> If you can’t be kind, if you won’t empathize, then you’re not on the team.
And there are people like that out there, too, making decisions that affect us all. How do you treat people who demand you see their humanity, but refuse to see yours? Who, when they see our government hurting people, react with “they’re not hurting the people I wanted them to hurt!”?
I'm using the word as it's been touted by notorious old school 'hackers' like esr or rms. The infamous guide for asking questions [0] by esr is the archetypal embodiment of this spirit: it's not that the advice in it isn't useful (it certainly is), it's just that esr comes off as a condescending dick when you read it. (This initial impression can be easily confirmed when you dig futher into the man's other writing and beliefs.)
As for HN and the way it uses the word 'hacker', I will remain noncommital. I certainly acknowledge that the definition as it's currently employed on the guidelines has shifted since the 1970s, but whether it has actually achieved the kindess expected of it is left as an exercise for the reader.
> it's just that esr comes off as a condescending dick when you read it.
That guide doesn't feel all that condescending, from reading it. Of course any guide to "asking smart questions" is going to be somewhat contentious, simply because it's very title implies that it's possible to ask stupid questions, and that people should strive to change their behavior around this. But it seems rather shallow to take issue with such claims.
Be gentle. Problem-related stress can make people seem rude or stupid even when they're not.
Reply to a first offender off-line. There is no need of public humiliation for someone who may have made an honest mistake. A real newbie may not know how to search archives or where the FAQ is stored or posted.
...
And in a sense, "Ask Questions The Smart Way" is also an exercise in precise (and non-offensive, respectful to other people`s time and kind communication).
I don't care what it does recommend, the general impression from reading this Proust-long wall of text is that esr is kind of an ass. The intent of a message is only vaguely related to its content which is only vaguely related to the effect it has on its recipient. I can only speculate what esr's intent were, I get the abstract message 'be gentle', but the general impression is that everything screams 'if you toe out of line people are right to be rude to you even if I said they shouldn't'. You can fool people with words but the general vibe of a text can't help but transpire.
Personally, I started making a lot more friends (and an SO!) on the internet when I finally started moving past the "I can be a dick if I'm right, being right matters, being nice is a distraction" mentality. And I think this makes me better, not worse, at communicating the things I think I'm right about.
Vote up is the thanks gesture in SO. High-traffic forums moderate "thanks" messages because it increases information density, making the content easier to digest. Imagine an SO comment section with 300 thanks messages and you're looking for that one comment with relevant information.
I agree. I think you misread what I wrote. If we are talking specifically about SO, just realize that it is a gamified forum where comments like ”thanks” is specifically discouraged. On most places it’s not.
I don't think "gamified forum" makes things all that different. It's fine to say "I think saying thanks is redundant", it's quite another to go around and removing "thanks" from questions because it's "redundant chatter". That's just ... weird.
No one's feelings are hurt, it just comes off as sounding like a dick. Just like the expression 'hurt your feelings'. (Nothing personal though, I'm sure you're swell in real life.)
I am not a native English speaker, first of all. My point is that SO is not a representative example of general internet culture, given its rules and gamified aspect(s).
Nonsense. The hacker ethos is to tinker and learn and there is a very high degree of regard for technical competence. Conversely, incompetence, laziness, especially blatantly so, especially publically is the biggest dick move there is. Wasting other people's metal energy is not nice.
In hacker ethos, you are appreciated for doing your homework and being right; that is very nice. You are a dick when you are lazy, wrong, or wasting people's time and energy.
Interesting that the only discussion of autism in the article is a tangential mention of those who believe in a connection to vaccines. What is to happen to people who are not neurotypical in this brave new world of be nice or be exiled?
We're doing just fine, thanks. Autism doesn't cause a lack of empathy. We're perfectly capable of seeing things from other peoples' perspectives. It's just that certain viewpoints/mindsets are aggravating from an aesthetic standpoint, which is why many don't learn to tolerate them.
I love this notion of others’ viewpoints or selves as aesthetic objects and will definitely, in one form or another and for one purpose or another, be stealing it.
This is highly contextual. One community I find myself going to on occasion is the archlinux IRC channel. Manners are very much not their highest priority. While they dont go out of their way to be mean, they dont really do it to be kind either.
But the result is a channel that is a very effective means of support when the documentation or wiki doesnt have what you need.
Communication is a game of compromise. Sometimes it makes sense to compromise on clarity or brevity to be nice. But when your goal is to solve difficult, material problems- it can be beneficial to prioritize clarity over all else.
The author mentioned Bezos' grandmother being hurt when he mentioned she smoked away 9 years of her life. Is it really Bezos' manners that hurt her feelings? I would imagine that that realization hits hard and does damage on it's own. I think it would be very hard to get that message hard without it hurting. You can attempt to veil the message and lessen the impact, or distract from it somehow- but now you've impacted the integrity of the message.
> But when your goal is to solve difficult, material problems- it can be beneficial to prioritize clarity over all else.
That's begging the question. You take it is a given that when solving a problem clarity and kindness are mutually exclusive, but you've provided no evidence to support that.
What if that problem is "convince your grandma to quit smoking"? It seems that telling grandma she's been smoking away 9 years of her life is somehow "unkind", and yet we all do very similar things as a society, such as putting disgusting images on grandma's cigarette packages, with clear warnings that smoking is a very serious health hazard - and very few people seem to take issue with this or find it unkind.
I think it's a good point that these "ends justify the means approach" arguments and ultimatums are fully sanctioned by society irregardless of evidence that those who don't change their behavior end up more self destructive, etc thanks to the additional hostility.
Human communication is impossible to get perfect. You have to strike a balance between a bunch of priorities. I could write an essay on this topic, but nobody would read it. Thus I sacrifice clarity for brevity, and make a comment that can be read in a minute.
If I highly prioritized kindness and told you how much I respected your viewpoint and appreciate your taking the time to engage with me- that would naturally require a number of words. Which means I either make my comment longer- which reduces engagement, or I shorten the meat of the argument- which reduces clarity.
So you can see how these different priorities can come at cost of one another. While I'd like to find the ideal sentence every time I communicate that sacrifices nothing- I just dont have the communication skills to do so.
> Communication is a game of compromise. Sometimes it makes sense to compromise on clarity or brevity to be nice. But when your goal is to solve difficult, material problems- it can be beneficial to prioritize clarity over all else.
I am not convinced that this friction exists. Often times things can be rephrased quite easily, e.g. "you're just plain wrong" can be "I don't think that's correct" or "I feel this may be mistaken".
These examples are simple, but in my own writing I've never noticed an example where I wanted to be clear, but wasn't able to do so while still being nice.
It is true that truly constructive comments are much harder to write, since they take significantly more effort: you need to carefully read the original article, think about it, maybe do a bit of additional research, etc, whereas a quick "this is just wrong because [X]" after reading the title is much easier.
Which often takes time. And limits engagement. The maintainers of pacman have a limited amount of energy they're willing to spend on free support- I'm happy for then to save effort wherever they can.
I wont argue that if you can be kind while sacrificing absolutely nothing else- absolutely be kind.
But anybody who has ever played a competitive sport or even team lifted a couch knows that sometimes barking an order is the best way of doing things- and you just have to have somewhat thick skin.
To live in a world where the perfect message always exists would be great. We dont live in that world.
You're taking my quote out of context, I said it takes more effort to constructively engage in constructive and meaningful discussions, not that it takes more effort to rephrase a sentence; I explicitly said it doesn't.
If you don't want to engage in discussion, fine. Then just don't say anything, or just state that you don't have time. That's fine. No need to not be nice.
I actually used Arch Linux for many years and switched to Void Linux last week. There were several reasons but really decided it for me was that I had an issue and found a thread on the Arch forums where a mod was chewing out a user trying to get help with the same issue in such an insufferably assholery way that it was painful to read; he almost went out of his way to belittle the other person. Most of the time this happens because it makes you feel smart and good about yourself. That's the real reason people are assholes like this. I wrote about this a while ago in the context of Stack Overflow, but the same ideas apply here too: https://arp242.net/stackoverflow.html
> sometimes barking an order is the best way of doing things- and you just have to have somewhat thick skin.
This is probably the most condensing and arrogant thing I've ever seen on HN, and that's saying something. Users aren't idiots who need to be "barked at" at when they do something wrong or misunderstand something. You can always say exactly the same without treating them like idiots.
> "you're just plain wrong" can be "I don't think that's correct" or "I feel this may be mistaken".
That makes it sound subjective, unsettled and open to negotiation. Which may be inappropriate when talking about such things that are considered medical consensus.
In a way you're just the messenger, not the expert who can elucidate minor nuances behind the statement.
Perhaps it could be made more impersonal (i.e. remove the "you") and providing a 3rd party as source. But inserting weasel words doesn't help when you try to convey rather strongly established facts.
Yeah, this exemplifies exactly the kind of attitude that this article is about: calling stuff "plain wrong" is not going to convince anyone of anything and you're just going to come off as a rather self-righteous arrogant twit. The "you" doesn't make one iota of difference, no one is even going to notice whether it's there or not.
Yet, some things are just plain wrong. The world does not improve by constantly coddling other people's delusions. Facts do matter, especially in STEM fields.
Indeed, they are. Which is more important to you, being right or making a difference?
Yelling at stupid people is easy and so satisfying. Debating with the clueless while staying calm and polite is frustrating, infuriating, and difficult. But if you choose the easy and satisfying path over the difficult one that actually works, you're just patting yourself on the back for being smart.
If facts matter so much, it's important to be able to convince people of those facts. And in order to do that, facts about the best way to convince someone are relevant. And the fact is, believing that the best way to convince someone that they're just plain wrong is by saying that they're just plain wrong, is just plain wrong.
If someone really cares about the facts, and not just owning their interlocutor, they'll look for effective ways to communicate, instead of holding on as tightly as they can to a method of communication that has pretty conclusively been demonstrated to be ineffective.
The best thing about facts is I have no need to convince people of anything. Facts are true whether we believe in them or not, and someday reality will come along to inform us of those facts rather painfully if we choose to ignore them.
It’s of course best to be polite, but we should not prioritize kindness over correctness. Not in fields of knowledge. You are either right, or you are wrong, there’s not much grey area in computing and STEM.
> The best thing about facts is I have no need to convince people of anything. Facts are true whether we believe in them or not, and someday reality will come along to inform us of those facts rather painfully if we choose to ignore them.
You might be willing to put up with the consequences of other people being mistaken, but most people aren't.
Take climate change - is your attitude "well, the tides will rise and swallow the cities and so on, but there's no point trying to convince people to minimise the damage, because at least I'll be proven right in the end..."?
Pragmatically speaking, it is often incredibly important to be able to convince other people of the truth, if you want to be able to cooperate with them. That really seems so obvious as to go without saying.
> "you're just plain wrong" can be "I don't think that's correct" or "I feel this may be mistaken".
I read these sorts of communications as passive-aggressive and patronizing 100% of the time. I'm certain I'm not the only one. And your assumption that your rewording was a constructive comment is unwarranted and condescending.
"I feel this is wrong" isn't nicer than "This is wrong", they mean different things. Ultimately someone has to state facts, if you always hedge everything you say with "I feel like ..." then that person can't be you, so someone else has to do that job. Worst case everyone else hedges everything they say as well, meaning that everyone has to construct their own facts from the mess resulting in huge inconsistencies in understanding.
> But when your goal is to solve difficult, material problems- it can be beneficial to prioritize clarity over all else.
For those problems, it is also a priority to induce the clearest thinking, cognitive capability, and relevant memory possible from all parties.
Anything that adds cognitive load to the other parties will not help - and "clear, tell it like it is" speech with no awareness of social consequence is often rather ineffective as a way to access clear thinking from everyone in the room.
Speech isn't free (as in effort) either though. There is an overhead cost to the person talking, and reducing that is just as valid as reducing the burden on the listener.
I think what matters more than kindness is simply allowing others to save face. If being wrong incurs a social cost, than any disagreement is going to become more heated, which may be detrimental to the community where this is happening.
Of course, sometimes it makes sense to impose a social cost for being wrong, but that's different from raising the stakes of every disagreement unintentionally.
A book on Nonviolent Communication helped me a lot with conflicts. When studying it, one of the first things you learn that's really useful is how to not evoke defensiveness (or aggression) in the other party. A whole realm of new possibilities opens up; sometimes you have trouble believing you're talking to the same person.
Yes, but I know too much about saving face, and I don't like how it's growing in the west.
