Don't tell someone they're wrong. You'll never convince them, even when you're right. It's not worth the ink (or the blood pressure).
Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).
Studies have shown that trying to convince people they're wrong with facts and/or truths will instead cement them in their beliefs harder than if you did nothing.
This was a hard learned lesson for me, and I still suck at it sometimes. Because, let's face it, arguing is a time honored form of entertainment.
> Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).
I had a manager who would quietly disagree with things we said, then try to gently steer us toward the answer he wanted by asking a lot of leading questions. "Socratic method", he called it. He thought he was doing us a great favor by helping us discover the correct answer through his questioning.
There was a problem: He was sometimes wrong. In certain domains, he was frequently wrong. He often misunderstood a situation and would launch into multiple days or weeks of leading questions designed to gently guide us to the "correct" answer, often leaving us with "something to think about" that we were supposed to ponder overnight.
Some times we'd spend days trying to guide him back to seeing where he was wrong, or why he was asking the wrong questions. Once he convinced himself he was right and we were wrong, it was hell to stop his socratic method questioning and get him to look at the facts again.
It was awful. I spent so much of that job trying to guess what he was thinking. We always had to reverse engineer what he wanted us to say with his questions, because he wouldn't just tell us like adults talking to each other.
If I learned anything from that job, it's that I can't stand working with people who won't communicate directly. We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.
Yup I have seen this technique used by someone who thought they were being tactful, but just came across as being totally patronizing and wasting a large amount of time.
Polite directness is best. Explain your position as clearly as possible, your reservations with the alternative, what it would take to change your mind, and actually be open to considering alternatives and changing your mind.
That being said, I think it is possible to be direct while also employing the socratic method.
Exactly. You can both state your reasoning AND ask a question that not only tries to lead someone else to your conclusion, but also allows them to rebut your conclusion with their own better one.
Assuming that that last doesn't exist is just insufferably patronizing asshole.
When I ask "what did I miss?" I'm really asking that.
Sure I know I've put a lot of time and thought into the topic (otherwise I'm not trying to state anything in the first place), and sure I may even be pretty sure I'm the authority in the immediate viscinity, but obviously anyone else from any background at any time on any topic may know something I don't know or have considered something I never considered, and may actually have an answer. In fact it happens all the time.
Totally agree. It can really feel passively aggressive to me if someone politely asks you to reflect. IMHO it is really important to be transparent. It is important for the opposite to understand also how important something is to you and why. I tend to really dislike people whose trained communication strategies you can observe, even it is something like nonviolent communication (whose underpinning I understand but am particularly bad at)
Of course poor communication skills will cause problems. It's well worth asking for clarifications in such situations; I have few problems playing the dumb oaf and admitting my lack of understanding if it gets someone to ELI5 their point. And generally, someone who brags about using the Socratic method out loud will gladly display their brilliance you've blundered past.
In the end, I'm not advocating for confusing the person you're communicating with, I'm advocating for not butting your head against their beliefs; against their ego. Perhaps this advice is better suited to online debates, but I've also seen it too often in real life to waste my time trying to change someone's beliefs.
The issue is that it is often very important in engineering to get to the point and state what you believe as directly as possible, so that others (and yourself) can compare it to the facts quickly and easily. And listen, and figure out where they might be wrong afterwards.
And we can and should expect everyone in Engineering to do the same for what they believe too. Because otherwise we all waste time we can’t afford to waste, and end up with more broken situations.
What you’re describing is fine for politics and social meet and greets. It wastes time, causes confusion, and results in expensive (and sometimes fatal) mistakes when the facts matter.
Engineers too are human. They have egos and beliefs and care more about the things they build than they should. Their feelings get hurt when people are rude, short, or belittling - or when they perceive that someone's being rude, short, or belittling.
The perfectly rational engineer (read: human being) doesn't exist outside of a select few neurodivergant folks. Acting as if every engineer is perfectly rational is now, and always has been, a mistake.
Just ask Linus' more verbose colleagues; have a look at how he has changed over the many years he's lead the kernel development.
It is entirely possible to be direct without being an asshole.
Being indirect, Socratic questioning, etc. has its place too. But it can easily just result in someone being a passive aggressive asshole instead of a direct one, or, as others noted in the thread, being confusing and a drag on everyone because they won’t actually say what they think.
That’s the ‘no one is an asshole, everyone is an asshole’ type of BS that muddies the waters.
Linus has been an asshole, he didn’t have to be, and everyone agreed on that, including him.
He’s getting better at being less of an asshole.
That is what I’m referring to. It isn’t ambiguous. It isn’t ‘a bad day’. It isn’t one person getting offended about something that no one else saw. Pretending it is does no one any favors.
Saying that someone is perfectly rational is not saying they have no emotions. Nor is it an insinuation that someone is somehow less human for prioritizing rationality in decision making.
And I say this as an outspoken neurodivergent myself.
And neither is anyone who’s neurodivergent “perfectly rational”. That’s not a helpful stereotype, all on its own, without any characterization of our emotional capacity or supposed prioritization of whatever mode of thought.
Also when did I say anyone was guilty of anything? I should probably stop coming back and rereading this response and wondering why what little I said is being construed as the opposite of what I said.
Every part of your comment was an accusation based on your own embellishments.
They are not guilty of claiming or even implying that all neurodivergent are purely rational. You produced that yourself, and said it's wrong. Well, true it is wrong, and they are not guilty of saying that. Your comment was in response to theirs and not in a vacuum, and so the most reasonable interpretation of your comment is as response to theirs.
I specifically said I didn’t think it was intended.
> They are not guilty of claiming or even implying that all neurodivergent are purely rational.
That’s not what I thought they said either. They said that “perfectly rational engineer (read: human being) doesn't exist outside of a select few neurodivergant folks”. My objection is that no person is perfectly rational, neurodivergent or otherwise, and identifying even a select few as such might reinforce the stereotype even unintentionally.
I think the point of the parent comment wasn't about communication per se, but that you can't always be right (even when we like to think we are) and your method of trying to lead others to adopt your wrong conclusions can be hell to deal with.
People often misuse the Socratic method like that. Socrates asked those questions not to guide the students to a certain answer, but because he himself didn't know where the questions would lead. It really was a dialogue and not a way to get students to some particular preconceived answer.
“ We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.”
Are these insights from a confession or somehow related by a confidant? Otherwise, isn’t this conclusion just speculation?
Lack of leadership is frustrating. Indecisiveness wastes time. That said, the job and style of the manager invite different styles of management.
My current boss is very opinionated and direct. And this makes sense for a sole-proprietor who has to make decisive choices and decisions. Also, in accounting consulting (the domain) clear leadership is very productive, which is tied to our business model. Of course you can argue and swing opinion, and soon find more responsibility to your plate. Haha
I’ve lead projects where I was the programmer and others were closer to the content and context. I worked to gently guide them to look for the patterns of their content, so i could determine if there were higher orders of complexity—which I was struggling to understand how to solve.
The picture I’m working to paint is that over my career I’ve seen different models and used some in low stakes business—not rocket science or healthcare. YMMV
A great description! I've worked with someone who abused the Socratic method, and it was infuriating. Especially considering he wasn't a particularly good technologist, his only claim was that he was the manager.
I'm remembering all the days spent with him asking leading questions, where after the first question it was immediately obvious he wanted us to "realize" a seriously inferior solution. It felt very patronizing, and a huge waste of time as I'd immediately start to explain why his end result couldn't work for some glaring reason, but he'd be certain I somehow misunderstood the problem and keep asking questions. Sometimes he was right, and legitimately guided the team to a better solution, but maybe only 1/3rd of the time. Whew.
Thank you for this comment. I feel that I have been operating in the same mode of your former manager and never considered how this could be as harmful as being too direct.
> Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against.
But before you do that, examine the context. Would they care to even find out the truth?
In over half the cases, I submit to you that they do not. Assuming that they value the truth as you do makes much of this submission relevant.
Very often, they want to have a conversation, and there are needs behind it - and usually "discover the truth" is not one of them.[1] Trying to guide them towards the path of truth is, simply put, derailing them. That's not the path they seek.
[1] I mean I'm sure it is for me and you, but we are in the minority.
Nope. But sometimes a good shove down that path is the right thing to do. I've seen a lot fewer posts in an extended family chat about drag shows after posting my own comment about how we were all entertained by Klinger, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bugs Bunny, Monty Python, et.al.
Have they changed their views? Not that anybody has said, but the quiet is nice.
> Trying to guide them towards the path of truth is, simply put, derailing them. That's not the path they seek.
If they actively want to lie to themselves you are not gonna easily stop them. But sometimes you still gotta put up the signposts for them to discover. Because guess who is more likely to walk down the wrong path:
A) someone who is never presented with facts that don't fit into their world image
B) someone who sees these facts constantly and from all different kinds of directions
Influencing someone's world view is a incredibly slow process. So even observing the difference one made is hard. And sometimes you don't do it for them, but yourself, because you have to live with not having done enough if they end up drifting into a cult.
The situation is much more complicated than can be dealt with by a single strategy. Human group discourse is a bit of a hydra where most individual people employ a single strategy but any strategy has its time and place and the group elevates speakers based on the moment. Eg, in an executive setting (military, business) there often isn't time or need to convince everyone. If you have a person who is consistently right, they should be in charge and they probably have a habit of telling other people they are wrong. In an academic setting it gets more extreme, incorrect arguments have to be just flat out demolished. There can't be tolerance for untruths in an academic setting or the academic culture collapses. And yet both cultures will also have extreme diplomats who just refuse to argue and sometimes get given the spotlight when it seems appropriate.
Broadly speaking "Don't tell someone they're wrong." is an effective high-status technique. But it also degenerates badly towards groupthink and tolerance of damaging idiocy if that is the only tactic acceptable to a group of people. There needs to be diversity.
