Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
And three interpretations to consider:
0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.
2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?
I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.
My style of online participation has been shaped by 2 ideas:
1. I rarely fully understand my own positions on minutia
2. Writing is rewriting.
I write forum posts to solidify my understanding of my own interests, beliefs, and reasoning. I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter. I can reference them and have to other people who ask my opinion. Sometimes I do respond back to replies immediately, and sometimes I revisit days later, after I've had time to put it in my day-to-day context. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Posting stopped being about convincing someone else maybe 20 years ago (around age 30). I do post to look back and understand myself. To others, I'm sure this sounds like existential navel-gazing and self-centered blathering, but I don't mind.
I do the same, except mostly I delete the responses. The writing was important to me, but the reading is rarely important to someone else. It would be wasting their time.
I would guess I post about 40% of the comments I write.
It's so bizarre to me that this works and I can't say I believed it until I tried. I shouldn't be surprised that it's so easy to trick our brains.
I assume the phenomenon where I write 90% of an email, save it as a draft to finish later, never remember to finish it, get asked about it and have irrefutable certainty I sent it, then finally discover it as an unfinished draft is a facet of the same trickery. Stupid brain... Grrr.
I think one of the drivers of arguments is we are trying to understand something, and the argument is subconsciously a way to not just bash their ideas, but test the strength of our own.
In the effort to create a written response we:
1. Find it takes more effort than we imagined to nail down our views, and describe them well.
2. Often have to adapt our own ideas more than we expected to make a clear description possible. Achieving a "better understanding of ourselves" is almost always a reassuring euphemism for "fixing our own surprisingly under-developed/under-coherent ideas".
3. This puts in a more humble mood.
4. Realize the issue is more nuanced than we imagine, and better assess the depth of conversation that even the most constructive engagement would require.
5. Realize we don't have energy left for that.
6. Feel good about having put our ideas to the test and "understanding them better". So a good place to stop.
The practical need to argue (test our ideas in battle) was real, we just didn't need the other person to have the argument. Their imagined pushback forced us to improve our thinking, probably more than we acknowledge.
When preparing for a race, the best thing anyone can do is tell you your opponent is achieving better times than they are. You will achieve more gains by competing with an imaginary competitor, who always sees all your weaknesses, than a real one who likely would not.
Journaling sounded stupid to me, until I tried it; and then the whole “do you really think that?”, “is that true?”, “what about this?” and “why are you lying to a sheet of paper?” started happening and I was like, “oh I get it.”
Come to think of it, that’s a major reason why fully agentic coding doesn’t resonate with me and/or feels like I’m not growing or learning. I’m short-circuiting the “journaling” step where I mentally attack my own thoughts and assumptions.
You should try writing a design doc with the AI before you have it write the code. It will make random extrapolations from your first prompt, some good and some bad. Then you get a chance to argue back and forth with yourself with the robot as a helper.
I wrote an email to my titanically incompetent leasing office mostly to vent emotions, then sent it anyway so I could receive proof that they had read it in writing for any future issues. It was quite cathartic.
Every time they asked this, it always put me into a deep thinking mode. In some cases it did trigger defensive mindsets, but I think having to actually engage by taking a step back and think deeply is for the best if you want to have any hope of changing your mind on something.
In some cases it's worth arguing even if you know you can't win in order to provide pushback against really dumb ideas. This doesn't happen nearly enough in standardisation work, where a small number of professional meeting-goers can railroad through unbelievably bad, broken standards because no-one pushes back.
Anyone who's ever worked on a standards body will be getting flashbacks at this point.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
> this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
And what of people that were convinced by rational argument that a God must exist? To some (Aristotle, Plotinus, Leibniz, etc) it is irrational to deny such existence:
Do people really lose their religion because of logic and reason? I’ve never seen this. There is usually some deeper story. If someone asks me why I don’t believe, despite being raised in the church, I’ll simply say it didn’t make sense and babble on about reason and logic if they push. This is just a shield to avoid sharing the truth with people I don’t trust on a very deep level.
Whenever I've met people who claim to have "reasoned" their way out of religion it has always been extremely shallow teenage rebellion, and always driven by feelings.
> every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
Do you know any specific examples of this? All examples I know are like people collected some experiences, they needed some mental map for it, and they've built one that doesn't involve religion. In the process of building they really listened to rational arguments, but rational arguments were not the reason for the change, they were the means.
The author of the article complain that people do not listen to their arguments, but if we take a closer look, and look for bigger things, not things like the best way to write bubblesort, people are not ready to change their views while in an argument. They could listen for arguments, but they wouldn't change their position. It would be stupid to change the position in a heat of an argument. It may be stupid to change the position as a result of an argument. People needs time and may be a lot of conversations to look at things from different angles, to think it through. And after that it is very hard to pinpoint what was the reason of the loss of the religion. People talk with other, get new ideas, and they live their lives applying these ideas to the reality. Sometimes it leads to changes in their worldview.
No because I believe you CAN reason a person out of a position they reasoned themselves into, but if they hold a position that they DIDN'T reason themselves into, THEY have to do the reasoning.
I had a little chat recently with a glaciologist and he told me about a student who had come from a very religious family. The guy had to learn all about the formation of Earth, etc, and decided to give up geology because it would put him at odds with his family and friends and he decided that they were more important.
So, you could say he rationally decided to keep his irrational beliefs.
Isn't that just point #2 from above? He rationally decided that his friends and family, and the values he is a part of, are more important to him, then being in geology, and some deep truth that it would supposed show him. Maybe he just didn't care enough about _this_ truth, compared to being part of the world he is in.
People aren't convinced by rational arguments. Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence, and someone with faith will not become an atheist because someone debunks the proof.
The rational arguments form a structure that beliefs can hang on, but the core process of changing ones mind is not rational. Like many people, I have changed my thinking on many topics over the course of my life, and arguments that I used to find convincing I now consider to be filled with holes, and arguments I used to think were paper-thin now seem stronger than steel. You can find a rational argument for most beliefs, and you can tear down a rational argument for most beliefs.
Reason just isn't how we form our beliefs at all, it's how we convince ourselves that the things we believe are true.
> Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence
I'm sure some atheists could be convinced. The rule "all atheists will reject evidence of God" seems false. The rule "all atheists will accept evidence of God" also seems false. Life is more complicated than that. It depends on the atheist and on the evidence.
An agnostic and atheist both live their lives as though there is no god. Because it is equally meaningless to say "there might be a god" but describe no further characteristics of such an entity, akin to "their might be faires but you can't see them, hear them, touch them and they have no effect on the world in anyway".
People trying who insist on a difference are just emotively trying to find some perceived middle ground from which they will claim intellectual superiority.
> Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence.
But of course that's not true. I would believe in a God with proof of their existence. I simply have not encountered such proof that hold up to my standards of proof of such an extraordinary claim.
If the skies errupted with the sound of trumpets and an angel descended to tell me to do something, my first thought would probably be that I'm having some sort of mental break, but if the person standing next me is seeing it, too, then I'll be the first one carving some commandments or whatever. There's a perfectly achievable standard of proof for you.
Defining God as supernatural and unprovable would lead the absurd situation that if God made Themselves self-evidently provable to everyone (say, with the whole trumpets and angels routine), then the alleged faithful would reject Him for not being their God, while He would only be believed by nonbelievers.
Sure, an Angel descending from the heavens would shatter our existing scientific understanding of the world, but that wouldn't make it intrinsically supernatural. It just would reveal a whole branch of knowledge that we didn't previously have any lines of inquiry into.
I do not believe it exists. If it is never, then it must not exist.
proofs I would accept:
(for Christianity)
Biblically accurate angels descend onto earth, to everyone, and submit themselves to scientific testing, which conclude they are made of something non-physical.
Divinity is proven to be a measurable and testable attribute of reality.
Reality warping magic, demonstrated to not be any sort of trick or technology, and limited to those devout to said religion.
God shows his ass to everyone, the only part of him that - according to the bible - won't make a human insane.
the basis of these proofs can be distilled down to some basic requirements:
- It must happen in 'reality' not 'in my head'.
- It must be testable, and repeatable.
- It must have no 'natural/scientific' explanation.
- It must be viewable by everyone.
That's not 'all' of the requirements, but regardless of which religion we are talking about: those are the common primitives.
Nothing I've encountered have met these standards. But if those standards of mine are met...
> "Biblically accurate angels descend onto earth, to everyone, and submit themselves to scientific testing, which conclude they are made of something non-physical."
You would easily agree that something which can be seen, touched, measured, interact with the sky, your eyes, and measuring equipment is "non-physical"? You wouldn't suspect the angels are instead aliens?
> "Divinity is proven to be a measurable and testable attribute of reality."