About costs for being wrong, last time I quoted a RFC about a topic I know well and said to someone that their information was outdated, I ended up downvoted as usual - even more in the reply, while providing a link to the RFC and even apologizing for insisting that the right information should be spread because how important it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430096
In the end, I decided to stop caring. Now I stick to being factual. If I hurt someone sentiments and do not allow them to save face, so be it. Let the objective truth decide, social consequences (like karma) be damned.
It sounds like you believe that you're simply delivering the unvarnished, objective truth, but this method is just a different (and less-persuasive) type of varnish.
Even if there's some "protocol overhead", a more effective communication/persuasion style benefits both parties. Plus, it's more fun!
I have seen far worse passive-aggressiveness here (most often it's a variation of "why anyone would think X is beyond me" or "You do X ? I do Y because of reasons and I would certainly never do X but do it if you want.").
It might be a globish issue but I don't see any hostilities in OP's comments. [0]
> > This is factually wrong. Your information is deprecated.
How would you phrase that ?
[0] but I also believe that HN has members from many different cultures and lot of what is being discussed suffer from too much variety in communication style.
Maybe "I am not entirely sure I feel convinced that nobody would disagree with this description providing sufficient convergence with what might be argued is a valid way to interpret reality". Or maybe "that's being disingenuous", another classic of sophisticated kindness.
I agree, I was being sarcastic. I find this overly flowery and passive language more dishonest than polite, because it means the same thing, but with added plausible deniability/indirection, and more useless work for the reader.
"This is wrong" always implies "IMO/to my knowledge" anyway, and is functionally equivalent to "I feel / it could be argued that this might be wrong" and all that, except that the writer has the courtesy to speak up when they are ready to actually express an opinion, not just to allude to the possibility of someone, possibly them, expressing an opinion or making an argument.
> "This is wrong" always implies "IMO/to my knowledge" anyway, and is functionally equivalent to "I feel / it could be argued that this might be wrong" and all that, except that the writer has the courtesy to speak up when they are ready to actually express an opinion, not just to allude to the possibility of someone, possibly them, expressing an opinion or making an argument.
They are not "functionally equivalent" if they effect the reader in two different ways.
I would infer an aggressive attitude on the part of the speaker which makes the meat of the message more difficult to parse. Should I, for my part, try to get better at parsing messages delivered in such a format? Sure. But the question of whether or not you want to be heard still leaves some onus on the speaker to consider their audience.
But it's complicated, right? There seem to be quite a few people in this thread that strongly prefer one over the other.
Historically, yes 465 has been deprecated several years ago. But as many ISP and the largest email services kept using it, the IANA had to change its tune and 'resurrected' port 465 in this RFC.
It is funny: the RFC itself describes that as a wart, but reality is a harsh mistress.
Section 3-3 of RFC 8314 from 2018 has the details.
Well, "Interestingly" (what?) and "It is funny but" sound patronizing to my ears. I'd use that language if I wanted to rub someone's nose into it and subtly hint they are stupid to other participants, especially at that point of the conversation.
Doesn’t that mean that you set out to interpret messages in that way?
I guess this is the reverse of nonviolent communication. If you always speak and are used to communicating agressively, then people that are being nice suddenly sound condescending.
> Doesn’t that mean that you set out to interpret messages in that way?
Yes, it does. But then it's still up to me to try to overcome my first reaction. I don't always succeed.
> I guess this is the reverse of nonviolent communication. If you always speak and are used to communicating agressively, then people that are being nice suddenly sound condescending.
"Always" ? Interesting choice of word when talking about non violent communication :).
Snark aside, I don't see myself as communicating aggressively. I may be wrong. I certainly don't put myself in the camp of "people who tell it like it is" though.
> Snark aside, I don't see myself as communicating aggressively. I may be wrong. I certainly don't put myself in the camp of "people who tell it like it is" though.
Ah. I didn’t mean you in particular, and not necessarily aggressive, just the opposite of nonviolent.
I just never considered this from the point of view of the other side before.
While I recognize that the language used here would normally be read as aggressive, I don't really understand why.
When someone speaks to me this way, especially in written form, I make it a point to assume noble intent. They are trying to communicate efficiently. I think it's an especially common style among programmers who are accustomed to "talking" to computers all day.
Still, I try not to use this kind of language myself. Sometimes you need to be inefficient in order to communicate efficiently. Leadership of many organizations has to fly across the world to have conversations face to face to accomplish efficient communication sometimes. It's pretty paradoxical!
I am the person whom ‘1996’ corrected. I was glad to be corrected, and I upvoted the correcting comment. Even though I was of course bothered by having been proven wrong, and the phrasing was a mite adversarial, I disagree with those who may have downvoted the correcting comment.
And FYI, I didn't feel you were being negative or anything, and I don't think you have the ability downvote to -3!
I took the time to answer to tell you about deprecation because I thought it was worth sharing given your message, and that you may find that funny (double deprecation, bringing it back from the dead!) as I did when I learned that.
However, our exchange was judged negatively by other people. In the end, I still give up. I can't please them. I don't understand their culture or how it is adversarial even after going though the discussion here (especially about the "funny" part).
I don't want to watch what I say or talk in fear on ow I will be misunderstood. This is not a dictatorship. But "inclusive" language start to feels this way to me.
> In the end, I still give up. I can't please them. I don't understand
I would hate to lose you. But you’ve got to keep up with the times. It used to be, for example, acceptable to call any theoretical person “him” if it was a person in a stereotypically male role. Now it’s not acceptable, and we all have had to adjust. When I was a kid, it used to be accepted and normal to make jokes about racial stereotypes, and most people only thought it was funny and didn’t assume racism of either the person making the joke or of anyone laughing. Now it’s different, and we cringe at the terrible things which we then accepted uncritically.
It’s a bit like that when cultures change.
> This is not a dictatorship. But "inclusive" language start to feels this way to me.
There are two different things going on, one mostly good – i.e. the societal move to less adversarial language – and one bad, the social media incentives which creates an outrage driven attention culture, which drives people to, like Cardinal Richelieu, scrutinize every tweet and find something in those words to cancel them.
You shouldn’t be afraid of the latter to a degree that you reject the former.
Let the other person save face. Nothing diminishes the dignity of a man quite like an insult to his pride. If we don't condemn our employees in front of others and allow them to save face, they will be motivated to do better in the future and confident that they can.
> Nothing diminishes the dignity of a man quite like an insult to his pride
This makes me realize how much the notion of “pride” applied to people feels such a dirty word by today’s standards.
Being proud of something, having pride in doing something is highly valued. Pride towards ourself is ridden with corrosive imagery from the cold war area, undue self boasting and narcism. I am happy with humility and openness becoming a better valued trait.
It’s for this reason that, when I was still on Facebook, I would take arguments to private messages when they were either getting heated, or embarrassing for my counterpart. It would immediately change the tone of the interaction, as it was no longer a performance, it was a discussion.
The problem with Facebook and other shithole social media is that these networks promote Pavlov strategy which is actually really awful for any kind of discussion. Before the internet, using this strategy socially was called "gossip" and rightly recognized as damaging. It would be very interesting to see the effect of every post on Facebook having a big red banner above it that said, "THIS IS GOSSIP" (before the utility of that UI wore off like old school banner ads). People are incentivized to open with "exploitative" cheap shot comments in order to increase the largesse of their social signaling. This is why I flatly refuse to engage in certain kinds of "discussions" unless in a private group or chat or after limiting the audience of a post (and stating in the opening sentence that the audience is limited and therefore devaluing the post's capacity for exploitation by others). And we're back to the basic trust problem.
Re "You can be an asshole, as long as you're right": While there are individuals who think that, I don't think it's true to say that society as a whole has adopted that viewpoint.
There are also individuals who act on the opposite principle: "If you can claim hurt feelings, you've automatically won the debate." This goes so far, that arguments often get to a point where one person dares another to hurt their feelings so that they can have an easy win. Like "A: Vaccines are safe, and not vaccinating your children exposes them to health risks. B: Well, I don't vaccinate MY children. Are you saying I'm a bad mother? [A: Well yes, kind of.]"
Also, I think that this opposite principle is exactly the principle that has lead to where we are as a society regarding the ridiculousness of political correctness.
The thing is: Cognitive dissonance reduction always trumps rationality as a mechanism whereby people form beliefs. So, the theoretical ideal would be to make a rational persuasive argument that somehow steers clear of creating cognitive dissonance in anybody (neither people on the same side, nor people on the other side of the debate).
But I also think that the article is right in asserting that, in today's world, there is just no room for lengthy and nuanced argument. They just don't get any airtime when all the media that matter, like social media and word-of-mouth are based on resonance, and attention spans of average people are fast approaching infinitesimal dimensions.
...so I really don't know where that leaves us as a society. I don't really see a way out to be honest.
You point is generally good, but I don't see it as a contradiction to the article. There's nothing inconsistent in saying, "You should be considerate in your manner of communication," while at the same time saying, "When you are criticized or contradicted, try not to take offense." The two guidelines are compatible.
I agree. The advice is sound. I wasn't taking issue with the advice, only with the premise that society as a whole has adopted the standard "You can be an asshole, as long as you're right."
Maybe, phrasing it more positively, I would add to the advice. (1) Try not to be an asshole, as you're winning an argument. (2) Don't try to win an argument by demonstrating that your opponent is an asshole.
Some people tend to foget about (1). Others tend to forget about (2).
I think a large part of this involves personal insecurities. I remember saying truthful things in very shitty ways during my younger years. But I also had a lot to prove, having just started out in life as an adult.
Somehow as I grew older (starting in my mid-30s I suppose), I became more and more aware of how I was affecting other people with my choice of words, and I had less and less reasons to "defeat" people in conversation. When victory is no longer the objective in a discussion, you tend relax, and can choose your words more carefully.
> Somehow as I grew older (starting in my mid-30s I suppose), I became more and more aware of how I was affecting other people with my choice of words, and I had less and less reasons to "defeat" people in conversation. When victory is no longer the objective in a discussion, you tend relax, and can choose your words more carefully.
Without trying to invalidate what it is you're saying: Would it be false to say that, you have also realized that how you say things will have consequences on your personal reputation and may be subconsciously taking them into consideration as well?
Not OP but 100% no for me. The difference here really is motivational difference of empathy vs selfishness. I think if you've learned the latter there's still much to be gained, even if the actions in this specific case are the same.
Most definitely this would be a part of it, but only when dealing with people with whom you'll have recurring interactions, or within your tribe (where word gets around).
Online this tends to disappear (at least to our perception). When there's no face-to-face interaction, we seem to lose that reputation instinct rather quickly...
There’s nothing wrong with being known as the type of person you want to be. It’s a side effect of being a version of you that you like. Of being able to live with yourself.
I think this pokes at the heart of what it means to be mature. To become more aware of how what we do and say impacts other people and their perception of us.
Social-positively mature. One can be mature and stable in their decisions, obligations, ideas, etc, but give much less damn about how others feel. There are people‘s people and things’ people, the latter usually discriminated for not thinking about someone’s insecurities. I met strangers on the internet who could rip off everyone insecure around and then discuss a topic freely being sure that the opponents who remained are strong persons not changing their minds or truths, not playing logical tricks when being offended. It is somewhat beautiful when a group of commenters almost kills itself only to continue in peace. The world that triggers on a minuscle misstatements has to learn from them, don’t you think?
I would say that a heart of being mature is when you don’t care how someone says something, but that is out of trend right now.
Similar experience here. I thought of us all more in terms of whether I & they were "doing it right", but I try now to see others as individuals of infinite worth, and remembering that things can be OK in the end, so I can hopefully think more about them as a person who (like me) is still learning, and has a unique background of experiences good & bad, likes/dislikes, choices, habits, ideals & dreams, and tremendous potential. I made notes on this for myself to review periodically (helpful for me at least), which I have also posted (at a simple site): http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854745184.html .
The reality is that, unlike yourself, most people replace "learning new things" with "actively avoiding learning new things" at some point after leaving high school. Correcting one of these people can snap them out of their self-imposed rut just long enough to correct a bad habit.
That might be true sometimes, but my experience is that more often it just alienates them (or lowers their confidence), which reduces chances of future success working together. I've found that certain mental habits I try to cultivate help me to say what is needed, if/when needed, in a way to move forward more and back less.
Yes, especially if you follow links around (or start at the home page). If there is any page on the site where you would like more ideas or content added, let me know (the footer has an email address), as often I have much more written under that part of my private notes, just haven't taken the time to decide what more I should mark public for export and edit for readability. The last link on most pages has more info on how to read the site. Honest comments are much appreciated.