Calling someone wrong, in the extreme sense, could be taken as an insult. Whereas when calling an idea wrong, the scope of negativity is limited to that idea. Even better is to focus only on the right, and minimize the time spent on the wrong.
Not sure how to measure my success here, but having realized this myself I try to be the kind of person I want others to be and actually accept painful information into my head. That doesn’t mean I always agree with the latest opinion I hear, but I don’t close down just because what I’ve heard hurts my ego. It helps that I have friends that are willing to cautiously challenge my beliefs
The change I’ve made is from wanting others to be wrong to wanting myself to be right.
Ehhh… Sure you won’t convince the person you’re talking too, but it’s often worth it because if you really destroy their argument in a way that’s visible to bystanders, you could quietly convince a lot of them (since they can change their minds quietly without any ego cost).
I think when you "really destroy their argument," the average human bystander thinks "... what a jerk."
If you quietly make a few good points, don't push too hard, and ask sincere questions to help you understand the other person's perspectives, the average human will think "that guy is a class act. He had a good point, too."
Convincing anyone other than a hyper-rationalist of almost anything significant is more about emotions than it is about cold, hard facts.
And most humans, for better or for worse, are emphatically not hyper-rationalists.
It depends if your relationship with that other person exists in a vacuum or not.
If that other person is being manipulated by cult like behavior from some other party it can be very difficult to convince them of anything. The other party has no problem with lying then doubling down on the lies forever.
"Destroy their argument" as a tactic is likely to get you in trouble eventually because few people are always right about being right.
The first time one of those bystanders sees you come in hot when you're wrong - or even just when they think you're wrong, since many arguments are fuzzier - you lose a lot of credibility you may never get back.
Depends on the context. On HN, sometimes I’m dead wrong, sometimes I’m spot on. I’d bet that there are people who downvoted me when I was wrong, upvoted me when I was right, and didn’t realize I was the same person. Heck, I’ve probably done that to other people on here too.
The way I put it is, “Don’t tell me I’m wrong. Instead, improve my understanding to the point that you don’t have to.” (If your correction doesn’t translate into an improved general understanding, then you should reconsider whether it’s actually correct.)
Imho that's true in a corporate setting where the primary problem you're solving is organizational dynamics. But when the problem is the actual problem, it's better to just go right for it.
People will learn since you will also be wrong often when you try to state your model of the world. Some implied fact will have turned out to have not actually been implied.
So in a startup where org dynamics are not dominant since the org is small - just go right for the facts that you can both agree on and then find the disagreement fast.
OP article is a bit long winded, though. LLM assisted perhaps?
Sorry if it came across too blunt, I actually mostly agree with parents point but just wanted to highlight the thin/ill-defined line betwee his approach and what I think people mean by gaslighting. This is interesting in my opinion because they seem to be so similar conceptually but are actually connotated in a very positive and negative way respectively.
I think I misinterpreted you! but that's one of the problems with low-information/provocative posts. Your follow-up post here is of course totally fine.
Even though WanderPanda's comment could have been written with more care (and thank you for your work in pointing this out), FWIW I think it's possible to charitably interpret it in interesting ways.
> I can't be the only one who thinks this delivery might be hilarious?
Of course, it is literaly a joke.
But think about the context. In reality people who are informed that they have only days to live are usually gravely ill. They are typically not joking around with their doctors at a cocktail bar, but are in considerable discomfort and pain. They also probably worried about their symptomps, their loved ones, and their financials. It is also probably not the first day they are being ill. Being sick makes one cranky, being deathly ill makes you even more so. The patient maybe haven’t slept well in days, possibly weeks. By the time a doctor is certain enough that a patient is about to die they have run a gammut of test. Very likely many of them quite invasive and unpleasant.
On top of that nobody goes to the doctor expecting to be told that they are about to die. People are optimistic. They think a few more tests, and the doctor will figure out what is wrong with them, they might need an operation, or some new medicine and things will improve.
So you are feeling the worst you ever felt, has been probed and poked for a while, you are in an uncertain situation. This whole disaster is going on since days, perhaps weeks. There is no respit. Maybe you can’t breath, or curled up in fetal position from pain, or your hearth is pumping like it is about to explode. You are scared. Are you still sure you would enjoy that joke?
What is even worse, what if the patient misunderstands? Hears the joke and thinks the doctor is just being funny. Will they feel like the rug was pulled from under them once they realise that, yes the doctor is just funny, but no they are going to die for real.
But there is more. It is not enough for the prognosis to be medicaly correct. The patient has to also believe it. There is so many reason to reject to believe a deadly prognosis. I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.
> I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.
Many physicians (and some other medical staff) seem to enjoy mocking dying (or dead) or seriously ill patients and treating them as the punch line of a joke, and do so routinely - but doing it directly to the patient in question is usually considered bad taste.
It's an ugly practice, and one that can certainly alienate patients and family members when they overhear it, but I've heard it defended as "gallows humor" and a coping mechanism. Compassion, it is argued, is an inappropriate luxury.
Sometimes intentionally disparaging and mocking notes or comments are written in charts as well, much to the dismay of any patients who discover them.
My brother was diagnosed with cancer. Almost died on the third chemo treatment so cannot finish the other five treatments. He would think the banana line is hilarious and greatly appreciate it. His wife? Not so much. It really depends on the person.
I wouldn't find it funny because it isn't clear that what's being communicated is a joke as opposed to some obscure idiom that I don't know. I wouldn't buy green bananas because they taste terrible, so it would seem on the face, not very useful advice.
OK, I do have to share: after receiving news that the surgeon on my cancer treatment team wasn't willing to tackle my liver metastasis, I was talking to my primary oncologist about next steps, if any, and timelines. He told me I should feel free to buy a new pair of shoes, but maybe not a car. (I appreciated his humor - and he helped me find a new surgeon, and that was 6 years ago. And I did end up buying a car when I needed to after. Probably shoes too.)
There’s a hack hidden in this message, one that I’ve built an entire career out of: learn to not take anything personally in a professional context unless you absolutely must. Several times in my career I have heard someone say, “stay away from so-and-so, he’s an asshole.” And every time, literally every time, I have gotten along with them famously. Why? Because I discovered that that I could use the message these individuals couldn’t deliver (because they did not take the advice of Agile Otter linked here) and take it to the right people, with the right tone and the right context, and get shit done. Shit that these people had been trying for months to quarters to get done.
One thing I think has great importance here if you are a tech guy is to speak clearly. If you are speaking to non-tech people/superiors you have to realize that the only way they have to trust you is by judging the way you talk and how what they can then observe measures up to the words you said.
They can not tell if the malleable logarithmic casing of the turbo encabulator is surmounted in an optimal fashion, so the technical facts don't matter a lot.
Become the person who is known to say the truth and who explains things in a way your superiors can actually make the choice.
I have seen collegues argue true points in an adversial manner and in the end their superiors made bad choices. That was only because they tried to essentially force them into the right choice by telling them everything else is stupid — they were right, but how could their superiors have trusted them on that? They gave them no choice only a strong opinion.
Now imagine explaining them the options and and what the pitfalls of all choices are (including the one you prefer!). Then tell them that it is their choice, but which one you would pick if you where in their shoes and why you would do so.
If you are trusted to keep your word, don't let things look good when they are not and don't let things look bad when they are not then people will also trust your judgement when you present them with options.
With non technical people I find explanation by analogy one of the best ways, but it works best when you understand who the person you're trying to explain to is. That typically means you have to listen to, and be willing to learn about that other person.
My experience is the same. In an industry allegedly full of (so-called) assholes, you would think it would be a more obvious strategy.
I'm also wary of complaints that someone isn't being sufficiently tactful in their communication: more than once it has been clear to me that tact was not the problem, but rather that the listener didn't like what they were hearing.
It's the social version of The Robustness Principle/Postel's Law[1]. Be careful about how you communicate (and how your communication can be interpreted), be accepting about how others communicate.
I understand the good will of the person trying to warn you, and in my experience they are sometimes right, but it’s almost uniformly random. My thought is always “no worries, I can handle an asshole if I must”.
This article reeks of weak sauce. Delivering truth in a "sensitive" manner is a sad testament to the frail sensibilities of modern society. If the unvarnished truth bothers you, that says more about your inadequacies than the person speaking it.
Hiding behind convoluted psychological constructs like "hyper-rationality" and "super-reasonability" is a coward's way to avoid hard truths and difficult conversations. The truth doesn't care about your feelings. It just _is_.
That said, while the truth may be insensitive, that doesn't give anyone license to be gratuitously cruel or dismissive. We are still responsible for our words and their impact. There is a difference between speaking an objective truth and using it as a cudgel. The truth can and should be delivered both accurately _and_ helpfully.
Rationality and empathy aren't mutually exclusive. The most effective truth-tellers understand how to leverage both. They speak hard truths but do so with compassion and care for the listener. They aim to educate and enlighten, not bludgeon and belittle.
In the end, it's not about "handling the truth" but about delivering it in a way that inspires growth rather than induces trauma. The truth may be insensitive but we don't have to be. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as the saying goes. Too much sugar rots the teeth but too much bitterness poisons the soul. A balanced approach is needed.
Does "good enough" satisfy the definition of "Leveler" though? How can we objectively predict that "good enough" would still not cause offense?
I personally think not because I do not think "good enough" can be objectively predicted without testing it out on the other person -- "good enough" is subjective.
If "trying" is all that matters, then how hard are we supposed to try? I personally struggle with this as I find it very time consuming and stressful to even know when to stop trying. I have no objective measure to stop because I have incomplete knowledge and am just guessing.
Granted there are obvious and quick things to consider to avoid being "cruel or dismissive," but I had to learn about those things beforehand. Everytime I say something I will learn some more, but I will definitely not learn everything.
The OP also seems to be claiming that collaboration is the greatest ideal to strive for in every context. But what if I have different priorities such as objectivity, truth, and reason?
(I'm not sure I understand you fully, because I don't know where the phrase 'good enough' came from in this context.)