At this point, if it happened then it's unlikely to be in the macro-scale world that we could all test with an easily available and usable thermometer or film camera or alkalinity measuring strip, because we would probably have noticed that by now. Imagine instead it's a paper from CERN and the Large Hadron Collider where in some extreme situation there's a deviation of 0.0000000<whatever>% from an expected value and experts in Quantum Theology claim that's a testable, repeatable, measure of Divinity. Are you tempted to believe this could happen, or are you already full of reasons to dismiss it?
> "Reality warping magic, demonstrated to not be any sort of trick or technology, and limited to those devout to said religion."
Mass warps spacetime and curves light rays. That's neither trick nor technology. It's arguably "limited to those devout to physics" in the sense that Flat Earthers might not accept it and primitive/uneducated tribes have no grounds for understanding what it means at all and no ability to build machines to test it. Similar with Young's double slit experiment, Lorentz contraction, entanglement, and others (reality warping, or brain warping?).
> "God shows his ass to everyone, the only part of him that - according to the bible - won't make a human insane."
What would it take for you to agree that that's whose ass it was?
But you DID NOT reason themselves out of a religion. You might have planted a seed that then the other person developed on their own. Still no small feat, but it's fundamentally different.
This is conflating all religious following with lack of reason. There are those that are fully unreasonable and those that find it reasonable from their current perspective.
> 0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
Disagree here, because:
* Most of us have an irrational attachment to many of our positions. Arguing may or may not be futile, but if you can't "walk away" from most people (except if you sit at home and do nothing, and maybe not even then).
* These people may well be your coworkers on your project or at the organization you work for. So there is no "walk away", you're working with them and will continue working with them.
With people I'm invested in, like a community (which includes co-workers), I start with some experience that they are good people, which provides an incentive to ask whether options 2 or 3 (or both) would work. Option 3 in particular leaves open the possibility that I will be convinced to support what they have in mind once we move from "that seems unreasonable" to "this is aligned with your values, could it align with some of mine?"
Ever heard of quiet quitting. The momen someone labels you as what you describe - they will do minimum they have to do to interact with you and then move on with their day.
Being hard wired to non logical believes is just not good in this regard.
I don't really like that quote, what is a position but an opinion and how do you reason about options? It doesn't really make sense. Its like when liberals say "reality has a liberal bias", its not a very useful thing to say either because it doesn't work that way in practice. Why do you support abortion? Why do you oppose abortion? People will give perfectly reasonable answers to either question.
This article really resonates with me. During college and graduate school studying philosophy, picking apart someone's argument and pointing out the esoteric and nuanced ways which made it wrong was celebrated. The general attitude in my cohort was:
"I want to be wrong, because when I realize I'm wrong, I've become smarter."
This was probably the most intellectually fulfilling period of my life.
(Note here: some of the greatest moments were realizing when I was wrong in my criticism of an argument. It wasn’t about me “winning.” It was about collaboration)
After graduate school, I literally had to re-learn how to interact with people. No conversation was good faith. Everyone cared much more about the vibe of the conversation -- even when discussing highly nuanced political opinions suggesting they were genuinely curious for feedback -- more than they cared about having a coherent view on the topic.
I slowly realize that the best way forward was to have three interaction profiles with people. Generally there is the "I don't know you" profile, with all Dale Carnegie's rules fully in place. After that, there is the "we know each other" profile, where I would occasionally offer some probing questions on more or less uncontroversial topics to see whether or not good faith disagreement is allowed. And lastly there is the "we know and trust each other" profile, where I can actually have the open and honest real discussions with people that were so trivially normal in the philosophy department lounge.
Learning to do this was honestly one of the saddest and most disheartening things I've gone through in my life. It's genuinely stupid that we can't just talk to each other like adults.
We can talk to each other like adults, the key is understanding what the goal of any given conversation is. Truth-seeking is just one possible goal among many.
Part of becoming an adult is learning how little most people care about that particular goal, and how big the buffet of alternatives is: creating shared meaning, understanding each other's values, building trust, giving/receiving emotional support, processing grief, etc. (Think of this as an upfront taxonomic exercise, followed by lots of in situ calibration exercises.)
Even for something like "decision making", which, naively, one might assume should be grounded in facts, a lot of the "facts" wind up being fuzzy and subjective. This is baked into the social fabric.
Of course there can be different goals, but I think there's something omitted. It's not quite neutral to put aside some goals for other goals. Reading that your friend wants emotional support rather than truth seeking or to understand their coworkers different values is fine, but also sometimes it's not for the best. The choice of when and when not is a choice, it's fuzzy and reflective of one's values. It's not the sole choice of one person that the other has to then read and adhere to either.
Sometimes friends are wrong to the point of the truth being more important than emotional support. More important for them to hear, or for you to stay aligned to your own values, or for the parties they're mentioning to get fair treatment. It's not so interesting me saying that broadly as I have, it matters where one has chosen that point to be, not that the point exists somewhere.
It's not neutral of me to recognize that the jokey casual conversation I'm having at a bbq is a vibes convo and thus if the jokes start suggesting distorted assertions about different races I should adhere and join (or even just nod politely). Or more mildly, as my friend starts complaining about their boss, who I think might be right, there is some point when I think it might be best for them to know.
Most of these goals are not strictly opposed to each other. They only look opposed when the thing we want starts to contradict with some of the agreed upon "facts" of the situation, and then we say the facts aren't always what matters. To oversimplify, if you choose to give your friend emotional support over truth then they will get the support and be wrong (or vice versa). This is okay if that's the right tradeoff here, but it shouldn't be distorted into belief that your friend is right. And being willing to do that in circumstances A and not in circumstances B is reflective of one's values.
Went from working in a highly specialized DoD lab to corporate america, and this too was a horrific surprise. Everyone turning work into the promotion hunger games was great for the mental health.
I've come to view a lot of these things as questions of a kind of conversational (/computational) tractability. People have limited time and so most discussions are subject to numerous constraints.
People communicate the main thing they want to say and hope the decompression algorithm on the other side sorts the rest out. Most of the time it's very lossy or just broken. But satisfices over the alternative.
This resonated with me. I'm a bit struck by a theme in the comments around whether it's worth one's time to argue their side. The logic is understandable, but just the vantage point I see from. I think if this means stating your view and then after that deciding how hard to push it, that's one thing and fine. But I think a lot of people just see a potential disagreement and then don't state their view, or not uncommonly even say the opposite and agree with the person (a la "The best way to get someone to shut up is to agree with them"). I think this is fairly bad all around, and disheartening as you've said. Not only because it's self-centering in the mindset and self-defined in value, but it's also just kind of dismissive.
I think I have a similar style, I can sound like I’m ‘arguing’ with a person but really I’m arguing with my own internal model. If I say “but what about….”, “what if…..” or “then how….” I probably mean it literally as a question, not “I’m trying to poke holes in your argument and prove you wrong”. I’m trying to poke holes in MY understanding.
I respectfully submit that your neat categorization of interactions into those three profiles may reflect a gap in your understanding of others. Namely, that your definition of what makes a "good faith" conversation may not be the only one, nor the only correct one.
The vibe that people care about - that's the unspoken channel in any conversation. Physical, emotional, thoughts that don't get said. Perhaps to the one you're talking to, a good faith conversation is one that cares about or prioritizes the vibes.
People are allowed to care about what they care about, I think you're right there.
My only point is that, for me, if I'm discussing a subject where I'm exasperated and am complaining in a questioning way, say (to take a random example):
>Why are my local supervisors are advocating and incentivizing return to office!?! Having to go into the office is pointless and terrible!
Suppose this policy seems insane to me, and I can only suggest that it is happening because my local politicians are corrupt jerks who only care about corporate interests.
But, now, suppose that someone in the conversation is a municipal finance nerd and believes that since dangerous local budget deficits are being driven by work from home policies, that city finances and looming cuts to important services might be what is pushing the return to office mandates, not is something the politicians want, but as a kind of compromise.
So, for me personally, I very much want this person to suggest new paradigm as an alternative explanation. I many not be satisfied with the explanation, but it has more explanatory power than "the politicians are crazy" theory that I currently hold.
I have found, however, that a huge number of folks that would pose these questions aren't actually looking for an explanation, they are just trying to express their frustration, and seek reassurance that they are in good company and are being heard. If that's what people want, I'm now happy to oblige them. I just don't understand why they would want that from the conversation, but to each their own.
I’m someone who operates in both modes on the receiving end, so I think I can answer some of this.
I’m going to come at it from a slightly different angle, but I think the spirit will get there.
Sometimes, I’ve been working on troubleshooting my PC for hours already. I’m tired. I’m angry because I’ve spent all that mental capital, etc., so I come to friends to rant a little bit.