Edit: examples include, though I'm not sure if I have them concisely in these words (but I do have a ton of notes) are:
to try to ask gentle questions instead of making strong statements whenever possible, to observe more than I did, to wait 72 hours thinking things over before making a negative/critical/possibly hurtful statement, to use the "compliment sandwich" (sincerely) to clarify that I respect/love them as a person and they are more important than the issue, to remember a quote from Pres. Thomas S. Monson to never make a problem to be solved more important than a person to be loved, to pray about how to help someone or if/how I should say things, and not forgetting that saying nothing can also be a selfish disservice (ie, finding the right balance: some things really do need to be said), and a routine to review habits at the right times, mentally practicing, including praying daily until I am confident I will remember the most important things and have a comfort level that my plan for the day is good (which has been helpful).
Note: I have not spent much time as a manager, but we have grandchildren, and I see that clear statements of what needs to happen can be required more often than the above suggests, but with thoughtfulness and caring toward others. I also know that if someone is a threat to others or the org., that boundaries need to be set, sometimes immediately, and there are consequences for performance and for choices, which should be made clear, and it is worth helping people develop and learn from where they are. Authority with accountability, choices to consequences, are relationships that should not be disrupted, it seems to me. I also try to remember that I have learned for myself that God lives and will judge us all, that this person who is learning might be my superior in the eyes of God (for all I know), might be more humble or have overcome more than I have or such (I am not qualified to judge), so I had better treat them with respect, and that God has commanded us to forgive everyone, so some things I can just let go. But trust is different from forgiveness, and should be based on real reasons of performance over time, not words or wishes. And my mistakes are forgivable also, based on repentance, and there is much more, which is why I made a web site....
I think there is some truth to what you say, but you would be more productive if you approached the "problem" from a place of empathy, like the article discusses.
A lot changes after high school/college which frankly makes learning more difficult.The nature of brain development changes, people acquire new priorities like jobs, children, and family. Additionally, they have more cognitive inertia to work against.
If you are implying that harsh attacks are required to snap them out of a deep set belief, and I don't agree and have never seen it work in the real world.
I think it mostly has to do with other people's insecurities. If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.
I try to follow Paul Graham's dictum "keep your identity small", the saying "strong opinions weakly held" and/or I've extremely strong self-confidence (compared to most people), so I seem to be way less personally affected by statements like these (though I'm sure I have other triggers)...
Granted I'm only 30 so maybe that will change in a few years, but for the time being I've started to moderate my stated opinions to spare other people's feelings (though I still think it would be better if they grew more emotionally mature, but I realize that's unlikely to happen), to improve social relations and, frankly, also because it's getting more and more dangerous out there, with political correctness and/or China-driven character assassinations.
Maybe because you're mentioning one group specifically. Any diet can be unhealthy. The fact that Vegans need to be a bit more careful doesn't make it inherently more unhealthy.
No, it's just an example. Probably a poor example. In reality I don't often meet vegans, but people get upset for all kinds of reasons / statements, most commonly for political ones which are to be avoided on HN (and real life) (and are quite easy to avoid, if you want to).
Another (non-political) one that comes up fairly often, is that I don't think it's reasonable to congratulate people when they decide to get married... it's a decision after all, nothing to do with achievement and/or luck (for most people I know at least, who aren't extremely lonely to the extent that finding anyone that tolerates them is an achievement... in which case, "congratulations" would be more in order), and if anything, they should be warned (as many marriages end in failure). But if you say that, you're the asshole.
I truly mean no offense but you kind of sound like an asshole.
I think these are perfectly acceptable thoughts to have but in the context of interpersonal relationships and society as a whole, these statements just seem confrontational and unnecessary.
Nobody's disagreeing with the statistics, they're disagreeing that statistical likelihood of success is a good criteria for determining whether to congratulate somebody on something or not.
I suspect that if we used that criteria, we'd end up reinforcing a lot of existing trends. For example, my daughter gets into a computer science program, but I know that most women don't end up getting jobs in that field, so I withhold congratulations. Why are you yelling? I'm right! I'm backed by decades of statistics.
Spoken like someone who has never suffered through trying to get pregnant! It’s not as easy as it sounds.
For both my kids we had another pregnancy prior that ended in miscarriage. The first one when you’re excited and the whole thing is new was particularly emotionally hard. Lying in bed with your partner mourning your lost future hard. Most parents wait until after the most dangerous period to announce their pregnancy to the world for this reason. There are a lot of hopes and dreams wrapped up in a very uncertain time.
There’s a whole bunch of luck involved, particularly when people start having to do things like IVF and as I said to the OP congratulating people is often about showing support. It can be an emotionally fraught time leading to physically and emotionally tough times ahead. Pregnancy, childbirth and raising kids is no picnic. The glib answer is “well you chose it” but that doesn’t make it any easier nor less worthy of support.
I don't think you understand marriage if you don't think it's an achievement.
If you give the people in question the benefit of the doubt, you would assume that they understand the gravity of the interpersonal and legal commitment they had made. Building up the trust to make that commitment is hard work.
It'd be like if somebody just made a commitment to donate periodically to charity. Presumably, those donations required that person to establish themselves financially to the extent that they can be reasonable sure that they will be able to keep their promise. So even though it's a "decision," it's closely related to an achievement.
Or maybe this illustrates it more clearly: You'd consider it an achievement to reach a 50th anniversary, correct? As you say, "many marriages end in failure." So why not a premarital relationship resulting in marriage? That doesn't always happen either. Most premarital relationships end in breaking up, not marriage.
So, as long as we're treating these people with maximum respect, we can see that:
1. Getting to the point where they were ready to commit to marriage was a challenging process. Big commitments require stable foundations, and stable foundations aren't free.
2. There is reason to hope that marriage will be a positive thing for the two who have decided to engage in it.
1 and 2 together are sufficient cause for congratulations, so they are in order.
I am married and I agree with the OP. I don't see it as a huge achievement and people who do are the ones who, in my experience, like to spend spend way too much (IMO) on a wedding. But we're proving his point really by discussing it!
Having experiences that suggest that an achievement is likely very minor should not be a cause for withholding congratulations, or any other social pleasantry. For example, in my experience, just being accepted to college at all is really not much of an achievement. There are plenty of colleges that will accept virtually anybody who applies. However, if a friend or coworker were to announce one morning, "I was just accepted to $LOCAL_COMMUNITY_COLLEGE," I would congratulate them. Maybe the hardest part for them was applying in the first place. Maybe it was harder for them to just apply to that college than it would be for you or I to get accepted into Harvard. We can't know, so we err on the side of warmth and encouragement.
As for,
> But we're proving his point really by discussing it!
You could look at being in a relationship and making that decision as an achievement. Although most of the reason for congratulating the couple is to show support. Otherwise you’re just being opinionated about how much effort is deserving of being worthwhile. Which is fine as long as you accept people’s reactions.
Like you could decide nothing short of an Olympic record is worth congratulating but this is pretty obviously very socially inept.
Edit: Basically on aggregate there is nothing special about it but it’s important to the people involved and how plussed or non-plussed you feel about it should relate to your relationship with them rather than how impressed you are personally about it.
You don’t say congratulations to newlyweds because they overcame adversity and conquered something, you say congratulations to newlyweds because that’s the customary way of communicating to them that you are happy for them. Like so many things, it’s not literal. It’d be like refusing to say “I’m sorry for your loss” when a friend’s parent dies, and then making a point of explaining to them that the reason you’re not going to say that to them is because you didn’t personally kill their parent therefore you have nothing to apologize for.
There was never any conundrum. "Sorry" can be correctly used in both an apology or in expressing sorrow. In saying, "I'm sorry for your loss," the context makes it clear that the speaker is not penitent, but sympathetic.
If you find that people often get upset when you talk to them then maybe you should look for the common factor?
Of course if you're "warning" people when they proudly and happily announce that they're getting married then you're the asshole. It's a super strange superiority complex to have. I got over this "social constructs are dumb and we should only express ourselves in objective facts like Mr Spock" phase when I was in high school, I encourage you to do the same. I remember explaining to some friends that having a party for the New Year was dumb because, after all, it was just a random point in the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Ow, the cringe.
anything in life is ridiculous if you look at it a certain way. why the heck would you sit in one place staring at glass and poking your fingers against plastic all day? how dumb is that??!>>!
perspectives like this have an ideal place in humor, not in criticism. among friends in a trusting and relaxed environment, go to town on how silly we all are. do it in a funny way and you get cool points. otherwsie, not so much.
(also, you congratulate the engaged because they've made a lifelong commitment to another person, which is a hard thing to do).
> I don't think it's reasonable to congratulate people when they decide to get married... it's a decision after all, nothing to do with achievement and/or luck
‘Congratulate” has additional meanings: can be about success and good luck or simply happiness linked to some particular event. You share their joy, that’s all. Even if you don’t think they really have motives to be happy :-)
> I think it mostly has to do with other people's insecurities. If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.
I'll bite. It's true that a vegan diet can be unhealthy, and that it's wise to supplement with B12, but that doesn't mean a vegan diet is unhealthy.
This is like saying "an omnivorous diet is unhealthy because you don't eat enough vegetables". Sure, some people with omnivorous diets need to eat more vegetables, but that's not true of all people who eat omnivorous diets.
I'm not sure whether you would benefit from increasing your precision or accuracy, but the "veganism is unhealthy" line is plain wrong.
You know, when it comes to "Being kind" on hnews, I have the least patience for these pedantic/off-topic replies that completely distract from the central thesis of the parent post. In this case, the vegan stuff was an example and you know it, but felt it appropriate to waste our time with your reply anyways.
I find these kinds of posts so, so, so tiring. The only saving grace is that the collapse thread button is so useful.
Eh, the upstream comment used bogus incendiary flamebait as an "example" so yes, people are going to reply to it. They might as well have gone with "the earth is flat". It's a show-stopper that challenges the veracity of the rest of their post. They aren't being "right but rude" when they are wrong about such a basic statement.
For example, B12 is in meat because animals are supplemented with it, like cobalt added to their feed. Humans can supplement directly.
It's like thinking you have to drink vitamin D fortified milk or iodine fortified salt to get vitamin D and iodine, and then asserting people who don't consume either must be unhealthy.
This reply right here is what I'm talking about. I simply don't care about veganism, I do care about the grandparent's points concerning insecurity.
Stop telling me about veganism, it's irrelevant. Stop writing irrelevant stuff, just stop it.
Edit: To clarify, before a stealth edit, hombre_fatal's first paragraph used to consist entirely of "Eh, the upstream comment used bogus incendiary flamebait as an "example" so yes, people are going to reply to it.". At least now he's added some more substance.
If I could find an extension that blocked the thousands of "ackshually" reply threads or replies like yours that miss the point entirely I would be so happy.
I realize and appreciate your point, but are you willing to consider the possibility that there's something important going on here that you may be overlooking? "Stop writing irrelevant stuff, just stop it" suggests not, but I try to not make assumptions.
> If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.
tomp wisely acknowledges, within brackets, that there are nuances, but statements like "veganism is unhealthy" are incredibly vague, and the very real nuances will be automatically constructed and appended to the message (and attributed to the speaker) by the listener's brain, typically without their conscious knowledge, and often in a manner not to your liking. Should people be like this? Who knows. Are they like this? Of course, and we all know it when the topic of conversation is psychology, but how easy it is to forget this when the topic is something else.
"they are so involved with their egos" seems to me of key importance, but it's so easy to forget that we are all involved with our egos. I listen to a fair amount of lectures by experienced Buddhists, people who devote their lives to observing their own minds, and a recurring theme that arises is that even with the substantial discipline and skills they've acquired in that field, they are still regularly fooled by their egos.
> but for the time being I've started to moderate my stated opinions to spare other people's feelings (though I still think it would be better if they grew more emotionally mature, but I realize that's unlikely to happen)
"feelings" is a tricky term in this context. What does it mean, really? Sometimes, it accurately refers to simplistic, emotional, low-information emotional reactions, as opposed to logical thinking. But is this always the case? Might there be times that it is perceived that this is what's happening in someone else, but in reality there is an unseen, complex multi-dimensional (nuanced) analysis taking place that happens to come to a different (and not incorrect) conclusion than the one (also not incorrect, considering the implicitly assumed nuances) that you or I might have formed?
Getting along can be amazingly difficult even in the simplest of situations (say, a family or team consisting of only 4 or 5 people, who mostly have aligned interests). But look at how the complexity, interconnectedness, and technical capabilities of the world has exploded in the last 50, 20, or even 10 years. And we're managing all of this complexity with largely the same political and psychological tools that we used when half of us were farming the land, with the addition of some "weaponized" psychological capabilities and techniques (mass media, internet, machine learning) thrown into the mix to make things even more interesting.