In terms of gauging one's impact on others and calibrating one's expression—that's definitely a long, hard road for a lot of us. But just the insight that being right isn't sufficient already gets you a big chunk of the way.
This comes up with HN moderation because people frequently break the site rules and then justify it by saying "but it was a factual statement". I usually point out that there are infinitely many facts, and infinitely many ways to express a fact. These things don't select themselves—people choose them, very much for non-factual reasons, and different choices can have quite different effects.
Human communication is complicated; more than one dimension is involved, and to get it right requires navigating all of those dimensions—not just the "true vs. false" dimension. The latter is important, of course, but the relational dimension is as well. If you (I don't mean you personally!) blast someone with a truth in a way that they're not capable to hear, you actually give them an incentive to reject the truth even harder, and that hurts everybody.
> But what if I have different priorities such as objectivity, truth, and reason?
I believe you that you care about those, but no one cares only about those. If I were you I would cultivate the skill of tracking my other motives as well. That isn't comfortable, but it eventually produces huge benefits in just the area you're asking about. Best of all, it doesn't require you to give up any of your passion for truth and reason. You just widen the frame to include more information. As you become more aware of that "more information" in yourself, you become more aware of others too, and this gives you more skill (and less stress!) in navigating those waters.
> I believe you that you care about those, but no one cares only about those. If I were you I would cultivate the skill of tracking my other motives as well. That isn't comfortable, but it eventually produces huge benefits in just the area you're asking about. Best of all, it doesn't require you to give up any of your passion for truth and reason. You just widen the frame to include more information. As you become more aware of that "more information" in yourself, you become more aware of others too, and this gives you more skill (and less stress!) in navigating those waters.
This implies, that some people prioritizing objectivity are not aware of their internal motives, and the perception of others, or rather not able to incorporate this effectively in their communication. In other words: it is their fault, made subconsciously, to deliver (bluntly?) a message that their counterpart are "not capable to hear". And it's something they could work on.
But have you considered, that this choice is made consciously? People can absolutely pick truthfulness, and stick to it, as a matter of principle. The delivery has by no means to be cruel, and not stating specific facts can be very tactful. But shying away from uncomfortable truths, and being incapable of hearing them, is first-and-foremost a problem at the receiving end (given they are delivered respectfully).
> first-and-foremost a problem at the receiving end (given they are delivered respectfully)
The problem is that respect has many layers. What the speaker considers respectful may not at all be experienced as respect by the listener.
I think we all need to work on both sides: we need to do a better job of listening to truth instead of rejecting it; and we also need to do a better job of calibrating how we express the truth so that our expression can have good effects rather than harmful ones.
In my experience, people who see themselves as deliverers of objective truth and see other people as deficient in truth-hearing capacity (I'd include myself in this group btw) do tend to have an oversimplified view of this, and yes, do tend to be unconscious of the effects they're producing, which they mostly ascribe to inadequacy in their audience.
Don't get me wrong—I'm not suggesting that anyone reduce their passion for truth. I'm saying it's one axis and there are other axes that are orthogonal to that one—for example the relational axis. Where you're located on those other axes also matters. If you occupy a point of high passion on the objectivity/truth axis and low awareness on the relational axis, it becomes easy to cause both others and oneself a lot of pain. You can think of the truth—especially uncomfortable truth—as a power tool. Wielding it skillfully is important.
The solution is to maintain one's high passion for objectivity and truth while at the same time taking up the work of advancing where one stands on the other axes.
The article seems to be anti-blunt truth. No room for bluntness.
But the comment by 19h ends with "effective truth-tellers...speak hard truths but do so with compassion". So they appear to be pro-blunt but with a sprinkle of sugar. I agree! Stay hard and sweet!
> The truth doesn't care about your feelings. It just _is_.
Yes, but the truth is also that there is a skeleton inside you that is wet at all points in time. The true question is how to wield truth — which truth to speak in which context and how to present it? Do you wield it as a weapon or as a guiding light?
Being "the truthful person" is a very strong position to be in within a world filled with people trying to selling each others down a river. It is also a more difficult position, because you have to have the reality to back your words up and you have to know a lot about what is actually happening (or admit you don't).
Someone speaking truth is not something people are used to, so if you care about the outcome of a conversation you definitly need to wonder how they could even trust your word first. You of course know how truthful you are, but how would the other know?
> In the end, it's not about "handling the truth" but about delivering it in a way that inspires growth rather than induces trauma. The truth may be insensitive but we don't have to be.
The fundamental quesion of communication: do you care about the message you send, do you care about the message that will be received or do you just care about the outcome?
> This article reeks of weak sauce. Delivering truth in a "sensitive" manner is a sad testament to the frail sensibilities of modern society. If the unvarnished truth bothers you, that says more about your inadequacies than the person speaking it.
No, the article is 100% right. First of all, it is not actually talking about people who are factually right. It is talking about people who hide behind supposed rationality while putting strong emotional load into how they are saying it. Second, in the past societies, saying true things or things in general could get you into duel. Southern gentleman could lie ... but gentleman could not accept other people saying he lies.
It is not that truth is insensitive on itself. It is that how you say it is part of the message people getting offended are frequently actually reading you exactly correctly.
It's not an either or, feelings are part of our reality. Ignoring them doesn't help you, neither does ignoring reality.
It seems people forget that it's not a binary scenario, you can absolutely respect someone else's time while also being honest with them.
Which is what the modern world is actually getting at, since historically we've ignored feelings far too much for the sake of submission to the status quo.
That depends on the person. I’ve known people who take any criticism at any time for any reason as an offense. There is no kind way (from their perspective) to convince such a person that their behavior is anything negative. Neutral at worst or it’s, “What do you have against me?”
Edit: To add a bit more context, some of these people are family members and close friends (who are now distant, unfortunately); I very much prefer being kind to such people.
I don’t mean to justify or suggest being unkind as a default. In fact, I’ll take the opportunity to say to the person reading this (yes, you): endeavor to be as kind as possible as often as possible.
Instead, I recognize that some people cannot be kindly (again, from their perspective) criticized. There is no, “That was disrespectful,” which is taken at face value. When this person hears such a phrase being directed at them, they hear someone being unkind to them.
Some people only receive straightforward truth that shouts in their face. Otherwise they find a hundred of excuses to slip through any kind argument. I agree that brutality should not be default - it’s simply statistically non-beneficial to your self. But avoiding it at all costs make you and/or your circle pay these costs eventually.
One of the human types may be called “emotional extremist”. They push borders until someone explodes in their face, and this is the feedback they use. Not reality or arguments. Cold controlled unkindness that presses them against the wall is much better in this case because otherwise someone will be driven crazy by them.
You can be honest and critical with someone and still be coming from a place of kindness. To be kind is not the same as being nice. Being kind is acting for the best interests of another person, which sometimes means being honest if it will help that person improve or gain a better perspective.
In addition, you can keep kindness as a guiding principle and still recognize the people who will take advantage of that kindness, and adjust yourself accordingly. You do not need to live to appease people who are never going to be appeased.
To such people, the classic "I statements" sometimes help.
Instead of saying "that was disrespectful" or "you are being disrespectful", you can say "I feel very disrespected by what you just said and it really hurt." This changes the statement from an accusation to a factual statement about your feelings. The other person can legitimately disagree about whether the statement was fundamentally disrespectful, but the other person cannot reasonably disagree about how you feel. It is then up to the other person to decide how to respond, whether to discount your feelings or adjust their words and behavior to be less disrespectful.
This is the epitome of the sentiment: those interested in the pursuit of “hard truths” are only extrinsically motivated to find fault in others and gleefully “correct” another’s “faulty” self perception. Never intrinsically motivated to better themselves…
Tell me more about how everyone else in the “modern world” is the problem…
Everything in this thread converges on generalizations and platitudes.
I've lived long enough to have learned to present feedback to others diplomatically and inasmuch as possible kindly.
But when it comes to me, dear Lorde, just get to a constructive point quickly and directly. Takes me a while to coach my mentors :) but life is easier for all once they believe me.
The point being, there's all sorts, including those who genuinely want "hard truths" without looking to only correct others.
Why would you bother giving input when you don't care if or how it is received? Stream of consciousness oversharing isn't required for honesty. You don't have to say everything that comes into your head. Practice giving less of a fuck about everyone else and not evaluating them and telling them how great you are (which is what you achieve when you criticize someone for no reason).
If you had cared about the consequences, it might have served everyone better (yourself included) if you’d found a constructive way to discuss concerns you’d had for months, so everyone involved would have a better chance of success. It’s possible you’d done that, but it sounds very much like you just left a situation in a far from ideal state until you chose to categorically write off a whole person who may not have even known there was an issue to address in the first place.
If full test coverage mattered to you so much, I'd expect at least a part of this anecdote to include some discussion of how it would be handled in light of prior concerns about test coverage up to that point. If I’d been in a leadership role in this scenario I’d probably postpone whatever next thing was on my daily agenda to sit down with you and convey that waiting months to raise known problems is exactly what I expect you not to do. I would indicate that it’s actively harmful to the success of whatever everyone is working on and to everyone working on it, and since you seem to appreciate bluntness I’d add that I expect it not to happen again.
> It was a frustrated outburst regarding something about which I had repeated (and more discretely) commented.
Okay, I’ll grant that my first impression might’ve been wrong.
> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
I think maybe there’s something constructive in just separating your assessment of someone’s present skills from your assessment of their person. Have you never found yourself in a position where you didn’t know enough to be proficient and faced a longer and harder climb to meet expectations (your own or external)? How much would it help you improve if you were designated not smart enough, full stop, no path forward?
> Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.
> (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)
I’m sorry but here I have to call bullshit. You have more informed criteria as a dev about testing than a layperson about construction. You probably have enough familiarity with the system under test to do an adequate job testing it even if you’re not well versed in the broader role of dedicated testing. I’m not saying you were in a position to mentor the tester, or that it was your job to do so. But you were definitely in a position to make more constructive recommendations than blurting out that a person is inadequate.