And then they start offering solutions. Solutions I’ve definitely already tried. Solutions that don’t work for a multitude of reasons that I’m not expressing because, again, I already spent hours on this. But they keep blasting me with troubleshooting tips and “have you tried this yet?” and “what’s the text say in this folder?”
But I’m already at my wits end, and now they’re wanting me to keep pushing, to do more labor to solve the problem. A problem I don’t want solved. I just want someone to hear my struggle and go “that sucks man, let’s have a beer”.
For me, sometimes it’s “I’m out of spoons”, sometimes it’s “I just want someone to see *my* struggle, too”. Sometimes I want to be validated for my current plight.
And when I’m reached with solutions and/or explaining, at the wrong time, sometimes that can be very invalidating.
In circumstances like this, when I’m on the end where I want to be the fixer or the explainer, I’ll even ask, “do you want fixer me? Or just company?”
You don’t have to lie and say XYZ are bad for that; but you can instead say something like “oh yeah that sucks when you’re already doing all this elsewhere”. Because it does suck. Even if it has a logical reason, it does suck.
Edit: Okay, I want to add a bit more. When someone is stressed or exhausted to a high enough degree, they literally cannot range in new information, no matter how well-meaning. So sometimes the commiseration and/or presence without offering solutions is just one of many steps to help them relax enough that they can even *hear* the new thought or suggestion. As well-meaning as advice or a reality check can be in those situations, until the stress is reduced, it’s literally falling on deaf ears.
When I find myself feeling like that, a good reframe I like using is to turn those comments into commiseration; “What about trying A?” — “Yeah it’s f*ked aye, I tried A, B and C and it STILL didn’t work!”.
I usually ask people straight at that point whether they want solutions for me or if they just want me to listen with empathically.
Depends on the person how I bring this though, but it tends to work.
I mean, I understand what you're saying. I guess the main way I can explain it isn't in any idealized case, but in the transitional case.
I completely agree that people might not be looking for a solution in a discussion. My point is that transitioning from a place where there are plenty of people, having plenty of discussions, and ideas flow freely back and forth is normal and welcome. And then moving to a place where people have plenty of discussions, but more often than not, ideas flowing back and forth are treated with outright hostility...
I mean, for me, it was very obviously a completely jarring transition. It's not that there are times when solutions aren't welcome. It's that the vast majority of the time, with the vast majority of people, alternative paradigms aren't welcome.
Why can't it be the other way around, you don't know that I am out of spoons too and rather than talk about why I am out spoons I should not be expected to validate other people's vibes or spoonfeed them... And so forth.
As an exhausted person the issue is not being given advice. It is being given wrong, ignorant, or inappropriate advice.
How does someone know what is wrong, ignorant, inappropriate advice without first finding out from you, through communication, what kind of state you’re in and what you’ve already tried.
And if the “listener” / fixer is in a state where they can’t do the work of finding out what kind of help and/or fixing is needed, then maybe *they* need to step back and have a break, too.
In my experience, fixers tend to completely miss the cues of “please stop word-vomitting at me, you’re not helping” and continue offering unsolicited suggestions. And then it’s my job, as the person that was talked at, to make them feel better, *further* exhausting my current state.
The solution to both of our problems is to ask and listen and hear. And then move forward. It’s true, we both exist. (Though I would argue that sometimes “bad advice” is just “advice I already tried, or that doesn’t work, but you don’t know that because you didn’t ask”).
And the solution to both is setting ground rules about what each person in the conversation can give and is expected to give.
If a fixer can’t empathize for a bit, and that’s what the other person needs, they should be allowed to step out of the conversation, too.
Well that's the basis of rationalism. Many important truths don't depend on the details of someone's state or someone's life history. To require it is to commit an ad hominem and destroys rationalism.
For example whether to drink alcohol is entirely unsafe at any level, according to the WHO. Expressing this as common knowledge is a counterexample of the popular heuristic to "listen to people's context".
Communicative empathy is still a heuristic, it is not an absolute rule. There are times when the message really is more important than how it is being conveyed. And actually people who run out of spoons know that all too well.
Incoming wall of text, because this is topic that hits close to home for me, and I've spent a lot of time in the last few years exploring it. So, knowing absolutely nothing about you or your life or how it compares to my own, I'll proceed.
I personally agree with you. I want that municipal finance nerd to speak up and tell me that as well. I think I get a little jolt of endorphins whenever I learn something new, so for me there's actually almost a physical draw to people who can give that to me. I wonder if it's the same for you.
I think you're describing a position of resignation on your part: you've almost sort of given up, and tried to convince yourself that you're ok obliging people in the surface level conversation that they seem to want. And I suspect, resigned yourself to the fact that most people you meet day-to-day won't be able to give you those little endorphin boosts.
I struggled on this path myself. First: recognizing that you seem to want more from conversations than most other people are willing/able to give. Second: finding that your mind, which naturally draws you to learning new information, is not the mind that everyone has. Third: developing almost a sort of disdain for people who you find do not meet your imagined bar. Fourth: identifying the disdain and feeling bad about it. Fifth: telling yourself that ok, you'll just give up looking for it and also you'll stop being disdainful towards others for not being able to give it.
The sixth part is the first big leap: realizing that it's not that you want more from conversations, you want different. And what is engaging for you is not necessarily engaging for someone else. And that neither of you is righter or wronger in that.
The seventh, hard part that I suspect you may not have gotten to yet. You can't expect that people can give you the kind of connection you're looking for, that they can scratch that itchy brain of yours, without first allowing yourself to truly believe that their mind is just as deep and rich as your own, and accept that it's just rich and deep in different ways. The challenge, then, is to stop asking yourself "what is it that I have that all these other people don't seem to have" and start asking "what am I missing? what are all these other people experiencing that I am not?"
If it helps, you can consider it an intellectual challenge. Try to really empathize, imagine what it's physically like to exist in their body. Force your brain to consider the fact that in this moment, in this conversation, their experience may actually be richer than yours - just in ways that you can't, by default anyway, see.
> municipal finance nerd and believes that since dangerous local budget deficits are being driven by work from home policies, that city finances and looming cuts to important services might be what is pushing the return to office mandates, not is something the politicians want, but as a kind of compromise.
I mean, in that case, the municipality needs to get rid of that nerd asap. And the companies can and should push against that nerd asap.
I don't know how else to put it but I feel surrounded by automatons. I would do a lot to only interact with people like you on a daily basis. I was toying with doing the Mensa tests. Maybe I need to go back to school and take night philosophy classes ?
I sometimes feel sad "talking" to an AI because it is one of the few places where I feel like I can reach that third interaction profile you mention. Even writing it now makes me quite sad. My closed ones will never have any interest in the benevolant truth-seeking that I long for, and it always pains me to accept it.
If I meet someone like you, how could I reach you on that third level as fast as I can ? Maybe we meet on a waiting line for coffee. Maybe we will sit close to each other on a subway. How to tear through the bullshit of small talk to have a bit of that deep conversation I clearly lack ?
I understand completely. I have colleagues who have been denied promotions and bonuses due to their way of communicating, which was indeed pointing out esoteric and nuanced ways that their colleagues are wrong. There was a specific scenario were someone held a slightly incoherent opinion, yet somehow it was "wrong" to correct that opinion for the rest of the meeting.
In some ways, I feel like everyone should start by reading the HN guidelines as a way to structure their communication around.
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.
This is indeed part of the problem. Life today is just too complicated. Take a simple topic like wind turbines: there is so so much to truly understand about materials, net lifetime carbon offset, environmental issues, recycling, capacity, placement, etc. that is is all but impossible to become a true subject matter expert on this one issue alone. Even gaining a cursory understanding of the issues at hand requires many many hours of reading and research from all positions. And this just makes you knowledgeable on this one small subject.
So what we do in practice is this: Pick the issue I care most about, then assume that any group that agrees with me on that position is a safe source to trust for ALL issues. This is our human need to belong (and tribalism). The problem is that the groups pushing these positions leverage this other'ing to create divisiveness for the sole purpose of making more and more money.
Yeah. We love the comfort of "getting it", but most of the easy problems have been solved, and we're only left with the hard ones.
People are pleasure-seekers, not truth-seekers. People demand what they can understand and feel good about, even if wrong. There's plenty of supply too. Radical free speech allows anyone to spread lies for huge financial upside, and we don't have any check on this particular type of weapon which is mass-destroying society.
Is life too complex or do we fail to teach and learn enough about it to have an educated perspective?