Considering all this, how reasonable does this common "just look at the facts and agree with me already" attitude seem?
The calling out of the example of being bad was perfectly topical. tomp is espousing advice that is nominally supposed to imply that s/he's risen above petty emotional investment in arguments, when in fact it's clear s/he's making misleading and inflammatory statements that are going to be directly insulting to a certain audience. Not only should s/he moderate their opinions, but s/he should reflect on their substance and accuracy. "My understanding is that veganism can lead to a B12 deficiency which is unhealthy" would be much better.
I’m happy to discuss, and I even indicated as much (a.k.a. there’s nuance). But people would rather play emotional games and feign being offended. Just look of what I’m being accused - wanting to win, misleadig, ego investment, trying to offend, being an asshole, ... I think the replies here perfectly demonstrate my point, ironically.
You are absolutely being misleading. The statement "Veganism is unhealthy" is objectively wrong in the sense that it implies that it cannot be done healthily. Practically any diet or activity in general is unhealthy if proper precautions are not taken. In the case of veganism, the proper precaution happens to be B12 supplementation. You clearly know this as indicated by your disclaimer about 'nuance'. You are making an equivalent statement to me saying "You are making asshole comments (but there is some nuance)" - there is an element of truth to the statement, but it is misleading and first and foremost designed to create an emotional reaction.
Edit: My last point is clearly demonstrated if the immediate downvote I received after posting this was from you.
> The statement "Veganism is unhealthy" is objectively wrong
The statement "vaccination is safe" is also objectively wrong (it's a medical procedure therefore it carries risk; the more correct statement is "vaccination is risky, but the tradeoffs are extremely worth it"), but saying it wouldn't "create an emotional reaction" in most people (except in anti-vaxxers, which AFAIK are a huge minority, and pretty much everyone would agree that they are extremely ego-invested in their opinion) (saying that it's wrong, however, might).
Anyway, my aim isn't to debate you on specific subjects like veganism or vaccines. Just be aware that stating things in a blunt, opinionated way can have undesirable effects on your communications, regardless of your intentions.
GP's larger point is fair enough. But it would be telling, and germane to this discussion, if it turned out that many of their experiences were due to the fact that remarks they consider to be just "statements of fact" are more contentious than they realize.
(1) Heme-iron is really the only good way to get iron and it's only in meat
(2) You're not really going to get carnitine from vegetables
(3) You're going to have a really hard time eating enough calories and having balanced ratios of macro-nutrients. Beans and rice which have protein also have tons of carbs and no fat. Good luck with that.
I've seen literally dozens and dozens of videos and posts of really really malnourished people advocating veganism.
It's pretty much too hard to execute for the average person.
You seem like the prime example of someone who has to win the conversation.
Purposefully harsh wordings that require parenthesized nuance even here are hardly the listeners fault. If there's a breakdown in communication because you're being pithy and sharp that's a problem you can choose to fix.
> Both of those statements have some element of truth to them,
No, they don't.
They are supercharged propaganda.
> but they're obviously incendiary, as is your 'veganism is unhealthy'.
Not at all.
Saying veganism is unhealthy is stating an opinion shared by many nutrition expert, it says nothing about vegans, it is just what it is.
meat is murder contains a judgement: if meat is murder, you are a murderer, if taxation is theft, who collects taxes is a thief.
I can accept "you eat corpses" because it's true, I don't eat animals alive, they are already dead when I eat them, but it is also imprecise, because I eat just bits of the corpses, not the entire carcass.
A majority of them studied and proved its unhealthy effects.
Unless you wanna say that every opinion counts, no matter the opinion, we can safely assume that being vegan is like drinking or having unprotected sex or speeding.
It won't probably kill you, it will even improve life for some, but it's not something one should take lightly like "it has no effects".
When you say things like, "Veganism is unhealthy," the issue is that it simply leaves no room in the conversation for the other person. Even just a slight change ("I understand that veganism is unhealthy") will almost certainly elicit a different response.
If you feel like you're often pushing people's buttons to the point of censoring yourself, maybe take a step back and see if you can communicate more kindly.
Smoking (or other forms of nicotine administration) is self-medication for a significant portion of the population, due to the not-completely-understood action of nicotinic receptors in the brain...
I think it's particularly harmful and sad to say there's no possible conversation about something when you are of two minds yourself!
> Smoking (or other forms of nicotine administration) is self-medication for a significant portion of the population
It is believed to be, but it isn't.
We could make the same argument for alcohol or even heroin, that stop a cough and relieves from physical pain.
> I think it's particularly harmful and sad to say there's no possible conversation
As a smoker, there is no possible conversation on the fact that smoking kills, cigarettes are killers, no matter the benefits one can take out of them, they are "responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers"
This is a fact that can only be acknowledged as true, even though personally many people decide to ignore this fact and smoke anyway (including myself).
But “veganism is unhealthy” is an opinion. Your parenthetical about the lack of B12 indicates that you know this, and that the topic is more nuanced. If you don’t normally qualify that statement, why did you choose to do so here?
Frankly, I don’t believe that you don’t mean it as an attack on the lifestyle choices of others, and I’m not surprised that people get defensive.
correct. my vegan in-laws, have been vegan for 40 years now and they are in very good condition for their age. Saying it's "unhealthy" with no nuance is a ridiculous statement. It is in a no-way a fact. People that speak like this give people that speak in facts a bad name.
My uncle has been smoking for 50 years, suffering no consequences whatsoever.
It must be because cigarettes are good for the health.
/sarcasm
That's exactly why speaking the truth is fundamental, being kind is simply a plus: we all do reckless stuff in life, we all base some choice on assumptions or beliefs, it's usually not that bad, but it can be and someone needs to say it.
Just the fact that we are discussing about an unhealthy diet, that killed millions of people in poor countries, because in rich countries we have doctors and pharmacies and a lot of ways to overcome its dangers and we can't agree that a fact is a fact and choices are choices, proves that being kind before being right can be dangerous.
Doctors will never say "you should eat vegan because it's better for your health", they will say "you should remove this or that from your diet" if something is wrong (yes, bacon is unhealthy too, coke in unhealthy as well etc. etc.) and if you decide to go vegan they will say "it won't probably affect your health, but be careful. Also I want to visit you again in a couple of months".
That's just what it is, unhealthy means not healthy, it doesn't mean deadly at contact!
But people are more sensitive about their choices than their health conditions. People think that their choices defines them, they resist to changes and to facts that challenge their status, because it shutters their reality and trigger their insecurities.
It's not personal, If I say "veganism is unhealthy" it' because it's historically correct and still a cause of malnutritions around the World, not because I think vegans are stupid.
I think they are adults making unhealthy choices (I hope knowing it), just like driving too fast, drinking too much, living a sedentary life or, like my uncle, smoking for 50 years.
My dad worked in lung oncology and doctors couldn't stop some people from smoking even after they had to surgically remove one of the lungs because tumor destroyed it.
Lucky them in Italy healthcare is paid by everybody's taxes or we would have more than a few Walter White.
A popular similar episode happened in the UK, a former very popular soccer player, George Best, had a liver transplant because he drank too much. Even after that he kept drinking and it led to complications and a liver infection that killed him at the age of 59.
Few days before he died he asked to be photographed in the hospital and the photo published with the message "Don't die like me".
It took him 59 years, a liver transplant and an horrible death at relatively young age to understand he was wrong.
Do you think nobody was kind, empathetic or nice with him before about his alcoholism problem?
But how many more were nice with him just to take advantage of his glory, fame, and, of course, money?
Being nice alone serves no purpose, being empathetic or nice, sometimes requires "not nice" manners.
If somebody confronted him and actually forced him to quit, he could well be alive and that liver could have saved someone who deserved it more than a repentless alcoholic.
We should also ask to ourselves: why is it so important for some people to convince others?
What purpose does it serve to have tools (empathy, kindness) to win people trust (they value the messenger), when we have tools (logic, fact checking) to evaluate the actual message?
Back to cigarettes.
Hironically my dad was also an heavy smoker, and reduced it a lot when my mother was pregnant of my sister (she had medical problems while being pregnant of me) and completely quit when my sister was born, because she suffered from asthma.
He went from 3 packs a day to zero in a few months and has been cigarettes free for 43 years now.
He knew he was wrong, he just had no reason to change, he probably thought that without cigarettes he would have lost self-confidence. My mother has always been more kind than right, but she couldn't convince ...
“Unhealthy” is not an intrinsic, observable feature; it’s a label we use to describe things that cross some arbitrary threshold of having deleterious effects. Calling something “unhealthy” is the textbook definition of an opinion, my dude.
You said many wrong things, but maybe with some help you can improve:
- first of all I'm not your dude, I am not anybody's dude, my "dudes" are the people that know me personally and the people that know me personally call me by name, they do not call me "my dude" because they know I don't like it. You see the problem here? By assuming instead of carefully crafting your message in a way it was simply factually correct - at the best of your abilities- you turned yourself from being simply wrong to an "unrepentant asshole"
- does unhealthy mean "a label we use to describe things that cross some arbitrary threshold of having deleterious effects"? no. The fact that we can measure the effect is the textbook of being "not an opinion" but a measure. If the measure is proved consistent in multiple experiments, we have a model (a proved theory).
- unhealthy means not healthy, it doesn't mean it will kill you on the spot. Is drinking healthy? no, it's not. Is it unhealthy? yes, it is, alcohol is a poison for our body. Will it kill you? You will probably die for other causes before it will, but it could.
- how many people die every year because are forced into an unhealthy vegan diet having no other choice? millions (AKA "still too many"). I'll post you the facts, you can make up your opinion about them, but they will be facts at the end of the day.
Worldwide, an estimated 852 million people were undernourished in 2000–2002, with most (815 million) living in developing countries.5 The absolute number of cases has changed little over the last decade. However, while China had major reductions in its number of cases of protein– energy malnutrition during this period, this was balanced by a corresponding increase in the rest of the developing world.5
In children, protein–energy malnutrition is defined by measurements that fall below 2 standard deviations under the normal weight for age (underweight), height for age (stunting) and weight for height (wasting).6 Wasting indicates recent weight loss, whereas stunting usually results from chronic weight loss. Of all children under the age of 5 years in developing countries, about 31% are underweight, 38% have stunted growth and 9% show wasting.3 Protein– energy malnutrition usually manifests early, in children between 6 months and 2 years of age and is associated with early weaning, delayed introduction of complementary foods, a low-protein diet and severe or frequent infections.13,16,28 Table 1 shows the geographic distribution of protein– energy malnutrition among young children in developing countries.5
Are you open to the possibility that even your deeply held beliefs, like “veganism is unhealthy” could be wrong? I have very frequently blundered into defending a false assertion for far longer than I should have, especially in work settings where you never know when you might meet someone much, much more well informed about a subject than yourself.
That burned me a lot when I was younger. Intellectual humility has never failed to serve me. I wish I was more humble about my strongly held opinions (that I thought were facts) when I was younger.
> I remember saying truthful things in very shitty ways during my younger years
People prefer to be deceived than proven wrong.
That's why young people are often thought of as shitty, because they have far less sovrastructures.
The more people age the more they think that when they where young they were shitty and insecure, because they need to justify becoming conformists (they prefer to deceive themselves)
Yes, I experienced something like that as well. I don’t feel I have anything to prove anymore; listening and choosing my words more carefully comes as a very natural approach to conversation now. I’m also a lot less interested in convincing people of things, though. It’s not important to me for others to see things as I do anymore.
you hit the nail in the head. I cannot resonate with this enough. The more and more I realise, I dont have to win a conversation, the more relaxed it gets.
In corporate culture I have found this advice to unfortunately be very ineffective.
Delivering critical feedback or trying to lobby to convince others of a course of action very often requires dispensing with pleasantries and bullshit and just get it out in the open.
It can cost you big time if you try to spare feelings or water down the case you’re making for kindness.
I mean, it can be the difference between having to fire someone or not, or getting resources so people don’t burn out. Or getting someone to stop wasting your team’s time while you’re on a critical project.
And it doesn't look like it hurt his career much either. It seems that in many cases it is more important to be a bit more right than it is to be a bit more nice.
>After spending years and millions of words and hours of video on this, we’ve had almost zero success. Why? Because you can’t reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into. No one responds well to having their identity attacked. No argument made in bad faith—that the person on the other side is a moron or a dupe or a racist or a snowflake—is ever going to be received in good faith.
Unfortunately it seems that even compassionate arguments made in good faith are ineffective for most people. As the author states: "you can’t reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into", and most people don't reason themselves into the positions they believe.
True, I've been trying to be polite and respectful and subtle at least in online conversations (I am far too emotional to do it effectively in real life, which is a big handicap). And I am not getting much results anyway.