If I might be more constructive myself, it sounds like you might benefit from becoming more familiar with the testing role you’re evaluating individual competency for. If nothing else it’ll make you a better dev. Maybe you and everyone else will be lucky and you’ll be a little more able to help your teammates succeed, and know how to fill in gaps so you can succeed too.
You're literally telling us about an incident where you were not proficient and don't even recognize the skills you would need to develop to have handled it better. The other version of this story is "yea I had this dev, did fine as a developer so long as you just babysat him through every interaction with someone else. Like, one time he just told this other engineering manager that he would have to do the testing on a project because this dev guy didn't know how to test stuff and he didn't think the assigned tester was any good at his job - and he'd just been sitting on this clusterfuck for months! I learned I had to just coax him into actually telling me about anything that wasn't literally written in an IDE. God, talk about exhausting. He didn't need a manager, he needed a social skills teacher."
And you're using this incident as an example of why social skills don't matter....
> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
Of course there is man. Nobody is smart or dumb, they are just curious or incurious. You could have pointed out what was lacking in their knowledge base, pointed to documentation, pointed to inadequacies in the process etc. Just shouting at someone's face that they are good enough was the worst way to tell this truth.
Well, I wasn't there, but I'm more inclined to believe that he wasn't given the support and mentorship he needed to learn than that he was simply "bad" and incapable of growing into the role. Maybe your organization wasn't in a position to provide that and it was a bad match, it happens.
If you decide this dude isn't gunnuh make it and start cutting him off projects rather than getting him more support, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And it's pretty messed up to trash him that way.
If I'm being perfectly frank, this doesn't so much sound like a case where brutal honesty saved a project than a case where you lacked the tact and emotional intelligence to navigate a delicate situation (or perhaps were frazzled by a complex project with deadlines where you felt your colleague wasn't carrying their weight), and so you just took a sledge hammer to it.
That's such a brutal way to treat a colleague, it must have been devastating for their moral. Like, what was your relationship to this person like after that? Did they stay on? Were your team lead and manager really okay with how you handled that?
An emotional response is part of the consequences. That’s the objective reality that everyone else knows. Either you do know and are kidding yourself, or you don’t know and people have worked around you or sidelined you, or maaaaaaybe you’re that one brilliant jerk everyone believes themselves to be.
In this example you’re basically just dodging the question, because talking to someone is different than talking about them to someone else. I can’t tell if you genuinely don’t understand this.
Let's put it that way. I've had the privilege to work with world class experts in three domains. (And no, I wasn't one in any of those domains, I just got really really lucky)
The people who truly knew what they were doing? Usually extremely kind. They don't need to prove their worth by being rude. They were always considerate of feelings, even when they had to tell you that you were really really bad (ask me how i know :)
None of them had to resort to "objective reality" justifications.
So, just based on that experience, I think we can all afford some kindness. It's not going to make us worse off.
I find this a bit perplexing. What value is there in telling people they aren't beautiful or smart? What objective sense of beauty and smartness are you trying to hold them to?
I can understand being bothered by things that are overly saccharine, I just don't understand the value proposition in providing a "counterpoint" or trying to check this in some way.
Well, I'm not interested in labeling you a cunt, but I think I see where the remark is coming from, and I know what it's like to say something on the internet and now there's just a firehouse of criticism with a lot of it not being in great faith, and I can sympathize with that.
I don't know how reflective the examples you gave are of things you actually say to people, but if you think you know that someone is objectively beautiful or smart and that you telling them that is some kind of bandaid to rip off for them - that is something to reflect on, these are textbook examples of socially constructed ideas. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. You're smart or beautiful when your community regards you that way, it's the consensus of tastemakers. It's nature as consensus can make it feel "real" or objective, but these are vague squishy concepts that change across time and across cultures. Even within a culture there's a huge diversity of preferences.
So some communities might prefer technical skills and call people smart when they're great programmers, some might value media criticism, it's not set in stone. Same goes for beauty, but I'd wager there's even less consensus there.
With that in mind, telling someone you don't find them beautiful is just placing a burden on them. It's telling them about how they fail to measure up to some measure in your mind, but the only outcome here is that either don't care or it bums them out. If you don't find them beautiful - that's a property of your eyes, not them, and you're entitled to feel that way but it's something to keep to yourself.
The thing you said in another comment about people being invariable reminded me of a comment I made recently:
> but if you think you know that someone is objectively beautiful or smart and that you telling them that is some kind of bandaid to rip off for them - that is something to reflect on, these are textbook examples of socially constructed ideas.
> Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
Genuine beauty exists is a strong indicator of health and fertility, extremes of human state (such as the anorexic or obese forms) are not only not beautiful but are profoundly unhealthy.
(Intelligence is a social construct, says a member of the only species intelligent enough to hold that notion.)
> Genuine beauty exists is a strong indicator of health and fertility, extremes of human state (such as the anorexic or obese forms) are not only not beautiful but are profoundly unhealthy.
Plenty of people find extremely skinny people attractive - it's one of the reasons anorexia can be a problem, people feel compelled to go without food because they're trying to attain a body shape that isn't achievable while staying healthy in order to conform to a beauty standard. Plenty of people find larger people attractive, and at other times in history this was the dominant attitude.
This is just smuggling your preferences into a frame of objectivity with some spurious comparisons. You're ignoring the is-ought problem [1]. You can tell me a long stream of "is" claims ("this person is obese, this person is anorexic") but you can't actually come to a conclusion about beauty without making or implying an "ought" claim ("you ought to look a certain way"). The rhetorical game here is that, if you leave it implied as if it were obvious and required no justification, then you can pretend that it is an "is" claim instead of an "ought" claim in a trenchcoat. And if you pretend that you've made your argument using only "is" claims we can all agree on, then you can pass it off as objective. But it's mere sophistry, and once you understand how it works, it stops being convincing.
Even if we accepted your framing here, very few people are anorexic or obese or in another extreme state at a given time. So by your logic, surely the vast majority of people are beautiful, and we still don't need to go around policing who gets to feel beautiful.
> (Intelligence is a social construct, says a member of the only species intelligent enough to hold that notion.)
This is does not contradict any claim I made. I'm guessing you've conflated "socal construct" with "fictional," but that's not so. Voting and being elected are both social constructs, that doesn't mean Joe Biden isn't the president of the US. Being smart is real, as a concept, but reasonable people may disagree about the definition or about who is smart, and it's possible for none of them to be wrong.
Plenty of people find extremely skinny people attractive … Plenty of people find larger people attractive … This is just smuggling your preferences into a frame of objectivity with some spurious comparisons
I think you forget that everyone’s stats are on a bell curve, and I may be a very beautiful boy for my mom, but her column is of height 0.02% and columns 20..100% don’t think so. You can’t start going to A if you think you’re at A and you can’t become a version of yourself you want to be if you believe you’re already perfect-ish. Being nice is one thing, another thing is gaslighting someone into unrealistic expectations. Who’s [not] wrong doesn’t matter if you have hard time finding a match or a job.
What I'm telling you is that people are not video game characters, you don't have a charisma stat that determines how attractive you are, and you can't look at someone and score their charisma stat. Toxic positivity is real, giving people unrealistic expectations happens, but the underlying mechanism there is that the world is murky and the future is unknowable and if you tell someone they have control over their destiny you're making a promise you can't keep.
The mechanism is not that everyone has a stat block floating over their head that they can't see and you're lying to them about what that stat block says. It is not a gesture of "being cruel to be kind" to tell someone they aren't smart or beautiful, because you don't actually have that power to see into their destiny.
You can see into statistics, e.g. people who keep their posture are perceived as more confident and attractive. Removing uhm like parasitic words from like your speech also uhm helps in like conversations. You’re trying to boil down this argument to “the future is unknown” and that is true indeed. But there’s a lot of common sense we do know that works for or against you chance-wise.
What I'm telling you is that people are not video game characters
I never said they are. Unless you reject the fact that people have traits, characteristics, etc just tell how you’d like to call them. These concepts weren’t invented in RPGs, they are from natural language.
Except that people who feel good about themselves do much better off in their lives then people who are low on confidence? People who think they are ugly or worthless do worst regardless of what the actual state of situation is.
I’ve known a handful of people I would layman-diagnose as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder and this cannot ring more true. Absolutely, one should always be willing to see oneself in a critical light.
I see so much of that behavior everywhere I look nowadays. It does make me wonder how much of that is a projection but I doubt it’s only a projection.
A phrase I grew up with, and a lesson I’ve had to learn and relearn many times over, is “you can be right until you’re blue in the face […]” The implied part, when it wasn’t explicit, was that being right doesn’t accomplish much if it involves being insufferable.
Objectively, if you’re hoping to persuade your audience by being an absolutely correct jerk, you’ll succeed. But only by eliminating your audience and having no one to persuade but yourself.
You don’t have to coddle people to treat them respectfully. And if you think you do, I invite you to consider that maybe you have more to learn on the topic.
Yes, there's a hell of a lot of objective reality that these just-the-facts hardbitten-realist people are usually either unaware of or deliberately denying. This frequently results in suggestions that would only be useful for a spherical cow.
I really don’t think the problems in this world are caused by people having too much self esteem. Many times, the toxic behaviors we observe that seem to be caused by excessive self esteem are actually caused by insecurity.
Truth (and honesty) can be told with kindness. That's the counterpoint.
Screw this everyone should feel good about everything crap but please be kind. Say the things that need to be said, but remember not everything needs to be said. Being blunt is better than evading.
But kindness is not weakness. If the person you're talking to works well with brutal honesty, have at. You'll probably have a lot of fun. :)
The point is caring about the other person rather than treating them like a punching bag.
That’s not inherent, and it’s not an excuse. If you’re not the sort of person that gets an inherent kick out of ‘the truth’, that doesn’t that there aren’t others that do.