I don't have to be a wind turbine expert to know that they're overall better than coal plants. Because at a minimum their source is not finite and their output hasn't been linked to increases in cancer and breathing problems.
but you don't need to be a subject matter expert on wind turbine material strength and recycling options to accept that President Trump's claims that they kill whales is nonsense: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66928305
"I want to be a whale psychiatrist" - President of the United States of America Donald Trump, interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience, October 2024.
And you don't need to be an expert on wind turbine placement to have an opinion on whether putting one in view of Donald Trump's golf course, and then having President Trump scupper them for revenge, is a sensible way to govern the world's most powerful country's energy economy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo
From that article: "Before making the transatlantic crossing for his Scottish summer jaunt, the US president urged the UK to "get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil".". The Conservative government under David Cameron made a change to planning policy in 2015 where a single objection could block a whole wind farm - and those planning changes only applied to wind turbines and no other structures - a situation described as a "de facto ban" of on-shore wind farms in England (not Scotland), which lead to a 96% drop in on-shore wind development compared to previous years 2011 to 2015. It continued until Rishi Sunak eased it in 2023 and Labour removed it in 2024.
You don't need to be an expert on wind farm placement or capacity to have a valid opinion on that.
Honestly, I have barely looked into it. The main thing I know is that there is currently about ~7 year payoff in terms of carbon. My general sense is that we should be investing in solar and batteries and not doing wind except in specific isolated situations but I don't have the knowledge to back that up right now.
I'd also argue that people above are making my point for me. It isn't enough to say that wind is better than coal. Lots of things are better than coal. That still doesn't mean that it is the right choice or best use of our time and resources to help combat climate change. The switch to EV is going to be long and slow but attacking electricity generation carbon is something we can do more directly more quickly (assuming the political will). The calculus on the quickest and biggest bang for our buck is insanely complicated.
> One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
A takeaway from that: if you think you're right about everything and rarely find yourself in situations where you're forced to doubt your ideas (at least a little), it's possible what's actually going on is you're just too isolated from others.
When I reflect on it, we are in a state of hyper-individualism on every single front. Is it wrong? Well, yes and no. It is a consequence of freedom. What I ultimately see happening is that we solved evolution on a biological level. Now, it is evolution on an ideological level.
What makes me sad is that some people don't have friends that can call them out and argue in good faith. I'm a very disagreeable person, and I have a good friend group that I can argue with without any fear.
My definition of a cult is a group where members don’t trust people outside the group. We have a lot of news sources saying that we should not trust other news sources. Especially statements like “that other news source lied once, so you should never trust them.” I think this promoted mistrust has created a lot of cults.
When members of a cult don’t trust outsiders, it allows their beliefs to drift away from reality. They’re not getting the feedback necessary to keep information grounded.
And reality is a great mechanism for keeping beliefs unified. The creation of cults has splintered the USA.
I think the Internet has helped foster this. It made it cheaper and easier to create a new news source. It is cheaper and easier to fund that news source through ads or direct payments from customers. And the resulting market incentivizes news sources to keep customers by denigrating the competition, which creates cults.
We need to redesign the market for news sources, to disincentivize that behavior.
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
> At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started.
I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.
Text is a hard medium to have a back-and-forth in. The features that make it useful for explaining also make it easy to feel ignored and insulted.
I think a lot of people also go online and write things when they feel argumentative, so comment sections self-select for people who want to argue.
Whenever I feel intellectually superior to someone, I try to remind myself that I can barely change the oil filter in my car, and there's a lot of people out there who can't write a line of Python but who save tens of thousands of dollars doing their own maintenance.
The problem, fundamentally, is that unlike a computer program that won't compile if there's syntax errors,
or that will crash on null pointer dereference, etc.
There's no such mechanisms in place to ensure logical consistency and coherance of made claims.
Thus the onus is on you to quickly realize that the other party "doesn't have what it takes" and bail out, or you're arguing with a person that doesn't have the mental capacity to recognize syntax errors and subtle bugs, they are simply interested in arriving at their destination and couldn't care less if they arrived there with an unbroken chain of valid chess moves.
> I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.
I love how you don't even care if it's true, merely how you think at any given moment (and this changes with mood) and how those thoughts makes you feel.
If you're unable to entertain the idea significant amount of people don't have "what it takes" (which is a fact, btw), have you ever been able to engage constructively?
One of the hallmarks of a person who isn't interested in playing chess is a person who focuses not on what IS true, but "what they think" or "how they start feeling" about chess moves at any given time, etc. Ie. focus is about vibes.
Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the most outlandish and direct.
It's generous to assume all the difficult accounts you encounter are lacking mental faculties. Many are participating with the goal of wasting your energy.
This site in particular is infested with accounts that seem to have some real intelligence behind them, but they use that intelligence to respond to the most absurd and frustrating interpretation of your comments.
> It's generous to assume all the difficult accounts you encounter are lacking mental faculties.
It's also not uncommon for people who are arrogant to think that most people who disagree with them are stupid. They assume they're right so disagreement is a sign of a defect (and helps avoid uncomfortable thoughts like, "could I be wrong?").
> Many are participating with the goal of wasting your energy.
> This site in particular is infested with accounts that seem to have some real intelligence behind them, but they use that intelligence to respond to the most absurd and frustrating interpretation of your comments.
That sounds like software engineers being software engineers. They often think they show off how smart they are by missing the point and nitpicking on some quibble.
> "They assume they're right so disagreement is a sign of a defect"
Take a step back and look at the original linked blog post through this lense, and you'll see an article where the author is a priori correct and other people are only wrong because they are too irrational and emotional to accept the author's flawless logic. There's no mention that author might be wrong about anything, e.g. for the author to argue so that they can learn things and change their mind. There's no room for the author failing to change someone's mind because the author's communication skill, reasoning, logic, isn't strong enough, only because the other person is defective and cannot be reasoned with. (Having taken those positions, the author declares themselves humble).
(Let's quickly address "the moment you insist on standing on the high ground, you’ve created the low ground someone else must stand on" by observing that we can all stand on "murder is bad" and nobody needs to stand on "murder is good"; and wonder how the author managed to miss that. (My answer: because this isn't about logic; if not-arguing is doing other people a favour, then it's a virtue and the author can feel good about it. It's a defense so the author doesn't need to change)).
> [article] "Worse, most people don’t learn from advice at all. They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks"
That this is an example which applies to children. Adults do not have to jump off a cliff to accept that jumping off a cliff is a bad idea. But it's still a weak argument. The experience of being burned by a stove includes the sensation of hot metal, pain, burnt skin, burnt hair smell, lingering pain, blistering, scabbing, healing... to suggest that the words "it will burn you" is the territory, and that the words adequately communicate the lived experience to someone who has not had that experience, is the Detached Lever fallacy[1]; it's something that a person who lives with text would argue.
If they take the most absurd interpretation or nitpick about irrelevant details that doesn't take away from the crux of the point you're making - and that's the best they can do - are they really intelligent?
Or are you simply dealing with people that "don't have what it takes" to do better?
They simply don't have the faculties to make a better argument or approach from a different angle, it's the best they can do, and the best they can do is just not enough.
Many people just don't care about honoring the integrity of the game, if they can gain advantage in the meta game. Of course motivation for the game dissolves under such conditions.
Tying a tangible score number to 'vague social approval' hits very hard. There's a sense in which people care about that by default, but have to make themselves care about the inner game. But appearing to have integrity about the inner game is a good move in the meta game, so of course the default move of those who don't care about the game but want to appear to for the sake of the meta game is to put up a front: the trick is that it's not real. If playing the inner game faithfully, it becomes trivial to disassemble their (fronted) position. But it's not really a game, because they're not playing but pretending to play. You're costing them meta-score! How dare you!
Anyway, I digress. This dynamic falls out of the incentive structure of sites like HN/reddit/etc which embed discussion/argumentation into quasi-anonymous social-approval-point-ranked contexts. Moderation can temper the most egregiously obvious of such behavior, but only that.
A reasonable strategy if you're interested in actually playing the inner game is to carefully check if there's any meta game focused cheesing going on before bothering to enter against someone. Do they make mistakes in rule adherence due to inexperience, or do they make mistakes in rule adherence that conspicuously always puts them in a meta game advantage? Do they adhere to rules even when it's _disadvantageous_? That kind of thing.
To return to the chess analogy... Don't play with people who blatantly return their own downed pieces to the board (or similar hijinks). They're just there to look like they're the kind of person who wins at chess, not to play chess.
I dunno, I think this is only really true online. Once you step out into the real world people are a lot more moderate and reasonable. I'm the Enlightened centrist of my friend group and my friends from both sides of the political centrum give me plenty of shit but are still good buddies, which doesn't happen so much online ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
yep, i just wrote an overly long comment that was trying to get across what you said in a paragraph. if its a random online, dont over think it. i started to pay way more attention to the real world people in my life and im much much much happier for it.