But maybe the problem is also that we expect immediate satisfaction: we want the other person convinced there and then, in the course of one exchange. Probably we should accept the fact that without inciting polarization, and being open to being convinced as well as convincing, eventually we'll contribute in changing some opinions, or we'll change ours. It will take time and we won't be there to witness the "flip", the moment when the other suddenly starts seeing our point of view. Ideas don't change during a heated confrontation; they change at random times, sometimes when we're alone and maybe thinking about something else.
What fascinates me about it is the psychology of it all.
That guy had nothing to gain, nor anything to lose, in your interaction with the other party. So why was he willing to invest so much clearly emotional energy into it? It's almost like he wanted to have the aggressive interaction simply for aggression's sake. Like he needed to feed on the aggressive emotions or something? There just doesn't really seem to be any sense in this whole thing?
Nah, it's signaling. Being nice, to the angry person, undermined the social cohesion of the people asking for change from the company and marked the person being nice as a potential weak link that the company could placate to divide and conquer the opposition.
Persuasion is mind manipulation. Facts and truth should be stated as plainly and objectively as possible. It is up to each person how they decide to handle it. Being kind is highly subjective and a slippery slope.
And when you are listening to someone, you control the other. In a dialogue, both parts has to do a bit of both.
Getting offended is basically never a good thing because it stops you from hearing their message. Similarly offending others is basically never a good thing because it stops them from hearing your message. So the best way to communicate is to be liberal with what you accept and strict with what you send out. Also called the robustness principle.
You always have control over your own actions, including your reaction when someone takes offence to something you say or do.
I've found that if someone is offended, if you react with openness and a willingness to listen to what they are saying, then the outcome will likely be positive.
If you are more concerned with defending yourself than listening to the other person, then it's likely the outcome is going to be negative.
This isn't rocket science. The problem is that people tend to react defensively. The only utility in such a reaction is a protection of your own ego. The irony is that in attempting to protect your own ego, you just end up making the situation worse, including for yourself.
I mostly agree, but a safer statement would be “The only thing you can ever have any direct control over is your own actions”.
Sleepwalking, inebriation, low blood sugar, hypoxia — these can all lead to degradation or total loss of conscious control of one’s actions. For many people, there are many other triggers, and some of these triggers are even less physiologically driven than the above.
By your logic the person who is offended has it entirely within their power not to be offended. Since in this scenario they are the one having the more extreme emotional reaction, perhaps it would be more reasonable to ask that they regulate their emotions to some degree, rather than criticize the way in which the person absorbing the brunt of their emotional onslaught does so.
> This isn't rocket science.
That's a bit condescending.
> The problem is that people tend to react defensively
Lukianoff and Haidt's "The Coddling of the American Mind" is a great read on exactly this idea (not being offended as a skill) and the impact of an easily offended society.
Ultimately, there's a line between offensiveness and empathy that requires judgement in order to get things done.
This topic is something I think about a lot.
While I am generally for kindness and empathy, there is something dangerously patronizing about this point of view. Quote:
> If you can’t be kind, if you won’t empathize, then you’re not on the team. That team is Team Humanity, where we are all in this thing together. Where we are all flawed and imperfect. Where we treat other people’s point of view as charitably as we treat our own. Where we are civilized and respectful and, above all, kind to each other—particularly the less fortunate, the mistaken, and the afraid.
That bit at the end is the crux of the matter: Instead of having an honest, fact based (yet perhaps heated) discussion, it purports a "civilized and respectful" treatment because the other side is to be seen as "less fortunate, the mistaken, and the afraid". This is hiding an assumption of superiority towards the other side. They are flawed and imperfect due to their unfortunate circumstances so we have to nobly accept them as such and be tolerant about their points-of-view. This to me seems like a worse, more insidious form of bigotry: Instead of have a leveled argument, where you risk hurting the other side by calling them out for being wrong (or dumb) but also allow them to answer back (and perhaps discovering you are wrong or dumb), you deem them 2nd class, in need of special attention and care. Too fragile/delicate/uneducated to be able to handle a direct response one would give to someone they see as "on their level" or above.
Of course context matters and no sweeping generalizations can be made, but (as per the example in the article) making your grandma cry by articulating her self-inflicted harm due to smoking is, imo, much kinder and empathic than being "understanding" and keep quite maintaining her short-term good mood.
>Of course context matters and no sweeping generalizations can be made, but (as per the example in the article) making your grandma cry by articulating her self-inflicted harm due to smoking is, imo, much kinder and empathic than being "understanding" and keep quite maintaining her short-term good mood.
That is only true if you believe making the grandma cry is in some way productive or helpful. If not, it is simply cruel.
That said, I think this example isn't the best for the article's message.
If you're getting decent at being kind and empathizing, you naturally won't end up being patronizing. Being patronizing is a lack of empathy: you're not understanding the others point of view. And, of course, it's insulting, which is unkind.
In terms of promoting kindness, I wouldn't worry much about that. If you're trying to be kind but end of patronizing, you probably just need some more practice.
Anyway, there's definitely a difference between coddling and being kind while telling the truth. It's not necessarily easy to find, especially since it often depends heavily on the other person's perspective (hence all the talk of empathy).
> ...making your grandma cry by articulating her self-inflicted harm due to smoking is, imo, much kinder and empathic than being "understanding" and keep quite maintaining her short-term good mood.
I don't think that's true. I suppose you're thinking that confronting Grandma with the facts will help her quit.
However, it's likely she knows those facts, yet has been unable to quit anyway (hence the bursting into tears -- you're reminding her of her failure, her accelerated mortality, and the associated anxiety and feelings about failure). So you aren't helping by providing her with facts she already has. You're only making your Grandma miserable. A better approach to helping your grandma might be to encourage her about cessation treatments and focus on what she has to gain (not what she's already lost).
Where would you place saying nothing in your hierarchy.
I think that saying nothing is better than being right and mean, because being right and mean is usually counter productive and reinforces the wong belief.
Humans are simply wired to use aggression as overriding evidence of the person being wrong. If your goal is to change minds, it just doesn't work.
> Humans are simply wired to use aggression as overriding evidence of the person being wrong.
This is not always true, many mathematicians and physicists can be mean when they argue but they still listen to each other and acknowledge when they are wrong.
I agree that there are fringe cases where individuals can separate emotional reactions from factual arguments. I would argue that it is the exception to the norm, and there is usually an implicit understanding of mutual respect
If you win practically nothing by telling the truth, saying nothing is better.
If saying nothing means that people will treat you or others unfairly, then I would say that being mean and right is better than saying nothing. The problem with this is that one can never really know when one is right.
This is just my ethical judgement though, not a practical guide to convince people. Maybe being mean is never convenient, or maybe it's convenient but unethical(?).
My experience is that saying something and being mean leads to others doubling down on their position, unfair or not because you made yourself an enemy.
My wife and I have been talking a lot about giving license to make mistakes and that means letting others do what they're going to do without mocking them for it. Be ready to help them with the "right" way if they fail but also for a pleasant surprise if it works out. As a lead at work, I often hear solutions I doubt will pan out and sometimes I can't help myself correct things. But this "fixing" is actually creating long-term problems and undermining responsibility and ownership.
Anyway, this is what I thought of about halfway through the article when it veered off into contemporary politics.
I'm a "less fortunate, mistaken, and afraid" immigrant living in Canada.
It would feel so refreshing to get the truth straight sometimes, instead of the oh-so-subtle and gentle ways Canadians have of dealing with clashing cultural behaviours.
The end result is I don't know what I'm doing wrong until years later, because so many think the right thing to do is coddle me.
Many of us want to adapt, and if we don't have access to the ground truth, it's a painfully slow process that is simply holding us back from fully integrating into society.
Canadians: I love you guys, but please give it to us straight.
As a Canadian who lived outside the country for a few years, I would say that most Canadians* are ignorant of the unwritten rules that underpin our culture, just due to the fact it’s hard to see the arbitrary choices that lead to our current society without deeply experiencing another.
It’s not malicious, it’s misunderstanding.
Ask for feedback on your perceived missteps (prefer “what” and “how” questions), and you’ll likely get answers. I also believe that it will lead to a learning opportunity for both parties.
* I would add that you could replace “Canadian” with any identity that has any sense of isolation.
This resonates. As a nerdy adolescent in BC, I couldn't understand why I sometimes felt gaslit and confused after seemingly polite exchanges. Moving to east coast USA fixed it--I'll take candor and tough love over passive aggression any day. I recognize it's not for everyone, but this worked for me.
This is an interesting point-of-view to me because I've lived on the east coast of the USA my entire life, roughly split between two places. Between that and the changes that come with aging, I have mixed feelings about this point that I don't fully understand myself. I'll try and explain anyway though.
I like the intent delivered clearly over roundabout ways of getting there. It can weaken the meaning otherwise to not try and be more direct. So clear intent is good. And of course I dislike are when people either make criticism personal, but I think most people feel that way.
What I dislike the most are when people drop their criticism off for you and let you deal with it. It's weird to not have any room for questions. It's hard to work with that and improve on the criticism without being able to discuss it. I also think I find it jarring how few people express any sort of self-doubt either, or room for the possibility that they may be misunderstanding something causing their criticism.
The interesting thing is that sometimes people are willing to help out, but they won't directly say they are, or even drop a subtle hint that they are. If you sort of go in head-first and just ask the dumb questions you may find they're very helpful. But that lack-of clarity is bothering to me.
You will rarely change a person's mind, and never right away, but you can do a lot to start their journey towards seeing things different (assuming you're right) by having them realize that people on "the other side" are decent, well-intentioned, rational people too.
I deleted Twitter last week because I found myself working harder to be clever and cruel instead kind. Social media is everyone screaming and very few listening. In fact, those with the loudest voices (politicians, entertainers) listen least. I haven't missed it at all.
It also consistently amplifies the angriest and least reasonable voices from the other side, so you don't get to spend any time listening to folks who could actually teach you something new.
Mostly everyone pushing kindness these days are sadistic manipulative bullies promoting an agenda. They gang up with others of their kind to destroy the lives of those who have displeased them or questioned their agenda.
Kindness is overrated. Not being a sadistic manipulative bully? Now that is a great thing to advocate for.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 297 ms ] threadAnd there are people like that out there, too, making decisions that affect us all. How do you treat people who demand you see their humanity, but refuse to see yours? Who, when they see our government hurting people, react with “they’re not hurting the people I wanted them to hurt!”?
Call their bluff. Being that unempathetic while demanding empathy from others is a lot worse than just neglecting kindness altogether.
What do you think they’re bluffing about?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As for HN and the way it uses the word 'hacker', I will remain noncommital. I certainly acknowledge that the definition as it's currently employed on the guidelines has shifted since the 1970s, but whether it has actually achieved the kindess expected of it is left as an exercise for the reader.
[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
That guide doesn't feel all that condescending, from reading it. Of course any guide to "asking smart questions" is going to be somewhat contentious, simply because it's very title implies that it's possible to ask stupid questions, and that people should strive to change their behavior around this. But it seems rather shallow to take issue with such claims.
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way
Be gentle. Problem-related stress can make people seem rude or stupid even when they're not.
Reply to a first offender off-line. There is no need of public humiliation for someone who may have made an honest mistake. A real newbie may not know how to search archives or where the FAQ is stored or posted.
...
And in a sense, "Ask Questions The Smart Way" is also an exercise in precise (and non-offensive, respectful to other people`s time and kind communication).
Perhaps my favourite example is that it's forbidden to thank people on Stack Overflow :-/
I don’t consider the SO culture a relevant counter-example. Like, why does a gamified forum hurt your feelings?
In hacker ethos, you are appreciated for doing your homework and being right; that is very nice. You are a dick when you are lazy, wrong, or wasting people's time and energy.
But the result is a channel that is a very effective means of support when the documentation or wiki doesnt have what you need.
Communication is a game of compromise. Sometimes it makes sense to compromise on clarity or brevity to be nice. But when your goal is to solve difficult, material problems- it can be beneficial to prioritize clarity over all else.
The author mentioned Bezos' grandmother being hurt when he mentioned she smoked away 9 years of her life. Is it really Bezos' manners that hurt her feelings? I would imagine that that realization hits hard and does damage on it's own. I think it would be very hard to get that message hard without it hurting. You can attempt to veil the message and lessen the impact, or distract from it somehow- but now you've impacted the integrity of the message.
That's begging the question. You take it is a given that when solving a problem clarity and kindness are mutually exclusive, but you've provided no evidence to support that.
