about "what" is what psychologists call declarative knowledge (memorization); knowledge of facts and rules belongs here. 2) Knowledge about "how" is what psychologists call procedural knowledge, and it is hard to express and hard to teach. To teach it well, demonstration is effective, and the only way to get good at it is through practice. Procedural knowledge is largely subconscious.
— from The Design of Everyday Things, p.81
I tend to have low "what" knowledge. So I seem to solve most things through procedural knowledge. But because I rely on this kind of improvisation or subconscious solving, I run into many problems when I want to push the work deeper or when I try to reach a shared understanding or collaborate with others. I came to see that between my method of understanding for myself and the process of thought/understanding and collaborating with others, a lot of collisions happen. For instance, we end up saying the same thing in the end, but we misunderstand each other or get into unnecessary arguments along the way. The issues with the recent startup-style meetings and communication are relatively small, but there are a lot of clashes with groups that have been running things in the older way. On top of that, using unverified terminology or communication makes it hard to earn persuasive power and trust. Expecting the other side to always be free of bias feels like arrogance or greed on my part. That is why I think I need some preparation of my own to give persuasiveness and trust to my words and actions.
I have come to think that the bias of others, in truth, traces back to causes in me.