Be careful what you’re centering yourself between. If one side is trying to build decent policy with a small fringe that has almost no political power, and the other side’s fringe has cemented itself as the new mainstream and fights classic liberalism, institutions, and science, you’re now in a very different center.
> isolating themselves & having their [...] views spread far and wide
> most cancerous developments & the less contentious it becomes
Your comment complains that people cannot articulate their reasons, while making a sweeping, emotionally loaded claim whose reasons are themselves barely articulated.
That doesn't read as a complaint, it's a realization, and the argument is articulated enough.
Are you challenging the idea that echo chambers facilited by modern tech are harmful, or that people get better at expressing themselves as they get older? From here it looks like you're doing neither, just taking a stab at the comment's author.
Was discussing the content, not the author. Yes, I am challenging vague discourse about echo chambers, since the mechanism behind an echo chamber is selectively listening to some opinions, while dismissing other sources of authority or correction. To see why this is a problem, consider that parent comment is compatible with both:
"Flat Earth is a cancerous echo chamber"
"As I grew older and became better at arguing, I learned to explain why universities teaching that the Earth is spherical are cancerous ideological echo chambers."
Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."
仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。
The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.
Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"
`Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."`
I never thought about this but I really believe it to be true and would love to know why is that. For example, whenever I want to get an interaction going with very small kids, I would pretend to not know something and they'd be super happy to teach me - works every time.
People feel competent and important when they teach others. This desire is so primal, as you said, that it can even be seen in young children. That's why people unconsciously try to teach others, and it often creates problems in relationships.
The reason arguments are dangerous is that while they look like an attempt to correct someone's knowledge, in reality they easily mix with the desire to place yourself in the 'teacher's seat.'
However, Confucianism places great value on teaching, and at first glance this might seem contradictory to Mencius's words. But it explains that the purpose of teaching is different. Good teaching aims to bring out the best in others and nurture them, and it should come after self-cultivation. On top of that, it requires the other person's consent, such as when they are in need. Bad teaching, on the other hand, is about self-display, the desire to feel superior, and interfering without being asked.
In reality, it's hard to draw a perfect line between the two, but I think the effort is to keep trying.
This is generally rooted in the Confucian thought that is broadly spread across Northeast Asia.
To think about your logic a bit more precisely, Orwell's metaphor is about why the power to trample others ultimately arises. In Confucianism, it's usually said:
孟子曰: 君子以仁存心，以禮存心。仁者愛人，有禮者敬人。
(Mencius said: The noble person keeps benevolence in their heart and keeps propriety in their heart. The benevolent person loves others, and the person who has propriety respects others.)
論語: 不憤不啟，不悱不發。
(The Analects: If the learner is not eager to know, do not enlighten them; if they are not struggling to express themselves, do not inspire them.)
孟子曰: 教亦多術矣，予不屑之教誨也者，是亦教誨之而已矣。
(Mencius said: There are many ways to teach. My refusing to teach someone because I deem them unworthy is also a form of teaching.)
This can be summarized as: 'When that desire passes through benevolence and propriety, it becomes good teaching. When it loses benevolence and propriety, it becomes scolding, interference, and self-display.'
From this, teaching can be understood as having different stages. Teaching is meaningful only when the other person is ready to receive it. Teaching is not about pouring out explanations; sometimes not teaching, stepping back, and letting the other person reflect on themselves is also a form of education.
The extreme of power that Orwell speaks of is, in other words, a kind of 'forcing' upon someone who does not want it. This means that the same desire can lead to completely different outcomes depending on which ethical filter it passes through.
However, this is also a very fragmented explanation when viewed in the full context. In modern society, we rarely live out classical thought as a complete system; instead, we cut out fragments of it and use them to explain current problems. I am not trying to explain Confucianism as a whole either. I am simply using the Confucian sensibility that is relatively commonly spread in Korea to try to understand this issue. So I cannot claim that the passages I cited are arranged in a completely rigorous way.
Perhaps the reason I feel this way is because I was born and raised in Korea, and I am currently active there. I am just active on HN because it is the metropolis of the programming world.
I feel that Western individualism treats the individual as a more autonomous unit. In contrast, in the Confucian sensibility I am familiar with, an individual is less like an independent point and more like an intersection of multiple relationships.
I think both Western and Eastern thought have their strengths and weaknesses, and they arrive at similar insights through different paths.
Orwell starts from a macroscopic, top-down perspective and examines how power tries to subjugate humans. This is a response to the macroscopic question, as seen in Machiavelli, of 'power as a matter of order and domination.'
As seen in Orwell's 'Notes on Nationalism,' his thinking is about the problem of proxy power: the attitude where an individual dissolves their identity into a group and pursues that group's power and prestige.
In other words, I think Confucianism asks questions about how to solve this problem at the microscopic level, while Orwell's work is closer to an explanation of how unresolved problems at the microscopic level can cause trouble.
Of course, what I have read is only at a university-level introduction to philosophy, so I hope you will take my answer as being just as superficial. For more detailed explanations, I suspect wild philosophers hungry for questions will appear and take over.
p.s. The irony is that this very comment is basically me pouring out content you probably didn't ask for. The biggest contradiction is that I'm talking about controlling the urge to act like a teacher, while I'm not practicing it myself. In fact, I think Confucianism also has macroscopic discourses, and Orwell also has microscopic explanations, so they don't fit together perfectly. There are also points where they conflict
But if I had to write briefly without actually searching anywhere, this is what I think. Normally, before writing a comment, I search for other people's thoughts and filter my own through them. But if I had to be sincere, without searching anywhere, or if I had to write briefly, I would say this:
'We are all trapped in a desire for recognition, and it's hard to control that desire. And when that desire loses its way, we try to teach others, try to control them, and ultimately try to take their place. True learning only begins when we put that position down, but we are too afraid of letting go.'
I often see variations on this exact comment on HN lately, even in response to things that are clearly genuine. Sometimes it's just ESL. In my opinion, whenever there is plausible deniability, just pointing it out is almost always the wrong move anyway.
Proliferation of AI "content" and people regurgitating the AI slop makes it extremely likely to be AI slop. You know, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.
If you look at HN comments in pre-"AI" era, you will see posts were way shorter and way more concise. While I am certainly could be in wrong, it does look like AI output.
I'm sorry, but I didn't use AI. The thing that's really hard about this is that the language I write in is Korean, and in the process of translating my words, the sentences and context I can use are limited.
Most of the time, I use officially translated versions of Confucian classics, but I'm actually using Google Translate and Papago (a Korean translator) to translate them. The words I use are fixed, and since the rich vocabulary I use in my native language is restricted, I guess it's inevitable that it looks like AI.
(The people here who reach for accusations of AI are saying they are not ready to learn, imho. Though your immediate preceding replies about Orwell flow less well than your usual writing?)
How would you judge the urge to teach people who have power or influence?
Your previous comments about Narcissism in Western economies come to mind.
It seems to me that Mencius was often talking down to his interlocutors. Maybe that would have worked out for him, but it didn't work out for many officials who got decapitated for speaking out. But am I an inferior person for thinking they weren't wrong not to control their urge to teach "tyrants"?
It seems that Stoics, Cynics etc escaped such punishment even though there were no equivalent advice in their worldview? Besides Socrates obviously. It could be that Westerners are simply better with manipulating emotions. And Socrates was complicated, but he'd never worm away from teaching.
I also think "hubris", a not very Asian concept, is something easier to address than narcissism (which has Asian versions).. maybe we can start there. (I am thinking of hubris in Greek stories or law, not the modern translation as "arrogance")
Consider Wu Kong. That's narcissism, not hubris, because he essentially had the powers of (most of) the gods. Whereas what Mencius had, and what the mods here have, could be called hubris. Hubris can be invisible to mortals, but not to gods. Hubris can be very abstract injuries to human dignity.
It feels like Orwell was being intimate with hubris. Big Brother. The Inner Party. And so on. Even "The Boot". Were carefully short of being "egoistic".
One caveat. It's very common in Chinese popculture to call someone competent a god, a goddess, almost always humourously. Interesting way to nip hubris in the bud?
Hubris is easier to correct than narcissism because sometimes all you have to do is point it out. Or wait for the AI bubble to pop.
Mencius would already have enjoyed his passive act of teaching before a bubble actually popped? Did he feel a need to buy puts?
It seems like I know programming terminology pretty well, but philosophical terms aren't my specialty, so it doesn't come out as smoothly. As you know, when you translate high-level vocabulary from a Chinese-character cultural sphere into English, a lot gets lost, doesn't it? Philosophy isn't my field, so I think that's especially the case.