Human communication is impossible to get perfect. You have to strike a balance between a bunch of priorities. I could write an essay on this topic, but nobody would read it. Thus I sacrifice clarity for brevity, and make a comment that can be read in a minute.
If I highly prioritized kindness and told you how much I respected your viewpoint and appreciate your taking the time to engage with me- that would naturally require a number of words. Which means I either make my comment longer- which reduces engagement, or I shorten the meat of the argument- which reduces clarity.
So you can see how these different priorities can come at cost of one another. While I'd like to find the ideal sentence every time I communicate that sacrifices nothing- I just dont have the communication skills to do so.
... you would be patronizing me, not showing me kindness.
I am not convinced that this friction exists. Often times things can be rephrased quite easily, e.g. "you're just plain wrong" can be "I don't think that's correct" or "I feel this may be mistaken".
These examples are simple, but in my own writing I've never noticed an example where I wanted to be clear, but wasn't able to do so while still being nice.
It is true that truly constructive comments are much harder to write, since they take significantly more effort: you need to carefully read the original article, think about it, maybe do a bit of additional research, etc, whereas a quick "this is just wrong because [X]" after reading the title is much easier.
Which often takes time. And limits engagement. The maintainers of pacman have a limited amount of energy they're willing to spend on free support- I'm happy for then to save effort wherever they can.
I wont argue that if you can be kind while sacrificing absolutely nothing else- absolutely be kind.
But anybody who has ever played a competitive sport or even team lifted a couch knows that sometimes barking an order is the best way of doing things- and you just have to have somewhat thick skin.
To live in a world where the perfect message always exists would be great. We dont live in that world.
If you don't want to engage in discussion, fine. Then just don't say anything, or just state that you don't have time. That's fine. No need to not be nice.
I actually used Arch Linux for many years and switched to Void Linux last week. There were several reasons but really decided it for me was that I had an issue and found a thread on the Arch forums where a mod was chewing out a user trying to get help with the same issue in such an insufferably assholery way that it was painful to read; he almost went out of his way to belittle the other person. Most of the time this happens because it makes you feel smart and good about yourself. That's the real reason people are assholes like this. I wrote about this a while ago in the context of Stack Overflow, but the same ideas apply here too: https://arp242.net/stackoverflow.html
> sometimes barking an order is the best way of doing things- and you just have to have somewhat thick skin.
This is probably the most condensing and arrogant thing I've ever seen on HN, and that's saying something. Users aren't idiots who need to be "barked at" at when they do something wrong or misunderstand something. You can always say exactly the same without treating them like idiots.
That makes it sound subjective, unsettled and open to negotiation. Which may be inappropriate when talking about such things that are considered medical consensus. In a way you're just the messenger, not the expert who can elucidate minor nuances behind the statement.
Perhaps it could be made more impersonal (i.e. remove the "you") and providing a 3rd party as source. But inserting weasel words doesn't help when you try to convey rather strongly established facts.
Indeed, they are. Which is more important to you, being right or making a difference?
Yelling at stupid people is easy and so satisfying. Debating with the clueless while staying calm and polite is frustrating, infuriating, and difficult. But if you choose the easy and satisfying path over the difficult one that actually works, you're just patting yourself on the back for being smart.
If someone really cares about the facts, and not just owning their interlocutor, they'll look for effective ways to communicate, instead of holding on as tightly as they can to a method of communication that has pretty conclusively been demonstrated to be ineffective.
It’s of course best to be polite, but we should not prioritize kindness over correctness. Not in fields of knowledge. You are either right, or you are wrong, there’s not much grey area in computing and STEM.
You might be willing to put up with the consequences of other people being mistaken, but most people aren't.
Take climate change - is your attitude "well, the tides will rise and swallow the cities and so on, but there's no point trying to convince people to minimise the damage, because at least I'll be proven right in the end..."?
Pragmatically speaking, it is often incredibly important to be able to convince other people of the truth, if you want to be able to cooperate with them. That really seems so obvious as to go without saying.
I read these sorts of communications as passive-aggressive and patronizing 100% of the time. I'm certain I'm not the only one. And your assumption that your rewording was a constructive comment is unwarranted and condescending.
How do you get people to stop self destruct? In the end you give up and just become cold.
I have sick relatives who dug their own graves. Not my responsability.
For those problems, it is also a priority to induce the clearest thinking, cognitive capability, and relevant memory possible from all parties.
Anything that adds cognitive load to the other parties will not help - and "clear, tell it like it is" speech with no awareness of social consequence is often rather ineffective as a way to access clear thinking from everyone in the room.
Brains just don't appear to work like that.
Of course, sometimes it makes sense to impose a social cost for being wrong, but that's different from raising the stakes of every disagreement unintentionally.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
About costs for being wrong, last time I quoted a RFC about a topic I know well and said to someone that their information was outdated, I ended up downvoted as usual - even more in the reply, while providing a link to the RFC and even apologizing for insisting that the right information should be spread because how important it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430096
In the end, I decided to stop caring. Now I stick to being factual. If I hurt someone sentiments and do not allow them to save face, so be it. Let the objective truth decide, social consequences (like karma) be damned.
Even if there's some "protocol overhead", a more effective communication/persuasion style benefits both parties. Plus, it's more fun!
> This is factually wrong. Your information is deprecated.
...
> Please read the outlined section 3-3 of RFC 8314 from 2018 that explain just that if you don't believe me.
You both started and ended your factual information with hostile phrasing.
You’re within your rights, of course, to keep being hostile with facts, but it’s possible to be both factual and friendly.
It might be a globish issue but I don't see any hostilities in OP's comments. [0]
> > This is factually wrong. Your information is deprecated.
How would you phrase that ?
[0] but I also believe that HN has members from many different cultures and lot of what is being discussed suffer from too much variety in communication style.
Maybe "I am not entirely sure I feel convinced that nobody would disagree with this description providing sufficient convergence with what might be argued is a valid way to interpret reality". Or maybe "that's being disingenuous", another classic of sophisticated kindness.
"This is wrong" always implies "IMO/to my knowledge" anyway, and is functionally equivalent to "I feel / it could be argued that this might be wrong" and all that, except that the writer has the courtesy to speak up when they are ready to actually express an opinion, not just to allude to the possibility of someone, possibly them, expressing an opinion or making an argument.
They are not "functionally equivalent" if they effect the reader in two different ways.
I would infer an aggressive attitude on the part of the speaker which makes the meat of the message more difficult to parse. Should I, for my part, try to get better at parsing messages delivered in such a format? Sure. But the question of whether or not you want to be heard still leaves some onus on the speaker to consider their audience.
But it's complicated, right? There seem to be quite a few people in this thread that strongly prefer one over the other.
Historically, yes 465 has been deprecated several years ago. But as many ISP and the largest email services kept using it, the IANA had to change its tune and 'resurrected' port 465 in this RFC.
It is funny: the RFC itself describes that as a wart, but reality is a harsh mistress.
Section 3-3 of RFC 8314 from 2018 has the details.
I guess this is the reverse of nonviolent communication. If you always speak and are used to communicating agressively, then people that are being nice suddenly sound condescending.
Yes, it does. But then it's still up to me to try to overcome my first reaction. I don't always succeed.
> I guess this is the reverse of nonviolent communication. If you always speak and are used to communicating agressively, then people that are being nice suddenly sound condescending.
"Always" ? Interesting choice of word when talking about non violent communication :).
Snark aside, I don't see myself as communicating aggressively. I may be wrong. I certainly don't put myself in the camp of "people who tell it like it is" though.
Also, faking being nice can really be annoying.
Ah. I didn’t mean you in particular, and not necessarily aggressive, just the opposite of nonviolent.
I just never considered this from the point of view of the other side before.
One way that comes to mind is along the lines of “It was deprecated, true, but it’s actually back in favor now because...”
When someone speaks to me this way, especially in written form, I make it a point to assume noble intent. They are trying to communicate efficiently. I think it's an especially common style among programmers who are accustomed to "talking" to computers all day.
Still, I try not to use this kind of language myself. Sometimes you need to be inefficient in order to communicate efficiently. Leadership of many organizations has to fly across the world to have conversations face to face to accomplish efficient communication sometimes. It's pretty paradoxical!
In this case, leaving out ‘This is factually wrong’, makes the message a whole lot nicer and doesn’t change anything about the content.
I took the time to answer to tell you about deprecation because I thought it was worth sharing given your message, and that you may find that funny (double deprecation, bringing it back from the dead!) as I did when I learned that.
However, our exchange was judged negatively by other people. In the end, I still give up. I can't please them. I don't understand their culture or how it is adversarial even after going though the discussion here (especially about the "funny" part).
I don't want to watch what I say or talk in fear on ow I will be misunderstood. This is not a dictatorship. But "inclusive" language start to feels this way to me.
I would hate to lose you. But you’ve got to keep up with the times. It used to be, for example, acceptable to call any theoretical person “him” if it was a person in a stereotypically male role. Now it’s not acceptable, and we all have had to adjust. When I was a kid, it used to be accepted and normal to make jokes about racial stereotypes, and most people only thought it was funny and didn’t assume racism of either the person making the joke or of anyone laughing. Now it’s different, and we cringe at the terrible things which we then accepted uncritically.
It’s a bit like that when cultures change.
> This is not a dictatorship. But "inclusive" language start to feels this way to me.
There are two different things going on, one mostly good – i.e. the societal move to less adversarial language – and one bad, the social media incentives which creates an outrage driven attention culture, which drives people to, like Cardinal Richelieu, scrutinize every tweet and find something in those words to cancel them.
You shouldn’t be afraid of the latter to a degree that you reject the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...
This makes me realize how much the notion of “pride” applied to people feels such a dirty word by today’s standards.
Being proud of something, having pride in doing something is highly valued. Pride towards ourself is ridden with corrosive imagery from the cold war area, undue self boasting and narcism. I am happy with humility and openness becoming a better valued trait.
How you say you are right matters.
There are also individuals who act on the opposite principle: "If you can claim hurt feelings, you've automatically won the debate." This goes so far, that arguments often get to a point where one person dares another to hurt their feelings so that they can have an easy win. Like "A: Vaccines are safe, and not vaccinating your children exposes them to health risks. B: Well, I don't vaccinate MY children. Are you saying I'm a bad mother? [A: Well yes, kind of.]"
Also, I think that this opposite principle is exactly the principle that has lead to where we are as a society regarding the ridiculousness of political correctness.
The thing is: Cognitive dissonance reduction always trumps rationality as a mechanism whereby people form beliefs. So, the theoretical ideal would be to make a rational persuasive argument that somehow steers clear of creating cognitive dissonance in anybody (neither people on the same side, nor people on the other side of the debate).
But I also think that the article is right in asserting that, in today's world, there is just no room for lengthy and nuanced argument. They just don't get any airtime when all the media that matter, like social media and word-of-mouth are based on resonance, and attention spans of average people are fast approaching infinitesimal dimensions.
...so I really don't know where that leaves us as a society. I don't really see a way out to be honest.
Maybe, phrasing it more positively, I would add to the advice. (1) Try not to be an asshole, as you're winning an argument. (2) Don't try to win an argument by demonstrating that your opponent is an asshole.
Some people tend to foget about (1). Others tend to forget about (2).
Somehow as I grew older (starting in my mid-30s I suppose), I became more and more aware of how I was affecting other people with my choice of words, and I had less and less reasons to "defeat" people in conversation. When victory is no longer the objective in a discussion, you tend relax, and can choose your words more carefully.
Without trying to invalidate what it is you're saying: Would it be false to say that, you have also realized that how you say things will have consequences on your personal reputation and may be subconsciously taking them into consideration as well?
Online this tends to disappear (at least to our perception). When there's no face-to-face interaction, we seem to lose that reputation instinct rather quickly...
I would say that a heart of being mature is when you don’t care how someone says something, but that is out of trend right now.
Edit: it's the blog post you linked above? "How to see self & others: not as better/worse, but as individuals..." ?
Edit: examples include, though I'm not sure if I have them concisely in these words (but I do have a ton of notes) are: to try to ask gentle questions instead of making strong statements whenever possible, to observe more than I did, to wait 72 hours thinking things over before making a negative/critical/possibly hurtful statement, to use the "compliment sandwich" (sincerely) to clarify that I respect/love them as a person and they are more important than the issue, to remember a quote from Pres. Thomas S. Monson to never make a problem to be solved more important than a person to be loved, to pray about how to help someone or if/how I should say things, and not forgetting that saying nothing can also be a selfish disservice (ie, finding the right balance: some things really do need to be said), and a routine to review habits at the right times, mentally practicing, including praying daily until I am confident I will remember the most important things and have a comfort level that my plan for the day is good (which has been helpful).