What I find with those people I have encountered is they’ve so focused on the scenario where they’re right that they miss why the situation came about, why things are the way they are.
Sometimes you need to know/ understand that kind of to do the right thing… well.
If your "honesty" never contains any positive message, well maybe it is not just others who are an issue. There is such a thing as a honest compliment. And if it is usually brutal or said in a way designed to elicit negative reaction, same applies.
1. science is the search for being right. It has brought us untold riches and wealth (and weapons). But getting humans to accept the provable facts is really really hard and usually progress is made a funeral at a time.
2. Most people who think they are right are not using scientific rigour but their own instincts and are usually full of hot air - see any middle manager for examples
So yes, you are right - ring right is the most important thing. We should bend ourselves to the correct truth.
however
It's almost impossible that the thing you are arguing about today actually has a right answer that you can prove to even a neutral outsiders standards.
That's what happens in practice, but the idealized version of science (like if you properly apply the scientific method in your backyard with no outside influence) is an iterative process for getting closer to the truth. Or maybe closer to an accurate model of reality, since "truth" is a bit of a weird concept. Of course the end point ("truth") may be unreachable, and often we get stuck in local maxima until someone finds some radical new approach. But it strives to get closer to "truth".
It's... not? It's an iterative process to come to a deeper and more complete understanding of any subject, with the quality of the result being measured by how well predictions based on that understanding correspond to observation.
Science does not concern itself with "truth", it leaves that to the philosophers. Instead, it concerns itself with finding models and the (often vast) set(s) of preconditions that must hold before those models can be said to apply.
In fact, many branches of science know that they can't decide on truth, simply because of fundamental limits in what can be done by science, illustrated by things like Godel's incompleteness theorems, astrological event horizons, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, etc. etc. etc. It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't, and that reality is what science works within.
> It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't.
And that's just for external reality. Science can't penetrate subjective experience for reasons unrelated to incompleteness, event horizons, or uncertainty principles.
I've a strong opinion that folks tend to confuse the objective and subjective by misapplying preferences or experience as "is" in far too many circumstances and too many disagreements are people attempting to dominate the objective with their personal subjective. Language, rather than helping clarify, tends to muddy the waters in these cases too.
As part of a larger project that you touched on, I believe it's important to convey the bounds of science as an epistemological process. There are other epistemological frameworks to draw on that do cover these areas and likely new ones to discover or create. If you couldn't tell, I'm an epistemological pluralist.
In practice, some seek truth and others seek a useful story to tell and, conveniently enough, they can pursue the same scientific goals without having to agree on philosophy.
But this frame you've got where truth exists in some kind of metric space... it sounds like metaphysics to me.
Science (to be more precise: "the natural sciences") is much more about developing useful models, discarding flawed models, and characterizing and quantifying uncertainty.
It's the closest thing you can possibly get to a "formal truth" about the real world.
1. Science absolutely has something to do with consensus, as a practical matter. Because humans are agents of "bounded rationality", and humans do the science. We have to defer to expertise not because it's the "spiritually ideal" thing to do or whatever, but because we have no choice.
2. Science is not about belief in the ignorance of experts-- on the contrary, expertise in science is all about having the skills and the knowledge to characterize and quantify uncertainty.
When somebody announces that a certain kind of particle exists and has certain properties... And they're equipped with all of these arguments, backed by experiment, which will help you come to the same conclusion. That's science, right?
The invitation to perform the experiment, replicate the result, and start using stories about things you can't see (e.g
. electrons) to explain the world around you, that's consensus building, because now you're using the same stories as everyone else who has followed the same process.
For best results we should be skeptical about any notion that those stories won't later be superceded by different ones (i.e. skeptical that they are true), but that's as much a belief in our own ignorance as it is in the belief in anyone else's. So where do the experts come in?
I thought science is actually the search for wrong - the null hypothesis. And science seems to mostly progress by showing your predecessors and colleagues are incorrect. The laws of science are nothing like laws.
It's more about characterizing and quantifying uncertainty.
And the "null hypothesis" focus in introductory stats is hotly contested, both pedagogically and philosophically. It's not wrong per se, but it can be a bit misleading and it's arguably not the most elegant framework.
Is it really though? To me science is more about asking questions and then figuring out how to answer them. Both right and wrong answers tell us something potentially new about the world around us.
While it is the intelligent to recognize that humans are mostly irrational and can't handle truth, and that you will have better results by working around their defensive instincts - it is still people's responsibility to try to think rationally.
The example of the truck sign is a false equivalence. It would be better if the author said the "Careful, dangerous dog" sign or "electric fence" or "radioactive". If you think of humans as equals, you must also recognize that half of the responsibility of communication lies with the listener. You can become an excellent communicator by taking 90% of responsibility, dancing around people's biases and getting around their defense systems. But that shouldn't be expected of you. If you are right, that should be enough if the listener is doing their part of the communication work. If you insist on irrationally touching an electric fence after being warned about it, that is absolutely not the communicator's fault.
Most of these advice focus on how to achieve results instantly.
What we want is to bring everyone one up in the long term, communication is part of it, part of sharing a common experience and common reasoning. Sometimes I am hyper rational because I hope the other and I are into a complex discussion where we'll both learn for the future.
But one needs to recognize when hyper rationality should be dropped out
Being mean is noise: It's something the listener has to cut through to get to the actual message, assuming there is one. The fact the noise is in the form of the listener's emotions doesn't really matter, assuming you want to communicate something to the listener beyond bad feelings.
(And, yes, there are definitely people who only really want to communicate bad feelings. Some people have a firehose of hatred they periodically direct at specific targets. Occasionally, they dress it up in language that sounds superficially reasonable and aligned with mainstream political movements; at that point, we call them "Callout Culture Influencers" and they get weaponized.)
Part of communicating is saying things that can be heard. If someone is so emotional over how you deliver your message they can't process it, you have failed at delivering that message. Wasting your time on making someone else emotional isn't really all that rational, is it?
If it were possible to always deliver unpleasant truths kindly then of course we would prefer it. But in practice we have limited time and limited ability, so in reality the choice will often be between delivering an unpleasant truth bluntly and not delivering it at all.
Whenever you say something that a reasonable recipient would find upsetting, it means you've failed, in the same way that when you have to add an explanatory note to a translation, or a comment to your code, that's a failure. But it's still often the least bad way forward.
As someone that feels they fit the "Super-reasonable" criteria, I personally struggle with this aspect: it takes me a long and stressful amount of time to be able to think of how to respond to people in a "Leveler" manner. In my opinion, it's impossible to do this because there is no objective criteria for how to satisfy it!
One might argue to stop at "good enough," but whose the judge on"good enough"? Again, no objective criteria!
I am strongly awaiting LLMs to at least automate "good enough" for me in communication, so that my perfectionism doesn't have to be directly involved.
> If we have an objective, context-free, helpful truth then why can't it be offered in a way that respects and honors other people?
In my view, this is essentially the key sentence that the entire blog post builds up to and revolves around.
Honestly, I am fearful of this ideology. What I see, is an author who spends a very long time and many words to explain how, sometimes, truths are "too offensive" or "inconvenient", and therefore sometimes need to be "offered" differently. This is frankly just a problematic ideology.
On the other hand, I concede that a "fact" or "truth", in isolation, can also be problemaric. After all, we have all grown tired of the usual race and crime correlation debates that often devolve into "I'm just stating facts and statistics!" drudgery. However, it's my 2 cents that I think that the author has subscribed to and promotes a somewhat problematic censorship ideology.
Delivering "truth and facts" can be a real tough cookie. I personally find that it is the single hardest thing about my line of work, and I like to think I work on some very complex engineering thingamabobs!
If someone really is wrong, provably, and there needs to be proof (data), because, say they are working on building a bridge and are making important engineering decisions, then what is the author saying you do? Not be an asshole and tell the truth but be "nice and kind" about it? Or, are they saying you lie? Wholly or partly?
Truth really isn't the central issue here. The issue is communication. You want the other person to hear and understand what you are trying to convey.
You may need to present your information in a way that doesn't make the person defensive. Or you need to yell because someone is being an idiot and they need to stop immediately.
You want your words to have a specific result. Tailor your words to your audience in a way that won't harm trust or future conversations. Speak to people in a way where they will best listen.
- Some people want to be confrontational and make you stand your ground. Engage with that.
- Others can be touchy and defensive. They'll need a softer approach.
Now, you can't win with everyone. There comes a point when it's the other person's responsibility to listen in good faith. If they aren't going to do that, consider the people around you. How do you want them to see this conversation?
Or just walk away. There are only so many hills worth dying on. :)
Yeah I agree.
My take on it is boils down to the following: Truth cant be context free.
Truth, is only valid within the model that it is defined in. True means something like, one thing being in accordance with some other thing according to some model. Example: 1=1 is true according to the rules of math.
There is always a context/model that describes what it means for something to be true, even if you can't see it. If two people seam to be disagreeing about something being true they are just miscommunicating and they are evaluating the things they think they are talking about in different ways.
With this as a background the original header of the article
> Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth?...
Is nonsense, it is a weak way of blaming once own insufficient communication skills on the receiver.
I have not met anyone who has this attitude who also happens to be a person of good breadth or depth of understanding of ANYTHING. This doesn't mean they don't exist, it's just that I can't begin to imagine what they'd be like because for all I care, they don't seem to exist. They don't have the breadth or depth of understanding of things not for the lack of trying either. It's just that they shut down everything that is not the "truth" to them and hence become uninteresting to anyone who has other ideas.
Sounds like textbook pride. Not like, "My child is my pride and joy!"
But more along the lines of, "You're a prideful person with no room for any outside input that doesn't already align with what you've already latched onto, and in the face of evidence that should shake up your beliefs, you refuse it and insist upon yourself as being more correct than data, evidence, wisdom, etc."