I think we and Westerners think differently when it comes to the concepts of narcissism and hubris. I'm not very familiar with the Stoics or the Cynics. As you know, we East Asians don't really learn Western philosophy much, right? It's mostly Confucian thought.
Anyway, as you said, 好爲人師 (loving to teach others / being fond of acting as a teacher to others) doesn't mean one shouldn't remonstrate with those in power. However, in Asia — especially in Korea — while Confucius is famous, Mencius is treated as almost his equal. I've heard that in China, Mencius is ranked a little lower. I'm particularly fond of Mencius, and I especially love this passage:
"To dwell in the wide house of the world, to stand in the correct station of the world, to walk in the great path of the world; when one achieves his ambition, he shares it with the people; when he fails to achieve it, he walks his path alone. Riches and honors cannot corrupt him, poverty and low status cannot make him waver, power and force cannot bend him. this is what is called a great man."
Personally, I think Wukong was actually more of a case of hubris, wasn't he? Because whether he had power or not, he fought against the heavens. Perhaps he could also be seen as an embodiment of Mencius's concept of the "great man."
I sometimes think about this.
because we're in different language spheres, the vocabulary we think in evaporates so much. It saddens me that I can't express things at a high level in English.
Haha there is something right about Wukong being a great monkey who either shares his spoils with other monkeys or suffers alone, so that it's exactly the hubris I was accusing Mencius of.
Otoh there is the famous story of young Confucius getting "rejected" by Laozi.. (Sima Qian, Shiji)
..."I have heard that a shrewd merchant hides his wealth deeply, appearing as if he has nothing; a gentleman of abundant virtue keeps a demeanor that looks like foolishness."...
This way of avoiding (direct!) teaching & sharing sounds both more actionable and appealing to me :)
For Westerners, Court Jesters? Korean movie King's Man?
Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.
Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).
However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:
- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.
- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.
- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.
- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.
These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.
But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.
You would be steel-manning his essay if you assume he’s right in these arguments. Unless you believe that no position is more correct than another or that no one is more often correct than others, you can imagine scenarios where the author is often more correct than the people he is dealing with.
Isn't that what I'm already doing? I assume that the author believes that he's right often enough to argue his position(s), but feels dejected without being proven wrong at the end of the argument.
But there's another important point here: the answer to the "am I really right?" question isn't always clear at the start of every argument.
Unless you believe there's room for (dis)proving your position, or getting some nuance on a topic [1], it's not a debate or an argument - it's a lecture. And lectures depend on other social dynamics which don't apply here.
[1] For example, maybe there are other reasons behind the position that the person can't express easily, or maybe you're actually arguing about different things.
There are 2 very different kinds of arguments. Arguments where you're trying to convince the other person. And arguments where you're trying to convince bystanders. These require completely different tactics.
If you're trying to convince the other person, be humble. Be gentle. Be subtle. Ask them questions. Let them think they came up with the idea entirely on their own. If any bystanders are watching this discussion, they are more likely to think that the other person is right, or that they are "winning". But this will give you the best possible chance of convincing the person you're talking to.
If you're trying to convince bystanders, project confidence. Present compelling evidence. Pick apart the other person's arguments and show why its flawed. Chances are, this will make the other person dig in even more strongly and resent you. But this will give you the best chance of convincing neutral bystanders.
Use the right tool for each job. If you're using "debate tactics" in a 1:1 discussion, you will never get the desired results, no matter how data-driven and logical your arguments are. I've made this mistake far too many times, and this seems to be what OP is getting at as well
I like this distinction, but it reminds me to cherish the people who don't require such confidence games.
Feynman has a famous anecdote about sitting around the table with senior scientists in contentious argument where he was perplexed because it was obvious to him who was right. They argued all sides, and ultimately agreed, having proofed the idea and its alternatives.
That's who I want on my team: people who can shake things out without needing to be right or needing others to be humble, and without playing games. After viability, that's my primary criterion for a position.
If you're trying to convince an audience, it matters how you treat the person you're arguing with. Don't be a jerk. People notice that, and judge you for it. They judge your position for it - perhaps not intellectually, but emotionally.
The best possible thing to do in that situation is to out-evidence them, out-argument them, and out-nice them. And really, if the facts are on your side, you shouldn't have to be a jerk or manipulative.
When you join a new team, don't try to change team tools, processes etc. starting in the very first week.
Most things are the way they are for a reason. Your "obviously better" idea may lack the full context. Start with observing the situation, talking to people to build understanding and historical context, and don't jump to conclusions too early.
Sometimes you'll be right, and things are suboptimal and based on long-outdated assumptions. Then, it's great to change them and improve! Freshman eyes are great for spotting such inefficiencies, and "new blood" is critical to make the team well-functioning and to improve the legacy stuff.
But improving and rewriting everything all the time has a cost. If you do too much of it too quickly, the team loses the understanding of long-stable processes and things. You may become a bottleneck as the "last person who touched this" in too many areas. People also have limited bandwidth to support your "rewrite everything" ideas every day, while trying to move on with their tasks.
Don't hesitate to suggest improvements, but please be mindful about the volume - especially in times of AI where everything can be vibecoded in an hour.
Finally, some "objectively better" things have no business justification. Improving performance of a piece of code than runs once a month? There's probably 10 more important things to do in your backlog.
It isn't even necessarily just Chesterton's Fences. The problem can just be picking your battles. Processes that are working well enough for the team don't need to be fixed right away to be better, and that'll dump a bunch of cognitive load onto the team in the short term. If you show up and on day one you want to fix 4 different processes, the team is going to hear that over the next 3 months you want to completely change how they do all their work, while they need to keep the rest of their work going. That is moving a whole lot of proverbial cheese all at once. Of course, teams can stagnate, and some of this can be good, but you need to spread it out, do the politics up front to get people to agree that processes need to get upgraded, and ease them into the changes over time.
They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.
How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.
I've been reading the writings of stoic philosophers each morning and journaling about what I read and I think this fits in well with that philosophy. We're all here on Earth to enrich ourselves (and I don't mean materially) and those around us. Arguing with strangers online is antithetical to that premise. You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling, and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so. They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?
Epictetus writes that the truely educated aren't quarrelsome. "The beautiful and good person neither fights with anyone nor, as much as they are able, permits others to fight.. this is the meaning of getting an education - learning what is your own affair and what is not. If a person carries themselves so, where is there any room for fighting?"
What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
For me the goal is twofold. I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I know it's nearly impossible to convince someone you are arguing with. But also I do try and have an open mind. It's not common that I change my position, but it does happen.
For example, I was once a climate change denier. It was debating with people online which caused me to reflect and change that position.
> I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake.
I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online. All too often these days, folks are just engaging in point scoring type arguments and readers just agree with their tribe.
Not saying it doesn't happen, nor that it's a good goal taken with care. But me personally the ROI just isn't there (your calculus is different, and that's okay!)
A lot of times when I engage in arguments online, I think of it more as showing nuance to a person. I'm not trying to persuade them, I'm not trying to win, I'm just trying to show them that the problem space is a bit more complicated than their view is showing them. At least that's how I justify it to myself when I do engage. And of course, I'm no where close to perfect, I engage in petty point scoring arguments because it feels good at the time but isn't fruitful or healthy in the long run.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online
I do, and I have. I’ve also argued something with someone and come out the other side convinced of their position. (Sometimes immediately. More often down the road. Nevertheless, a valuable exchange.)
A very similar experience here. Reading comment threads over the years has absolutely turned me on to perspectives I never even conceived of previously. I've reconsidered my positions (on political and technical matters, mainly) by reading the discourse in comment threads.
Sometimes I post to clarify my own position. Writing helps with that.
There's a whole field of street epistemology which is about persuading people. Arguing with them is one of the least effective ways to do that. Socratic dialogue sometimes works, although for any belief that has an emotional root you're likely to hit a crash out point.
It turns out the most effective techniques are manipulative. The best persuasion doesn't look like argument or persuasion, it looks like something self-evident you can't help agree with.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online
HN comments sway me more than any other source nowadays. Reading comments not directed at myself probably makes it easier because my ego does not feel attacked.
The only times it has helped is when I am researching something like say gardening or researching a product. I find the back and forth between people helpful in making my decision on what to do.
The online stranger's argument was convincing because they brought a lot of evidence from research papers to general climatologist opinions which completely debunked a lot of the talking points I'd used (without me exposing those in the conversation).
It also made me go back on my own sources and question where they were coming from. Let's just say the anti climate change positions become a lot less convincing when you dig into their sourcing and find a large number of them literally funded by the likes of Koch industries or Glenn Beck's personal companies.
Climate change being anthropogenic is so easy to verify nowadays that when someone has contrary conviction it isn’t because they don’t know the data.