Note: I have not spent much time as a manager, but we have grandchildren, and I see that clear statements of what needs to happen can be required more often than the above suggests, but with thoughtfulness and caring toward others. I also know that if someone is a threat to others or the org., that boundaries need to be set, sometimes immediately, and there are consequences for performance and for choices, which should be made clear, and it is worth helping people develop and learn from where they are. Authority with accountability, choices to consequences, are relationships that should not be disrupted, it seems to me. I also try to remember that I have learned for myself that God lives and will judge us all, that this person who is learning might be my superior in the eyes of God (for all I know), might be more humble or have overcome more than I have or such (I am not qualified to judge), so I had better treat them with respect, and that God has commanded us to forgive everyone, so some things I can just let go. But trust is different from forgiveness, and should be based on real reasons of performance over time, not words or wishes. And my mistakes are forgivable also, based on repentance, and there is much more, which is why I made a web site....
A lot changes after high school/college which frankly makes learning more difficult.The nature of brain development changes, people acquire new priorities like jobs, children, and family. Additionally, they have more cognitive inertia to work against.
If you are implying that harsh attacks are required to snap them out of a deep set belief, and I don't agree and have never seen it work in the real world.
I think it mostly has to do with other people's insecurities. If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.
I try to follow Paul Graham's dictum "keep your identity small", the saying "strong opinions weakly held" and/or I've extremely strong self-confidence (compared to most people), so I seem to be way less personally affected by statements like these (though I'm sure I have other triggers)...
Granted I'm only 30 so maybe that will change in a few years, but for the time being I've started to moderate my stated opinions to spare other people's feelings (though I still think it would be better if they grew more emotionally mature, but I realize that's unlikely to happen), to improve social relations and, frankly, also because it's getting more and more dangerous out there, with political correctness and/or China-driven character assassinations.
Another (non-political) one that comes up fairly often, is that I don't think it's reasonable to congratulate people when they decide to get married... it's a decision after all, nothing to do with achievement and/or luck (for most people I know at least, who aren't extremely lonely to the extent that finding anyone that tolerates them is an achievement... in which case, "congratulations" would be more in order), and if anything, they should be warned (as many marriages end in failure). But if you say that, you're the asshole.
I think these are perfectly acceptable thoughts to have but in the context of interpersonal relationships and society as a whole, these statements just seem confrontational and unnecessary.
I’m curious if you will elaborate. What your parent commenter said about failing marriages is factual and is supported by statistics —- for decades.
You saying that somebody _seems_ to be an asshole however, I see nothing factual about that statement.
Would you try expanding on your position?
We say congratulations to people when they get engaged because it is nice to do so.
I suspect that if we used that criteria, we'd end up reinforcing a lot of existing trends. For example, my daughter gets into a computer science program, but I know that most women don't end up getting jobs in that field, so I withhold congratulations. Why are you yelling? I'm right! I'm backed by decades of statistics.
Tomp: "Chances are you will die within the year. Just stating the facts hurp, don't know why everybody I talk to is so sensitive."
Maybe published on academica journals is the only way to do it?
But again, if you recommend a journal article about how beef is unhealthy to a beef-lover, you can still kind of like an asshole?
For both my kids we had another pregnancy prior that ended in miscarriage. The first one when you’re excited and the whole thing is new was particularly emotionally hard. Lying in bed with your partner mourning your lost future hard. Most parents wait until after the most dangerous period to announce their pregnancy to the world for this reason. There are a lot of hopes and dreams wrapped up in a very uncertain time.
There’s a whole bunch of luck involved, particularly when people start having to do things like IVF and as I said to the OP congratulating people is often about showing support. It can be an emotionally fraught time leading to physically and emotionally tough times ahead. Pregnancy, childbirth and raising kids is no picnic. The glib answer is “well you chose it” but that doesn’t make it any easier nor less worthy of support.
If you give the people in question the benefit of the doubt, you would assume that they understand the gravity of the interpersonal and legal commitment they had made. Building up the trust to make that commitment is hard work.
It'd be like if somebody just made a commitment to donate periodically to charity. Presumably, those donations required that person to establish themselves financially to the extent that they can be reasonable sure that they will be able to keep their promise. So even though it's a "decision," it's closely related to an achievement.
Or maybe this illustrates it more clearly: You'd consider it an achievement to reach a 50th anniversary, correct? As you say, "many marriages end in failure." So why not a premarital relationship resulting in marriage? That doesn't always happen either. Most premarital relationships end in breaking up, not marriage.
So, as long as we're treating these people with maximum respect, we can see that:
1. Getting to the point where they were ready to commit to marriage was a challenging process. Big commitments require stable foundations, and stable foundations aren't free.
2. There is reason to hope that marriage will be a positive thing for the two who have decided to engage in it.
1 and 2 together are sufficient cause for congratulations, so they are in order.
As for,
> But we're proving his point really by discussing it!
I'm curious. How so?
Like you could decide nothing short of an Olympic record is worth congratulating but this is pretty obviously very socially inept.
Edit: Basically on aggregate there is nothing special about it but it’s important to the people involved and how plussed or non-plussed you feel about it should relate to your relationship with them rather than how impressed you are personally about it.
No customs, no euphemisms, and to the point.
There is a way out of the conundrum you outlined.
Of course if you're "warning" people when they proudly and happily announce that they're getting married then you're the asshole. It's a super strange superiority complex to have. I got over this "social constructs are dumb and we should only express ourselves in objective facts like Mr Spock" phase when I was in high school, I encourage you to do the same. I remember explaining to some friends that having a party for the New Year was dumb because, after all, it was just a random point in the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Ow, the cringe.
perspectives like this have an ideal place in humor, not in criticism. among friends in a trusting and relaxed environment, go to town on how silly we all are. do it in a funny way and you get cool points. otherwsie, not so much.
(also, you congratulate the engaged because they've made a lifelong commitment to another person, which is a hard thing to do).
‘Congratulate” has additional meanings: can be about success and good luck or simply happiness linked to some particular event. You share their joy, that’s all. Even if you don’t think they really have motives to be happy :-)
Yes, exactly, so if I say "eating candies is unhealthy" I don't think there's gonna be any group jumping at my throat.
Maybe is because candy lovers are not insecure cultists.
They know it's a matter of taste and personal belief, not something with a more profound meaning.
I'll bite. It's true that a vegan diet can be unhealthy, and that it's wise to supplement with B12, but that doesn't mean a vegan diet is unhealthy.
This is like saying "an omnivorous diet is unhealthy because you don't eat enough vegetables". Sure, some people with omnivorous diets need to eat more vegetables, but that's not true of all people who eat omnivorous diets.
I'm not sure whether you would benefit from increasing your precision or accuracy, but the "veganism is unhealthy" line is plain wrong.
I find these kinds of posts so, so, so tiring. The only saving grace is that the collapse thread button is so useful.
For example, B12 is in meat because animals are supplemented with it, like cobalt added to their feed. Humans can supplement directly.
It's like thinking you have to drink vitamin D fortified milk or iodine fortified salt to get vitamin D and iodine, and then asserting people who don't consume either must be unhealthy.
Stop telling me about veganism, it's irrelevant. Stop writing irrelevant stuff, just stop it.
Edit: To clarify, before a stealth edit, hombre_fatal's first paragraph used to consist entirely of "Eh, the upstream comment used bogus incendiary flamebait as an "example" so yes, people are going to reply to it.". At least now he's added some more substance.
Maybe it's best to install an add-on which blurs veganism out for you, if it is so uninteresting that even mentioning it offends you.
> If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.
tomp wisely acknowledges, within brackets, that there are nuances, but statements like "veganism is unhealthy" are incredibly vague, and the very real nuances will be automatically constructed and appended to the message (and attributed to the speaker) by the listener's brain, typically without their conscious knowledge, and often in a manner not to your liking. Should people be like this? Who knows. Are they like this? Of course, and we all know it when the topic of conversation is psychology, but how easy it is to forget this when the topic is something else.
"they are so involved with their egos" seems to me of key importance, but it's so easy to forget that we are all involved with our egos. I listen to a fair amount of lectures by experienced Buddhists, people who devote their lives to observing their own minds, and a recurring theme that arises is that even with the substantial discipline and skills they've acquired in that field, they are still regularly fooled by their egos.
> but for the time being I've started to moderate my stated opinions to spare other people's feelings (though I still think it would be better if they grew more emotionally mature, but I realize that's unlikely to happen)
"feelings" is a tricky term in this context. What does it mean, really? Sometimes, it accurately refers to simplistic, emotional, low-information emotional reactions, as opposed to logical thinking. But is this always the case? Might there be times that it is perceived that this is what's happening in someone else, but in reality there is an unseen, complex multi-dimensional (nuanced) analysis taking place that happens to come to a different (and not incorrect) conclusion than the one (also not incorrect, considering the implicitly assumed nuances) that you or I might have formed?
Getting along can be amazingly difficult even in the simplest of situations (say, a family or team consisting of only 4 or 5 people, who mostly have aligned interests). But look at how the complexity, interconnectedness, and technical capabilities of the world has exploded in the last 50, 20, or even 10 years. And we're managing all of this complexity with largely the same political and psychological tools that we used when half of us were farming the land, with the addition of some "weaponized" psychological capabilities and techniques (mass media, internet, machine learning) thrown into the mix to make things even more interesting.
Considering all this, how reasonable does this common "just look at the facts and agree with me already" attitude seem?
like your post?
There are far more fictional or at least many times less controversial examples to made, the OP "dug his grave" them self.
Edit: My last point is clearly demonstrated if the immediate downvote I received after posting this was from you.
> The statement "Veganism is unhealthy" is objectively wrong
The statement "vaccination is safe" is also objectively wrong (it's a medical procedure therefore it carries risk; the more correct statement is "vaccination is risky, but the tradeoffs are extremely worth it"), but saying it wouldn't "create an emotional reaction" in most people (except in anti-vaxxers, which AFAIK are a huge minority, and pretty much everyone would agree that they are extremely ego-invested in their opinion) (saying that it's wrong, however, might).
TIL.
Anyway, my aim isn't to debate you on specific subjects like veganism or vaccines. Just be aware that stating things in a blunt, opinionated way can have undesirable effects on your communications, regardless of your intentions.
I've seen literally dozens and dozens of videos and posts of really really malnourished people advocating veganism. It's pretty much too hard to execute for the average person.
Purposefully harsh wordings that require parenthesized nuance even here are hardly the listeners fault. If there's a breakdown in communication because you're being pithy and sharp that's a problem you can choose to fix.
Both of those statements have some element of truth to them, but they're obviously incendiary, as is your 'veganism is unhealthy'.
For the most part it sounds like you're just lacking tact. I used to be that guy too. Probably still am, to some extent.
No, they don't.
They are supercharged propaganda.
> but they're obviously incendiary, as is your 'veganism is unhealthy'.
Not at all.
Saying veganism is unhealthy is stating an opinion shared by many nutrition expert, it says nothing about vegans, it is just what it is.
meat is murder contains a judgement: if meat is murder, you are a murderer, if taxation is theft, who collects taxes is a thief.
I can accept "you eat corpses" because it's true, I don't eat animals alive, they are already dead when I eat them, but it is also imprecise, because I eat just bits of the corpses, not the entire carcass.
But also an opinion disagreed with by many nutrition experts
A majority of them studied and proved its unhealthy effects.
Unless you wanna say that every opinion counts, no matter the opinion, we can safely assume that being vegan is like drinking or having unprotected sex or speeding.
It won't probably kill you, it will even improve life for some, but it's not something one should take lightly like "it has no effects".
Go and check if you don't believe me.
If you feel like you're often pushing people's buttons to the point of censoring yourself, maybe take a step back and see if you can communicate more kindly.
Smoking is unhealthy, there's no possible conversation.
It is, if you prefer to smoke, it's your choice, no amount of reasoning is gonna change that.
Disclaimer: I'm a smoker, a not very involved one, but still one.
I think it's particularly harmful and sad to say there's no possible conversation about something when you are of two minds yourself!
It is believed to be, but it isn't.
We could make the same argument for alcohol or even heroin, that stop a cough and relieves from physical pain.
> I think it's particularly harmful and sad to say there's no possible conversation
As a smoker, there is no possible conversation on the fact that smoking kills, cigarettes are killers, no matter the benefits one can take out of them, they are "responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers"
This is a fact that can only be acknowledged as true, even though personally many people decide to ignore this fact and smoke anyway (including myself).
But we smokers are simply wrong.
Frankly, I don’t believe that you don’t mean it as an attack on the lifestyle choices of others, and I’m not surprised that people get defensive.