The latter kind of pride is often underlying those who claim to be "telling it like it is," and it's more about them feeling morally or intellectually superior, than actually being right. Their "rightness" is usually contextually dependent at that.
That's just my 2 cents from seeing the pride in myself and in others. And having reality slap us in the face and refuse to bend to our version of it.
Agreed. I had trouble finishing the blog post without wanting to quit from arrogance overload. The “questions” at the end seem like they are for me, but not them, they’re above all that.
If humans weren't tribal, social animals and were instead Vulcan then yes the 'truth' probably would be sufficient.
Any information that challenges our deeply held beliefs can trigger a physical fight or flight adrenaline dump.
Even when gently, thoughtfully delivered.
Actual everyday scams its often impossible convince a person they are being scammed even as they are cashing in their savings to buy itunes giftcards for the IRS.
There's no point in being rude for the sake of being rude, but you can't sugarcoat a turd either. Sometimes you are wrong and it really is that simple, and trying to spare your feelings by hiding the truth will only hurt you in the long run.
There's a reason agreeableness and conscientiousness are different letters in OCEAN.
I'd argue that telling someone the truth does absolve you of responsibility, because if the truth upsets someone, what they're actually upset about is the reality of the universe. Or if it's a truth about them, then the reality about themselves. The truth-teller is just the messenger. Each person is responsible for how they deal with reality, including the parts they don't like.
I get what the article is saying. Given the reality of how people are, when you state the truth it has x effect on others, and the author is arguing that you are responsible for that effect. But I'd argue that when a truth upsets someone, even if you hadn't told it to them, eventually it would've upset them anyway, because the underlying reality that upsets them is still there. You aren't ultimately the cause of their upset.
1. Often "you can't handle the truth" is used for something that is... less than the truth. The speaker wants it to just be the truth, with no argument, but they're ignoring some very relevant issues/context/details/data. When that's pointed out, they say "you can't handle the truth". No, you (the one claiming this is "the truth") can't handle the complexity of reality, and are using this cliche to try to stop conversation that is threatening to make you deal with all the complexity of the real world. We're not actually upset (maybe a little annoyed at this person who won't listen accusing us of being unable to handle the truth). It's more you who are upset, and are either projecting that on us or pretending that it's us.
2. If you tell me the truth and you're a jerk about it, I may get offended by the truth, but I'm almost certain to get offended by you being a jerk. You are absolutely the cause of that part of us getting upset.
I don't think I disagree with point #1. What you're describing is just not stating the truth. I'm sure "you can't handle the truth" is wheeled out in all kinds of situations where the person saying it is the one who's wrong.
I'm refuting the narrower argument that is sometimes made that just because something is true, it doesn't give you the right to say it.
In regards to point #2, I agree that if I deliver the truth and include a side payload of being-a-jerk, certainly, I'd be responsible for that payload. But many people in many cases think that just stating the truth simply, plainly, no extra malice or attacks, just stating a disagreeable truth bluntly, is being a jerk. In those cases I think the upset really is just about the underlying unpleasant truth itself.
OK, 3: You're telling the truth, with no jerkiness.
3a: Some truths you have to earn the right to tell. They're being a bad spouse? Nothing useful is going to come from a random stranger pointing that out, even if they're right. That kind of truth takes a close friend, telling them in the right situation, with the right amount of firmness and the right amount of gentleness. You have to build the bridge of the relationship before you can take that kind of freight over it.
3b: You're telling the truth, but they're a snowflake, and they're melting. That is totally not on you, but once you find that out about them, you have to realize that there is nothing you can usefully do. (At least, I don't know of any way where you can get them to actually listen, rather than just blowing it off because it offends them.)
No. They can also be upset because you are bringing up negative things that make them sad/annoyed to think about, to which there is absolutely no benefit in thinking about.
Like spending a wedding reception saying to everyone "there are people starving to death right now". Is that true? Yes. Are people upset by that knowledge? Yes. Are they, completely separately, pissed off at you for being an asshole that decided everyone should think about starving people during the wedding reception? Yes, quite reasonably.
That feels like a bit of an edge case. I mean, I take your point that you can definitely have no social skills and run around interrupting people's conversations and going "hey, did you know that animals are tortured every day?" and that would be you being a jerk. But I'm not talking about that.
Am I crazy? I feel like what I'm describing is a near universal phenomenon and everyone knows what I'm referring to/has experienced this. I'm talking about how in general, people just don't like people who are "right all the time." People don't like criticism delivered bluntly even when it's correct, relevant and actionable. People don't want to hear things with implications that go against their moral values, or suggest that something they spent lots of time on was wasted, or reflect badly on themselves. There's that famous quote about how people don't want to hear things when their paycheck depends on them not hearing it. They don't like hearing those things even when they are true and directly related to them. I don't like hearing those things. I'm talking about those cases.
You’re looking for straightforward “shooting the messenger”. While it’s true that it can be straightforward deflection of negative feelings about the scenario to the person who made them aware of it, I think you’re still discounting that a lot of the time, the majority IMO, people shoot the messenger so that they stop getting messages. Stop telling me your colleague is stealing paperclips so I can pretend I don’t know. Stop reminding me I have homework to do because I’m trying to forget it.
It's not just about upsetting the other person, it's more about the end goal. If the end goal is to express superior knowledge, do strike down your hammer of truth.
But if the end goal is to enlighten the people around you, and let them enlighten you, then it matters how you package your truth. Sadly it's seems to be human nature that if you tell someone that their perspective of the universe is wrong and don't give them any leeway, there's a high chance of them just dismissing it because it would hurt them.
Now if you are more diplomatic with your self devised absolute thruths, you might find that the people on the receiving end are more willing to accept them.
This concept seems to be fully absent from politics these days.
> When people claim that they are just telling the truth and can't be blamed, it is likewise nonsense. We are always responsible for the words we speak and the actions we take. We're not let off the hook just because it's true.
I found this piece riddled with false assumptions.
>When people are acting hyper-rationally, they often expect to be respected and appreciated for having a superior argument, a more data-backed answer, a provable theory.
This makes no sense. If you were truly hyper-rational, you would understand that the vast majority of people are not hyper-rational (or I would argue, rational at all). Thus you would not expect to be respected and/or appreciated for having a superior argument, a more data-backed answer or a provable theory. Most people aren't interested in hearing "the truth", they are interested in hearing things that enforce their preferred narratives.
>"If the truth bothers you," one may say, "then you are overreacting or overly sensitive."
One may say that, and it might be true, but you would not make this assumption if you were hyper-rational, as there are many other possibilities aside from overreaction and oversensitivity. There is stupidity, mood disorder, insanity, cognitive dissonance and mental disfunction of all kinds that explain being bothered by rational, true statements.
>If we have an objective, context-free, helpful truth then why can't it be offered in a way that respects and honors other people?
Because many objective, context-free truths are not "helpful" and certainly cannot be told without perceived disrespect and dishonor by people whose chosen narratives conflict with objective reality. For example, there are many objective, context-free truths that conflict directly with certain religious beliefs and dogmas. For someone who is devoutly religious, and holds their religious beliefs as absolutely true and unassailable, there is very often no way to offer any bit of conflicting objective reality that "respects and honors" them. The same goes for the "secular religion" common among many today (culture and politics). Devout believers are not interested in objective reality that doesn't jive with their preferred narratives. As someone who is hyper-rational, all you can do when it comes to these people is either utter your objective, context-free truth without regard to how offended they will get, or just shake your head and move on (the latter is often the better strategy).
For starters a lot of confusion arises when people don't distinguish between truths and facts, the article itself is guilty of this. Facts are empirical, usually simple, self-revealing observations about the world. Truths are subjective and always hold an element of belief. You can believe something to be true, you can't be believe something to be a fact. Truths are underpinned by a subjective stance towards an object, facts are not. There can be competing truths, there can't be competing facts. When it comes to facts, rationality or evidence matter a lot, when it comes to truths a lot of different values start to be important.
Take the example from the article
"It reminds me of the bumper stickers on trucks saying that vehicles must stay back at least 200 feet because the driver is not responsible for damage done to other vehicles by falling rocks. It's nonsense of course. The sign on the truck does not let the company off the hook."
Is it "of course" nonsense? How far one's responsibility on the road extends isn't a factual question. Sure, there's more or less defensible positions, but you're not discussing the weight, the speed, or the position of the truck, you're discussing what social behavior is tolerable or not, who is culpable in case of an accident.
Trying to resolve discussions about the truth or falsehood of beliefs as if they were questions of fact is very common today, because the latter is much easier, but it fundamentally just causes a lot of confusion.
I sometimes participate intentionally in social contexts where truthseeking is a top priority. I've noticed that while you occasionally get some overlap with the kind of people who like trying to win arguments in normal contexts by insisting that they are "objective", for the most part these people tend to be pretty bad at actual truthseeking too. Most of the time, they've simply arrived at a different dance to do to try to give themselves authority and status, a dance which works on a different subset of other humans who, like them, have leeway to decide what matters in context, and don't have enough information to arrive at a definitive "objective truth" regardless.
tl;dr The behavior described is more often just another form of puerile bullying than an honest and effective dedication to truthseeking
Yeah, it's fascinating how often I observe people saying "I'm just telling it like it is", but the range of judgements and subjectivity they are demonstrating is just blatant. Like.. nah, you're not seeking an objective truth, you're deciding which facets of "truth" you want to focus on and propagate/strengthen.
Engineers (mechanical, civil, etc.) could easily be arrogant being used to deal with perception or opinion independent data. What they say is not personal opinion or point of view, things are the way the things are, arguing with those has no use.
Yet it is - apart from perception from people being used to bend meaning with will hitting hard wall on engineers - just a side effect sneaking into other than natural science topics. Because context is important, if deling with people not things the set of objective facts are much much smaller, things become fluid and elusive. Pretty hard to get a graps at individual or small groups level systematically. Those engineers forming undeniable stand on human matters too misusing their abilities in areas unfit.