Data won’t help it at all. It’s available two clicks away, there is no shortage of it.
People want to believe otherwise and you will never actually convince anyone on the internet using data on anything in 99% of the cases.
Persuasion is an art and most of the people on the internet have no clue how to manipulate human mind to instil beliefs.
I can give a short rundown on persuasion as non autistic individual actually having those skills:
1. Always say that you understand somebody point of view. Appear interested in what they have to say and respect their beliefs.
2. Intertwine few uncomfortable questions in their point of view, very gently and non argumentative. These are the seeds of doubt.
You are a farmer it’s like gardening and watering a flower. You must be gentle with new sprouts of doubt. Tend to the garden of new beliefs and one day they will bear fruit.
> Climate change being anthropogenic is so easy to verify nowadays that when someone has contrary conviction it isn’t because they don’t know the data.
I agree and this is true. But my opinion and position there shifted around 2010 or so.
It's true the data was there and available in a few clicks. But I wasn't seeking it out and instead was relying on trusted sources that were lying to me.
Now-a-days, though, even my parents are on board with climate change being real. It's just too apparent for anyone that can remember what the world was like 10 or 20 years ago.
Why? If the argument is well argued, and makes you have better understanding of the issue, does it teally matter who you argue with? Can you only have your deeply held convictions changed from your own sphere? The implications are a bit disheartening in that case.
Nobody thinks this way about actual strong convictions they held like belief in god or abortion or polygamy.
This works only for very narrow set of topics about numbers and data.
Even the same academics that would change their mind quickly about some theory would never actually change their mind on their strong ideological convictions. I know it from real life examples.
Strange that it needs to be articulated so loud and clear.
So I repeat again if you changed your mind under influence of an internet stranger then it wasn’t a very strong conviction.
> Nobody thinks this way about actual strong convictions they held like belief in god or abortion or polygamy.
There's no need to change that kind of strong convictions, what needs to change is the desire to use such convictions as justification for policies imposed onto others.
> Even the same academics that would change their mind quickly about some theory would never actually change their mind on their strong ideological convictions
Again, that wouldn't be a problem if they recognized the right of others to think differently. Their propensity to invoke "science" to justify intrusive policies, one way or the other, is the real problem.
> So I repeat again if you changed your mind under influence of an internet stranger then it wasn’t a very strong conviction.
To paraphrase Keynes here, those who don't change their minds when facts change are simply fools or trolls. And the realization of change may come from a single word, of people known or unknown, or even without words - it doesn't matter, change must take place when change is due.
We could argue about the semantics of "very strong convictions" until the cows come home, but it won't do any good if we haven't beforehand agreed upon "why we argue".
If they believe something is right, or even “good” then of course they think everyone else should probably do alike.
Look, I don’t even know why are we arguing over what exactly? I don’t know. Seems like truisms
I don’t even know what is exactly your opposite view on anything right now and if it indeed exists or what is the point of this exchange.
I just said basic truth - majority of people won’t change mind under influence of online strangers and if they do their convictions weren’t that strong to begin with.
You could of course provide me with data that this is not true and people change mind under online strangers persuasion all day everyday
> I just said basic truth - majority of people won’t change mind under influence of online strangers > You could of course provide me with data that this is not true
Actually, it's the other way around - you have to provide data showing that the majority of people won't change their minds under the influence of online strangers regardless of the quality of arguments and the time they spare to participate in discussions. That's how proper studies are done.
> Look, I don’t even know why are we arguing over what exactly?... Seems like truisms
As I said, that depends on the semantics of "strongly held convictions". Do all people have them or are they just for bigots?
See, you fail to convince me not because you're stranger but because the quality of your arguments is lacking - you seem to conflate these and then, instead of finding a productive reason to participate in the discussion, you jump to the defensive "I'm just writing truisms".
The thing is: your inability to understand this is not my responsibility.
I am content with knowing what I know and more people joining this particular abstract group makes no difference to my wellbeing or sense of satisfaction.
You say that like it's a bad thing, and not the defining characteristic of an well educated and well rounded human.
One of the best ways humans have developed for information transfer is rhetorical debate. You're supposed to argue for whatever you believe in vehemently, but critically, abandoning it as much as necessary to adopt a better, more accurate understanding or model.
Unquestioned or unchallenged ideas are significantly less valuable than challenged or improved ones. Arguing for and defending what you know is a good thing, holding on to convictions that aren't improving your life or the life of others is fucking stupid. And the idea that you can't learn something from another human because the medium is the Internet, is certainly a take to read from someone making a comment on the internet.
I waver between "I'm not going to convince anyone anyway, and they'll retreat to their echo chamber and be right back where they were" and "The world would be better if we fight for what's right, and speech is the only ethical way to do that".
> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
I'm sure this is some sort of confirmation bias, I've noticed fewer stupid talking points for topics where I argue about online. I doubt it has any impact in people's political beliefs, but people end up being slightly less ideological and more hedgey. IMO, establishment figures are too dismissive about engaging with the public because they think they're above it, but this is how you end up with DOGE laying off departments only to beg for them back.
Also, honestly, I just enjoy the feeling of putting a dumb person in their place. Occasionally, I'm the dumb person, but I don't really mind that since I'm not really tied to any viewpoint. Being more informed also satisfies my mild superiority complex. Also, even if I don't learn from others, generally learn from the process of defining my arguments.
Check out the sceptic Sextus Empiricus. Hackett has a collection of his writings. Admittedly he was strongly opposed to the stoics as he considered them dogmatists, but at its heart scepticism is the idea that we should hold all arguments about non-evident things in suspension of judgement, because against any argument put forward we can balance an equally plausible argument. Instead, we should "turn our back upon the whole dispute and go back to talking and acting like a civilised, common-sensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist".
I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.
I will do that, thanks for the recommendation. Stoics are a mixed bag for me, I definitely had a better opinion of them before I actually read their works. Most of my journalling is about how blatantly obvious and non-helpful their writings often are, or how they miss the point. But there are certainly value in the general guidelines and they certainly have nuggets of value. I find they add flavor to my personal philosophy, but don't dictate it. After I get through my book of writings, I was planning on moving on to humanists and Camus.
Check out Ryan Holiday's books! There's the Daily Stoic that is a daily meditation on a stoic writing, one page to read and think about each day, and then there's also a journaling prompt one. I use the meditation book, and then often find Ryan Holiday's curation useful, but his trimming of context a bit too aggressive to give him the ability to put it all on one page, so I might read the source along with what is written there.
Most of the stoic writings are letters and aren't super long. They're very approachable!
>They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?
The outcome is not foretold. I have learned a lot from being corrected by someone who knows more than me or points out a fault in my assumptions/logic. I have also learned from seeing subject matter experts arguing with each other.
> You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling
Not always, but it is at least always entertainment. If the alternative you would have chosen is watching a mindless movie then you're no worse off.
> and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so.
It is inherently a solitary activity. You are right that the likelihood of a bystander gaining anything from it is nearly zero, but there was never any reason to think they would. It was never about them. Squabbling, as you call it, happens so you can learn about yourself.
The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.
So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)?
I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics.
No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.
But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy.
If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot.
So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this.
What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning.
> No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.
I disagree, and offer the world of 2026 as anecdotal evidence lol. Most of what you wrote implies that every person participates in arguments honestly, with full faith, and are both cognitively capable of, and actively willing to, receive, evaluate and ultimately accept the argument as a zero-sum "winner". In reality, illogical appeals to emotion tend to win the day.
This also kind of refuses to acknowledge that a lot of people simply don't feel the need to be right; some people move in silence, others just don't care for the friction, or need the accolades. Still others don't enjoy the company of self-righteous, unbending, argumentative people, or have wildly different perspectives on a topic due to life experiences that are unfathomable to the rest.
I believe that multiple things can often be right simultaneously, and it's exactly that kind of positive sum philosophy that drives the most argumentative and need-to-be-right people completely insane haha. Different strokes for different folks man.
> In reality, illogical appeals to emotion tend to win the day
Not to a neutral party. Debates and arguments that can change the course of a project happen in front of a neutral committee (ideally) in that case logic can win.
> This also kind of refuses to acknowledge that a lot of people simply don't feel the need to be right; some people move in silence, others just don't care for the friction, or need the accolades. Still others don't enjoy the company of self-righteous, unbending, argumentative people, or have wildly different perspectives on a topic due to life experiences that are unfathomable to the rest.
I didn’t refuse to acknowledge. Did you even read my post? I said people feel both. The need to argue and the need to avoid it. Most people feel it on sort of an even 5050 ground but there are some people who of course swing one way or the other. If you describe the human condition in general and not get into specifics or edge cases. Overall the most apt description is a duality.