No, it is not.
It must be because cigarettes are good for the health.
/sarcasm
That's exactly why speaking the truth is fundamental, being kind is simply a plus: we all do reckless stuff in life, we all base some choice on assumptions or beliefs, it's usually not that bad, but it can be and someone needs to say it.
Just the fact that we are discussing about an unhealthy diet, that killed millions of people in poor countries, because in rich countries we have doctors and pharmacies and a lot of ways to overcome its dangers and we can't agree that a fact is a fact and choices are choices, proves that being kind before being right can be dangerous.
Doctors will never say "you should eat vegan because it's better for your health", they will say "you should remove this or that from your diet" if something is wrong (yes, bacon is unhealthy too, coke in unhealthy as well etc. etc.) and if you decide to go vegan they will say "it won't probably affect your health, but be careful. Also I want to visit you again in a couple of months".
That's just what it is, unhealthy means not healthy, it doesn't mean deadly at contact!
But people are more sensitive about their choices than their health conditions. People think that their choices defines them, they resist to changes and to facts that challenge their status, because it shutters their reality and trigger their insecurities.
It's not personal, If I say "veganism is unhealthy" it' because it's historically correct and still a cause of malnutritions around the World, not because I think vegans are stupid.
I think they are adults making unhealthy choices (I hope knowing it), just like driving too fast, drinking too much, living a sedentary life or, like my uncle, smoking for 50 years.
My dad worked in lung oncology and doctors couldn't stop some people from smoking even after they had to surgically remove one of the lungs because tumor destroyed it.
Lucky them in Italy healthcare is paid by everybody's taxes or we would have more than a few Walter White.
A popular similar episode happened in the UK, a former very popular soccer player, George Best, had a liver transplant because he drank too much. Even after that he kept drinking and it led to complications and a liver infection that killed him at the age of 59. Few days before he died he asked to be photographed in the hospital and the photo published with the message "Don't die like me".
It took him 59 years, a liver transplant and an horrible death at relatively young age to understand he was wrong.
Do you think nobody was kind, empathetic or nice with him before about his alcoholism problem?
But how many more were nice with him just to take advantage of his glory, fame, and, of course, money?
Being nice alone serves no purpose, being empathetic or nice, sometimes requires "not nice" manners.
If somebody confronted him and actually forced him to quit, he could well be alive and that liver could have saved someone who deserved it more than a repentless alcoholic.
We should also ask to ourselves: why is it so important for some people to convince others?
What purpose does it serve to have tools (empathy, kindness) to win people trust (they value the messenger), when we have tools (logic, fact checking) to evaluate the actual message?
Back to cigarettes.
Hironically my dad was also an heavy smoker, and reduced it a lot when my mother was pregnant of my sister (she had medical problems while being pregnant of me) and completely quit when my sister was born, because she suffered from asthma.
He went from 3 packs a day to zero in a few months and has been cigarettes free for 43 years now.
He knew he was wrong, he just had no reason to change, he probably thought that without cigarettes he would have lost self-confidence. My mother has always been more kind than right, but she couldn't convince ...
I believe the reason these people died was lack of food in general, not veganism.
Lack of nutrients, not simply lack of food.
They have not enough food and the food they have lacks the nutrients necessary to survive, because it's mostly low protein vegetables.
- first of all I'm not your dude, I am not anybody's dude, my "dudes" are the people that know me personally and the people that know me personally call me by name, they do not call me "my dude" because they know I don't like it. You see the problem here? By assuming instead of carefully crafting your message in a way it was simply factually correct - at the best of your abilities- you turned yourself from being simply wrong to an "unrepentant asshole"
- does unhealthy mean "a label we use to describe things that cross some arbitrary threshold of having deleterious effects"? no. The fact that we can measure the effect is the textbook of being "not an opinion" but a measure. If the measure is proved consistent in multiple experiments, we have a model (a proved theory).
- unhealthy means not healthy, it doesn't mean it will kill you on the spot. Is drinking healthy? no, it's not. Is it unhealthy? yes, it is, alcohol is a poison for our body. Will it kill you? You will probably die for other causes before it will, but it could.
- how many people die every year because are forced into an unhealthy vegan diet having no other choice? millions (AKA "still too many"). I'll post you the facts, you can make up your opinion about them, but they will be facts at the end of the day.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180662/That burned me a lot when I was younger. Intellectual humility has never failed to serve me. I wish I was more humble about my strongly held opinions (that I thought were facts) when I was younger.
I think your prior statement about ‘nuances’ discounts this as a fact. Perhaps your strong opinions are not entirely facts?
People prefer to be deceived than proven wrong.
That's why young people are often thought of as shitty, because they have far less sovrastructures.
The more people age the more they think that when they where young they were shitty and insecure, because they need to justify becoming conformists (they prefer to deceive themselves)
Delivering critical feedback or trying to lobby to convince others of a course of action very often requires dispensing with pleasantries and bullshit and just get it out in the open.
It can cost you big time if you try to spare feelings or water down the case you’re making for kindness.
I mean, it can be the difference between having to fire someone or not, or getting resources so people don’t burn out. Or getting someone to stop wasting your team’s time while you’re on a critical project.
Unfortunately it seems that even compassionate arguments made in good faith are ineffective for most people. As the author states: "you can’t reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into", and most people don't reason themselves into the positions they believe.
But maybe the problem is also that we expect immediate satisfaction: we want the other person convinced there and then, in the course of one exchange. Probably we should accept the fact that without inciting polarization, and being open to being convinced as well as convincing, eventually we'll contribute in changing some opinions, or we'll change ours. It will take time and we won't be there to witness the "flip", the moment when the other suddenly starts seeing our point of view. Ideas don't change during a heated confrontation; they change at random times, sometimes when we're alone and maybe thinking about something else.
Ideal: objective wrt self, subjective wrt others.
The angry person argued we shouldn't be so "submissive" and are perfectly in our right to be demanding etc
My response: "It took me less time and effort to type please than it took you to get angry and write all this about it."
That guy had nothing to gain, nor anything to lose, in your interaction with the other party. So why was he willing to invest so much clearly emotional energy into it? It's almost like he wanted to have the aggressive interaction simply for aggression's sake. Like he needed to feed on the aggressive emotions or something? There just doesn't really seem to be any sense in this whole thing?
Not getting a mob means everyone goes home, bored, probably alone, and doesn't get to participate in making changes.
Getting offended is basically never a good thing because it stops you from hearing their message. Similarly offending others is basically never a good thing because it stops them from hearing your message. So the best way to communicate is to be liberal with what you accept and strict with what you send out. Also called the robustness principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
Do you really have control of anything?
I've found that if someone is offended, if you react with openness and a willingness to listen to what they are saying, then the outcome will likely be positive.
If you are more concerned with defending yourself than listening to the other person, then it's likely the outcome is going to be negative.
This isn't rocket science. The problem is that people tend to react defensively. The only utility in such a reaction is a protection of your own ego. The irony is that in attempting to protect your own ego, you just end up making the situation worse, including for yourself.
Listening is a superpower.
I mostly agree, but a safer statement would be “The only thing you can ever have any direct control over is your own actions”.
Sleepwalking, inebriation, low blood sugar, hypoxia — these can all lead to degradation or total loss of conscious control of one’s actions. For many people, there are many other triggers, and some of these triggers are even less physiologically driven than the above.
Knowing one’s own limitations is also important.
By your logic the person who is offended has it entirely within their power not to be offended. Since in this scenario they are the one having the more extreme emotional reaction, perhaps it would be more reasonable to ask that they regulate their emotions to some degree, rather than criticize the way in which the person absorbing the brunt of their emotional onslaught does so.
> This isn't rocket science.
That's a bit condescending.
> The problem is that people tend to react defensively
I really don't think it is.
Do you really have control of anything? Maybe not, but you have to at least assume so or become a passive participant in life.
Ultimately, there's a line between offensiveness and empathy that requires judgement in order to get things done.
> If you can’t be kind, if you won’t empathize, then you’re not on the team. That team is Team Humanity, where we are all in this thing together. Where we are all flawed and imperfect. Where we treat other people’s point of view as charitably as we treat our own. Where we are civilized and respectful and, above all, kind to each other—particularly the less fortunate, the mistaken, and the afraid.
That bit at the end is the crux of the matter: Instead of having an honest, fact based (yet perhaps heated) discussion, it purports a "civilized and respectful" treatment because the other side is to be seen as "less fortunate, the mistaken, and the afraid". This is hiding an assumption of superiority towards the other side. They are flawed and imperfect due to their unfortunate circumstances so we have to nobly accept them as such and be tolerant about their points-of-view. This to me seems like a worse, more insidious form of bigotry: Instead of have a leveled argument, where you risk hurting the other side by calling them out for being wrong (or dumb) but also allow them to answer back (and perhaps discovering you are wrong or dumb), you deem them 2nd class, in need of special attention and care. Too fragile/delicate/uneducated to be able to handle a direct response one would give to someone they see as "on their level" or above.
Of course context matters and no sweeping generalizations can be made, but (as per the example in the article) making your grandma cry by articulating her self-inflicted harm due to smoking is, imo, much kinder and empathic than being "understanding" and keep quite maintaining her short-term good mood.
That is only true if you believe making the grandma cry is in some way productive or helpful. If not, it is simply cruel.
That said, I think this example isn't the best for the article's message.
In terms of promoting kindness, I wouldn't worry much about that. If you're trying to be kind but end of patronizing, you probably just need some more practice.
Anyway, there's definitely a difference between coddling and being kind while telling the truth. It's not necessarily easy to find, especially since it often depends heavily on the other person's perspective (hence all the talk of empathy).
> ...making your grandma cry by articulating her self-inflicted harm due to smoking is, imo, much kinder and empathic than being "understanding" and keep quite maintaining her short-term good mood.
I don't think that's true. I suppose you're thinking that confronting Grandma with the facts will help her quit.
However, it's likely she knows those facts, yet has been unable to quit anyway (hence the bursting into tears -- you're reminding her of her failure, her accelerated mortality, and the associated anxiety and feelings about failure). So you aren't helping by providing her with facts she already has. You're only making your Grandma miserable. A better approach to helping your grandma might be to encourage her about cessation treatments and focus on what she has to gain (not what she's already lost).
Being right and nice is better than being right and mean.
Being right and mean is better than being wrong and nice.
Being wrong and nice is better than being wrong and mean.
I think that saying nothing is better than being right and mean, because being right and mean is usually counter productive and reinforces the wong belief.
Humans are simply wired to use aggression as overriding evidence of the person being wrong. If your goal is to change minds, it just doesn't work.
This is not always true, many mathematicians and physicists can be mean when they argue but they still listen to each other and acknowledge when they are wrong.
If you win practically nothing by telling the truth, saying nothing is better.
If saying nothing means that people will treat you or others unfairly, then I would say that being mean and right is better than saying nothing. The problem with this is that one can never really know when one is right.
This is just my ethical judgement though, not a practical guide to convince people. Maybe being mean is never convenient, or maybe it's convenient but unethical(?).
Anyway, this is what I thought of about halfway through the article when it veered off into contemporary politics.
It would feel so refreshing to get the truth straight sometimes, instead of the oh-so-subtle and gentle ways Canadians have of dealing with clashing cultural behaviours.
The end result is I don't know what I'm doing wrong until years later, because so many think the right thing to do is coddle me.
Many of us want to adapt, and if we don't have access to the ground truth, it's a painfully slow process that is simply holding us back from fully integrating into society.
Canadians: I love you guys, but please give it to us straight.
It’s not malicious, it’s misunderstanding.
Ask for feedback on your perceived missteps (prefer “what” and “how” questions), and you’ll likely get answers. I also believe that it will lead to a learning opportunity for both parties.
* I would add that you could replace “Canadian” with any identity that has any sense of isolation.
I like the intent delivered clearly over roundabout ways of getting there. It can weaken the meaning otherwise to not try and be more direct. So clear intent is good. And of course I dislike are when people either make criticism personal, but I think most people feel that way.
What I dislike the most are when people drop their criticism off for you and let you deal with it. It's weird to not have any room for questions. It's hard to work with that and improve on the criticism without being able to discuss it. I also think I find it jarring how few people express any sort of self-doubt either, or room for the possibility that they may be misunderstanding something causing their criticism.
The interesting thing is that sometimes people are willing to help out, but they won't directly say they are, or even drop a subtle hint that they are. If you sort of go in head-first and just ask the dumb questions you may find they're very helpful. But that lack-of clarity is bothering to me.
Kindness is overrated. Not being a sadistic manipulative bully? Now that is a great thing to advocate for.