But even when hyperrealistic reasoning is used in its place on objective truth that is independent from individuals, on matters remaining so if people are taken out of the picture, the reality bending people will still consider them arrogant as not open to wrap the universe around will and personality. Branding them insensitive or such in contexts sensitivity and multitude of pespectives has no place.
The world and other people would pretty well exists and live on without the individual and this seems to be forgotten in today's modern societies where those unabale adapt to the world, unable controlling the one thing fully available for them to control and influece: themselves, try to influence and control everyone else, the feel and need of the self is unhealthily sacred in too many situations grinding away the group by the individualistic selfs.
Dealing with humans sensitivity is important as well as knowing our natural and human context and being able to process it, handle it. Handling the truth.
Invariably, these people are full of "rational" and "honest" criticism ... but only outbound. They don't take the exact same kind of inbound criticism nearly as well themselves. Nor do they ever offer any honest praise, encouragement, or support. These asymmetries give the game away. It's just an excuse, put forward when convenient and taken back when it's not. A truly honest person would not be so selective about which truths to tell, or to hear.
What a load of nonsense. Not only that, this is dangerous and frequently weaponized.
People routinely use the idea something said was hurtful and that's way more important than the merits of what was said. This immediately changes the conversation. It's the basis of cry-bullying, for example.
Fragility, usually imagined but sometimes real, is so often weaponized to deflect from the merits.
I think this principal has great application to political discourse, and I struggle everyday to apply it.
In terms of politics, the fundamental question can be reframed to ask, "are you trying to change someone's mind or are you trying to argue and feel self-superior".
Almost all the time the “truth” is less important than the values and feelings of people involved. Humans are emotional beings first and foremost. I have met a few “super rational” people in my life and they were clearly driven by strong emotions. Emotions they were blind to or refused to acknowledge. They also typically didn’t understand that all rational value judgement is relative to and built on top of a foundation of axiomatic values that are different for different individuals. So your “rational” truth might not be my “rational” truth.
This shouldn't need to be said, but probably does:
It's important not to transform the advice for speakers to speak the truth in love, into advice for listeners that they can ignore any truth not spoken in love. Any excuse for ignoring truth reinforces the post-truth world that so many are falling into. Ignoring the truth for any reason is suicide.
So yes, when speaking the truth, you are responsible for doing what you can to help the listener understand. If not, the rest of us are free to point out both that you are handling the truth poorly, and that the listener is a fool for not handling it anyway.
It turns out the 'hyper-rationality' concept the author describes as having excessive faith in 'rational truth' has another meaning in game theory in the 'rational actor context', which oddly enough sort of inverts the meaning:
> "The assumption of rational behavior is based on the fact that each player seeks the maximum benefit, but in assumption of hyper-rational behavior, each player thinks about profit or loss of other actors in addition to his personal profit or loss and then will choose an action, which is desirable to him. One of the most important advantages of this concept emphasizes the importance of the outcomes of other actors in the game."
Note this can have different effects depending on circumstances - e.g. one person could damage another's outcome by not being truthful with them about their chances of success with a particular strategy, which is comparable to the malicious giver of bad advice (if not as actively harmful). For some people in some situations, the goal is not so much that they win as that some other person loses (e.g. the academic feud scenario).
Another scenario would be to withhold truthful opinions that might benefit another out of fear of alienating them, particularly if that person has a history of retaliating against anyone who disagrees with them. This kind of hyper-rational thinking is 'well, if I criticize this, it might help the overall project but it would hurt me personally' (e.g. the corporate team player).
In the ideal situation, this kind of hyper-rationality leads to win-win outcomes, if one can find a way to play a game that benefits both oneself and others. Playing with that goal in mind is of course something of an ethical choice.
Maybe the behavior the author is describing could better be called 'rational fundamentalism'? It's not very healthy, being so sure that you've got the right answer, and also shuts down the playful spirit of inquiry that scientific progress has always relied upon.
In teaching, teaching the wrong thing is not merely suboptimal but actively evil. So therefore while it is best to be both right and helpful, if one must give way, then helpfulness must give way. Otherwise you are just being successful at being evil.
In comforting someone in a time of crisis, say, then obviously truth can sometimes give way (but that's not always the solution!). But one can try to organize one's life so that opportunities for teaching (say) come far more often, and then the super-rational approach can be beneficial.
This got me thinking about teaching as well. But I actually think it is a good counter-example to the idea that the truth is somehow sufficient.
The truth is obviously necessary, but not sufficient. When lecturing, sure a collection of facts is nice, but most people don’t do well with a bunch of facts. Our brains can only handle a couple things at a time. If the facts aren’t combined into a single cohesive narrative that can be considered “a thing,” they are much harder to keep hold of. And building a narrative is a much a thing of subjective tastes, as objective truth.
When talking to students one-on-one, if they make a wrong statement, it is usually not enough to just tell them the alternative correct thing. A wrong statement is a symptom. It is the start of a journey. You may have to travel with them down some fairly winding paths, to get to the nexus of misunderstanding.
this is conflating a lot of concepts. there's nothing wrong with being rational with regard to the development of your own beliefs, and there's nothing wrong with using rationality to determine the best way to achieve your goals. when considering whether to be blunt with someone, you should consider your goals. if telling them the bare truth is going to offend them, and that's not in your interest, it's not rational to do so. being rational doesn't mean acting like a truth-telling robot.
All fair -- except the context is there's sort of a self-proclaimed "rationalist" community which is known for eschewing social norms to the point of seemingly deliberately over-considering controversial ideas as a reaction (e.g. certain racial topics, pandemic, etc). I think those people are the type we're talking about.
A truly rational person would potentially never call themselves "rational" because they would know most people find it an alienating term and kinda an unfair self-assessment.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and mansplaining is a concept because what works for X person may not work for Y person no matter how hard they try. Two people doing the exact same thing can get different results because they are different people.
Science is the art of trying to suss out what is reliably true in physical reality and a lot of things are more art than science because context weighs so heavily on the detail of what's real or true or practical.
If you are working in a company with other people and have little say in matters, it is the reasonable choice to navigate people's emotions. Is it unfortunate? Maybe. But it is what it is, and the company well being is not your responsibility. Of course, your stance should change if things were to change and your position is different.
It seems to me that the super-reasonable choice is always the stand to take.
You can build a toxic environment out of kindness too. You do need to coach and mentor and guide people towards the truth (regardless of if you even have it).
I also just don't have time to make everyone's ignorance my problem. I wish I did, but I don't, I have a hard enough time dealing with my own ignorance. Sometimes all I can do is point out the problem.
Whenever I read these articles about being kinder in the truth, which I think people can be, I think there needs to be a follow up about how you should also be more accepting of the truth. One side should work to be less offensive and the other side to be less offended. It seems like the articles are always for one side and I’m not sure why that is.
The little diagram with five figures might have been better with 2^3 = 8 figures. One of these would be those that neglect truth for the sake of feelings, self and other. When social context is emphasized this is of course common behavior, a la the emperor’s new clothing.
It’s interesting that the three cases left out all involve neglecting truth.
Hyperrationality is like a videogame. It's only fun when you get totally immersed, forget it's a game and call it "reality".
But if you stay aware of the thousand arbitrary interpretations and devices supporting the facade, then the game isn't nearly as impressive or compelling. Then it's just a toy for kids.
Truth should be sufficient, but I agree we should also develop some tact whenever we are dealing with people who are not receptive to a more direct conversation. For me, as long as I don't feel that the person is trying to hurt me by "telling the truth", then I am pretty ok with that.
Honestly, people do not entertain useful fictions anymore. It's increasingly difficult to posit an idea without tripping over social landmines. Outside of speciality areas anyway.
Communicating meaning has never been harder, in normal life.
> Sometimes we put too much emphasis on being right and forget to be helpful
Usually people who say things like this are actually putting more emphasis on being "helpful" (or rather, to avoid giving offense) and forgetting to be right.
on occasion i give up trying to impose truth and instead give them enough rope to hang themselves with. encourage them instead. but it feels to me really bad form to say “i told u so” after shit hits the fan..so i avoid doing that.
But noticing that something else is self-contradictory gibberish is not.
Sometimes you can pull meaningful information out of a model, argument, or measurement, but sometimes there's nothing there. Then you have to decide whether and how you can get better results by calling it out or walking away and doing something else. Sometimes people learn from mistakes and/or ask for help and sometimes they don't.
“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together”
If someone says something that is objectively not true, I genuinely want to know why? So asking questions led to know that person more. Which gives bigger perspective about way of thinking that person.
TLDR ask questions a person that you don't agree with.
Smart people attribute their success to their intellectual superior. When in reality of them have led a cuddled life, and their success is based on their social status, and not intellect. They act without questioning, defer to authority, and are rewarded for it by Society.
Think about how many Scientific truths are based on the reliability of carbon dating. What if it turns out its wrong.
How quickly would a scientist lose social status if they went around questioning evolution, the vaccine, or any myriad of socially accepted Truths.
I read some Krisnarmurti. We can put a thousand kinds of labels -truthfull ?- on it.
And he is known as a person who constantly talks about seeking the truth.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti)
One of the features that I pay attention to in his speeches is that he always puts reality in a high, inaccessible, -perhaps-mystical place, interacting with people like sitting together in parks and public places instead of communicating with people through publishing articles. And usually starting with "Let's think together" when putting forward an argument. Knowing something, authority - you can examine it if you're curious, he rejected all serious religious titles given to him and abolished the community that brought him to that position-,
I come across many books "How to argue everyone", "How to win every argument". No, reality is not something that can be grasped only by the mind and reinforced with thoughts and arguments, life is a common field of cognition,
develops through asking questions and getting to know oneself.
As he mentioned a lot, all "isms" are like a kind of mental prison. (I'll try to find individual citations if desired). I found rationalism beautiful, despite the ism at the end,
Although I didn't do much research on it, it caught my interest.
On the other hand, the information I don't remember from where I know is: "Reality is something pure and clear as it is, rather than something that changes with arguments as a result of judgment."
Mental arguments under reality and the prevailing assumptions in them only determine the perception of reality in the viewing community.
I don't want to talk about absolute reality anyway, but I use it in a sentence. After that, saying something like "You can't accept the truth" to someone is like an unfortunate, ignorant attack on each side's own reality. The party that sees himself as the one who knows and tells the truth - there are all kinds of it, the one who dictates, the one who legislates, the one who makes religion - actually does not take the humble position required by science.
may have distanced himself, put himself in a position he would not want. For the other side, the situation is already pathetic. In my own serious discussions, I note that let's not call it reality, please, but a common consensus area. The other party may break away from the common consensus and find itself in an unpleasant place as alienated and excluded.
After that, it would be like living in a dungeon that creates isms, can make people do very bad things when necessary, and at least does not see the sun - real -. I think accepting the truth may be the way to go, with an open desire, a desire for heart, mind, self-knowledge, and actually accepting the truth as one whole.
In my inner reality, in the mental world, what is called reality is consensus. And reality is experienced in a way that is modest, more or less scientific, by living it, being humble, rather than living in life without a serious will to exist and being presented to outsiders saying this is the truth. It's just experienced, knowing is a mental thing, and reality is beyond mere knowledge - yes, I seem to put the concept on a higher ground - it's a single, changeable whole, reinforced by life. In my experience, the situation is often painful because, let alone thinking together, consensus spaces - forums, political consensus spaces, academies, I don't even want to include religions - are like sunless, depressing places, even under the influence of the pathetic human ego.
We can think about all these things together, I don't expect anyone to agree with me, to approve me with their mind, to be told that you are right - this is ego food, it can get me out of my way - but if you want, let's think about this together.
Wouldn't this world we have created be a place to live if we did not have a common area of consensus and conditioning, if we had a constant fear, punishment and reward mechanism, and these methods are no longer obsolete?
Imagine if I'm presenting all I've said by saying this is the truth,
Will this belong to me, I will write my name under it, if I convince you with scientific evidence, mind games, interesting discussion methods,
Ooh we will say, have we reached the truth, will I start to get fat in a position like a great sage and now be more confident - if it is possible to stay - will I start to lead people and will our ground be reality. I don't know, let's think together if you want, but I think at best we would be like a helpless, sunless forest. Without symbiosis - the forest - pure, direct communication, we can turn to humans who worship the gods of their own creation. I think that happiness, peace, joy, compassion, meaning meaning cannot exist in the realm of pure thought and logic.
I would alter your sentence -where do you think reality comes from - to
"Lets think where reality comes from."
Krish, was an interaction person -I sense, think-
Their arguments, always, was invitations.
Not statements -and personal (I, you, ..) things..-
They never personalized, project themself as a person.
So we could easily interact with our question,
from a one single meaning.
Reality perceived from a one single meaning-s-, by tribes, nations, people..
And yes, since you're the invitee, you could easily navigate your spark somewhere, by either with my spark or yours, or lets say ours ( since we interacted, communicate, it belongs us from now on )
This started to an interaction.
So, two things, perception and society.
And what we started to think is, they wouldn't start directly from reality.
Concepts like realty, god, .. are too big to start with.
I think they meant "grow a big rubbery one," which is referring to the tumescence of the corpus spongiosum of a penis. Though I believe the comment to be facetious, and no sexual arousal was actually, or has actually been, achieved due to content of their original claim.
Bill Gates was known to be blunt with his feedback. He still is. But I can see his justification for it. He is knowledgeable and MSFT is a huge company, so directness is needed.
I am not Bill Gates. I am not Steve Jobs. I am not Wozniak. I am mercifully not Larry Ellison. I do not have [Google,Amazon,Facebook]'s problems. I do not have Google's customer base. I do not have Google's money. I have pretty normal problems, which require pretty normal to slightly extraordinary solutions. Anything these people are willing to discuss in public is an old solution to old problems. When I do have their problems, better solutions will likely exist, in the literature if not in reality.
I'm not a hero, or a prophet to save the world.
I'm just a child who - delusion, illusion, assumption, pick a word for me my master - believe "man can change the course of history"
Oh sorry master, I sense you said - this is God's work, you are a small, poor individual, do not be a hero -. Accept the truth you say.
But master, what if I'm a potential of progress, or a spark of a delusion.
Employees with too much self esteem are more expensive. 1990's Microsoft was run like Neverland, with all the cruel behaviors of a bunch of middle school children with no adult supervision. Whether he knew it or not, feeding their egos in a not-quite healthy way makes people easier to control for a useful period of time. We are the greatest, only we don't quite believe that's true so we have to be very, very loud about it.
> It reminds me of the bumper stickers on trucks saying that vehicles must stay back at least 200 feet because the driver is not responsible for damage done to other vehicles by falling rocks. It's nonsense of course.
No, it isn't nonsense. Neither are the signs at a mechanic's shop telling you they're not responsible for lost or damaged items. What all these signs have in common is that they signify dangerous work.
A dump truck can't be unloaded without everything else out of the way, a car on a lift should be treated with caution, and of course a rational statement of fact cannot be sugarcoated or censored without affecting its truthfulness.
Particularly with software, it can absolutely be dangerous to not be as clear as possible what is occurring. Computers are machinery too and humans should respect that.
>No, it isn't nonsense. Neither are the signs at a mechanic's shop telling you they're not responsible for lost or damaged items.
I'm sure that included in the waiver you sign at the mechanics shop, its included that they are not responsible for lost or damaged items. The extra sign is just to let you know.
The sign on the back of the truck is nonsense because it has no basis in reality. You can't just slap a sticker on your truck and say 'laws don't apply to me'
You can't sign certain rights away. If you sign a contract saying the mechanic isn't responsible for broken or missing stuff and they use that as an excuse to steal, drive recklessly with the door open, not take their gloves off before smearing oil on the upholstery, ..., they can and will be held liable if there's a modicum of evidence.
To focus only on the liability instead of the danger is missing the point. This article does a lot of that.
If the sign seems obtuse it's because it addresses the danger by pointing out the liability. Yes it can seem condescending, but wouldn't you rather everyone notice the sign? The problem still lies squarely with those who do not heed warnings, not the sign.
The law (at least in my state) holds the truck driver responsible for what is called an unsecured load. Meaning if it is unable to be driven without stuff flying off it, it shouldn't be on the road. The signs have no legal significance.
Do I drive closely to dump trucks, though? Nope, I keep my distance. They might be responsible for the damage, but I don't want to deal with a broken windshield in the first place.
I wield the truth proudly, because it cut my hands when i picked it up, it slices them when i wield it and it hurts even more when i knight you with it. I actively search out discomfort, i embrace knowledge about my retardation and i attempt to work out solutions for them. I detest the hive, the cuddling together in falsehood and illusions, the disasters it has spawned time and time again, the justifications for evil it was, over and over.
I rather suffer in misery alone for the rest of my life, then to be happy with you together in some delusion.
Those that shirked the burden, have mined the path to the future and parked there misery in addition to my own upon my shoulders. And of course, if we want to redistribute what you parked on the rational as your beast of burden to carry, that is an outrage. It makes sense in a insane way. But then why stay in our society. Why not walk, to those crashing, looping societies that embrace your madness full time. Why eat the fruit we grow, but condemn the gardener?
Oh, now you will come with it all, with majority, loudness, the resilience of the true insane. And then you will walk of the cliff, once every generation. Go on then. I will still be here.
This comment sounds like copy-pasta so not sure if it's being posted in disagreement or in satire.
However if it is genuine, as someone who used to think this way I realize now it is falling for the same black and white worldview that you accuse the "insane" others of following.
Is your goal to convince others of the truth, or to simply feel smug about convincing yourself you know the truth? You are enjoying the idea of uncomfortable truths more than the actual discomfort of having to use empathy and mutual context to introduce someone else to a new or uncomfortable view.
Also you wouldn't actually like a world in which everyone was hyper-rational and had no illusions or falsehoods. It would be quite dull.
> Is your goal to convince others of the truth, or to simply feel smug about convincing yourself you know the truth?
My experience has been that for most people who know the truth and state it bluntly, they don't care about either. They don't want to convince and they don't want to feel smug. They just want the truth to be known so they can wipe their hands and conscience and just move on.
The world is not about status or victory for everyone, especially not these pesky people who always seem to be right about stuff! When you know better, there's nothing to prove or gain by bothering with any of that. Being right keeps things moving along. Smart people don't argue nor have to fight for what they have. They just effortlessly float through this world being right and avoiding ignorant people who love to throw tantrums; underappreciated.
I think we may be talking about different goals here. There is no effect in stating a "truth" that is not received and you don't enjoy stating. If they want the truth to be known, they need to make more effort for it to be communicated, not just heard or read. If there isn't even that desire, and it is purely for the sake of a pattern of sound passing through the air, what should be appreciated about that?
I am not talking about status or victory alone, I am also talking about moving things along and being effective in collaborative or social situations. As someone who used to believe (and still does to varying degrees) that they were one of those smart people floating through the world untouched, I had to learn the hard way why I was under-appreciated. Also considering how often my smart self has been wrong about things that at the time I was 100% certain I was right of, the floating through the world being right part begins to fall apart given enough time.
There is a space between throwing tantrums and being a self-absorbed dick, and that gray area is far more effective, moves things along faster, floats through the world being right better, and is far more appreciated than what the original comment and you are describing.
Don't tell someone they're wrong. You'll never convince them, even when you're right. It's not worth the ink (or the blood pressure).
Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).
Studies have shown that trying to convince people they're wrong with facts and/or truths will instead cement them in their beliefs harder than if you did nothing.
This was a hard learned lesson for me, and I still suck at it sometimes. Because, let's face it, arguing is a time honored form of entertainment.