> I believe that multiple things can often be right simultaneously, and it's exactly that kind of positive sum philosophy that drives the most argumentative and need-to-be-right people completely insane haha. Different strokes for different folks man.
Did you read my post? I feel you read the first part and felt the need to argue your point without consideration to the topic at hand. My entire post is about a conflicting duality when it comes to arguing. You embody your own stereotype you describe.
I almost never reply to replies on something that I wrote in a public forum, because I stand by what I wrote as a complete statement and don't feel the need to defend it further. In this particular case, because the whole topic is about "argument", I found it funny enough to break my own rule.
For what it's worth, I did read your post twice before I replied, just to see if I didn't get it on the first pass. What I took from it, and maybe I'm thick as molasses, was that humans defacto love to argue due to biological imperative, we stratify social value based on the success of arguments, and ultimately promote argument as a contact sport that you can dominate in for personal gain and personal validation. Dominate instead of mediate, which I've found through life experience to come most often from people who are deeply insecure with themselves.
When I came back to the thread, I noticed that the submission title had been updated to Most arguments are about ego, not ideas and saw your replies to my post + siblings, and felt like that new title encapsulated your responses perfectly. You and I simply disagree on the purpose and value of argument.
Persuasive people rarely argue. Persuasive people do not need to be unequivocally right. The most persuasive people do get what they want in the end, but you often don't even realize you've been persuaded.
Argumentative people leverage power if they have it, and data, and sometimes "win", but rarely succeed in persuasion.
And that's just my opinion! Feel free to disagree, I've no interest in an argument LOL
It’s just wording for the same thing. Arguments can be persuasive.
When you say you persuaded someone it meant you gave a persuasive argument. You’ve turned the discussion into word play but essentially we are in agreement that I am right. No need to argue when we both agree.
> The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right
Frequently accompanied by a feeling of despair when you are dominated by another.
> The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.
Dialog brings clarity. Clarity helps build tools. Tools help survival. So, if there is anything to seek, try clarity of understanding - not being right, and being right stands in the way of understanding.
> Frequently accompanied by a feeling of despair when you are dominated by another.
Take a few minutes to read the entire post. I talk about this. In fact the entire point of my post is about this. If you missed the point I can only assume you decided to respond without reading everything.
> Dialog brings clarity. Clarity helps build tools. Tools help survival. So, if there is anything to seek, try clarity of understanding - not being right, and being right stands in the way of understanding.
The dialog itself is not what I’m referring to. I’m referring to empathetic relation. This “dialog” or thread exists because participants in this thread relate to all the emotions described in said topic. Please finish reading my post before responding.
There's a lot of sloppy thinking in that post, starting with the pseudo-scientific framing in terms of evolutionary psychology... which is ironic given then ScIeNcE-bro tone... couched against an artificial and incorrect taxonomy of reason into "philosophical, logical and scientific"... in reality those are intersecting at times, orthogonal at others, and the devil is generally in the details... but it certainly doesn't make sense to impose some kind of juvenile "batman vs superman" power scaling hierarchy on top of them...
The reduction of the results of an argument to a binary win/loss between two people is probably the most humorously absurd bit. There are many outcomes of an argument. Sometimes it pivots research in a fruitful direction. Sometimes it leads to compromise. Sometimes parties talk past one another. Sometimes it serves to create an artifact for later analysis/reflection. Sometimes it causes us to pause and re-evaluate before acting. Sometimes it plants a seed that bears fruit later. Sometimes it strengthens both parties by refining their respective views. Sometimes it wastes everyone's time and nothing valuable comes of it.
Pursuit of knowledge or aligning action to truth isn't an arm-wrestling contest with winner-takes-all outcomes. That's just a silly framing that doesn't reflect reality, it's the kind of way you see the world of you aren't actually part of knowledge production and consume "debates" as influencer-slop from Ben Shapiro types.
I argue with people all the time. At work, with friends. It's generally a form of productive commerce. I see things one way and have knowledge/strengths that I bring to bear through my perspective. Others have their own knowledge/strengths. Working together, we might build a scalable data system, prioritize a road map, design a better game, make food decisions at a restaurant, have an enlightening political conversation, improve a speedrun. Whatever, the ends are various. The means are often spirited debate, in which, generally, everybody wins. That's just kind of the first principal of macro economic theory, if you need a bro-system to cash things out into.
This is kind of rude, implying I’m on drugs. It’s a cheap way to win an argument to sort of degrade your opponent before even talking.
I prefer to keep what’s underneath my post is as a discussion rather then play games or engage in arguments like this. So I’m sorry to say, everything you wrote underneath that initial paragraph you can just throw it in the trash because I’m not reading it. Apologies and thank you.
But I also got the feeling when reading this article that this guy loves motte-and-bailey. People don't intentionally set out to do motte-and-bailey arguments, but they often do it by accident. When people realize that they're arguing the losing side but can't admit it, they subtly shift their argument, and shift, and shift again until they're out of the bailey and inside the unassailable motte. Now they're the "winner" of the argument and can maintain their 100% argument success rate. Nice, and since nobody's recording the conversation, nobody can prove that they changed their argument in order to get on the winning side.
Motte-and-bailey is a common strategy for people who think they've won every argument they've ever been in. Nobody is so logically perfect that they actually win every argument without resorting to some kind of fallacy. I can't prove it. I just speak from experience. When I first learned about motte-and-bailey, I realized I had used it myself without realizing it. It's a natural tendency because it's so easy to do without really thinking.
Once we've learned all the fallacies and recognize them in ourselves, we finally realize that arguing is stupid and stop doing it so much. :)
Now listen, I think you are dead wrong about this.
:)
It's a healthy attitude I believe. I think a little argument is fine, but there does need to be a time when you learn to stop. A lot of people want to get the last word in and I'm at the point where I just let that happen generally (though I do often want that last word myself :) )
What I've found is that when an argument feels like it's running in a circle, that's the time to bow out. You don't need to say anything or point anything out, just stop responding. The person with the last word doesn't automatically "win" and you certainly aren't always the one to "win". Winning doesn't really matter, the argument and the persuasion of the readers of the comment chain is what matters more.
But also real life isn't the internet and how you write shouldn't mirror how you talk. I have loads of family members I disagree with, and we do argue about hot button issues. But everyone approaches it with a "we love each other" and we listen and respond to what's being said. In fact, I generally make it a point in conversation to find common ground and agree with the person I'm talking to. Unlike an internet comment train where I know I'm probably going to disappear from memory, with real relationships I know I'll see my family again, a lot.
Or, if that reply link/button doesn't show up, click on the timestamp of the comment you wish to rebut/remark/comment, then you will see a comment box with button.
I think the parent's point is that if you are genuinely open to losing, the arguments can be productive because you can learn something instead... So stopping arguments is just another way of closing yourself off.
> They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Sometimes it's worth considering what the effort is on. Another assumption is that you should effort is in convincing someone rather than understanding them: play dumb on the topic, and perhaps ask the other person questions to see why they think the thing(s) they do.
Knowing other people's cognitive blindspots may help you avoid them yourself. Perhaps make the effort on understanding.
Language is a flawed vessel for conveying truth and the more people accept that they will never truly (like at a deep, fundamental level - not just truth-like via utility) be understood or understand, the more humility they might approach difficult discussions with, potentially facilitating the cooperation and coordination that language can be great for, rather than the dharma-combat people’s egos have them fighting every time they perceive a verbal slight or challenge.
> Now, I will attempt to put down my phone and not respond to any replies I get to the contrary.
I know you were joking, but you should try it sometimes. It's very cathartic to get things out of your system and then ignore any replies. It's my default mode.
I often write a comment in a thread here and, satisfied I got it out of my head, hit the back button without hitting reply. I know, you might look at my comment history and say I don't do that enough, but imagine how bad it would be if I always replied!
I've done this, and even more: very often lately I've written a response on HN, let it sit for a few minutes, then delete it.
Not because I think I'm right (I think I'm aware of my flaws), but because I realize I don't feel like arguing about it, maybe my reply is closer to a belief of mine I've no wish to defend, and I suspect any snarky replies might incite a bad back-and-forth that never ends well online, bet it HN or elsewhere. So having gotten the reply out of my system, I delete it before anyone has a chance to reply.
Somehow my brain gets tricked into thinking I've replied, and allows me to drop the whole conversation in peace. It's a neat trick.
Also, even if you can't resist looking, not replying to every single person arguing against your position is a powerful tool on the internet.
If you're right, or at least, not making a complete ass of yourself, chances are someone else is going to come along and argue back for you. And besides the benefit that someone else will likely explain your position in a slightly different way, and the multiple POVs might combine more effectively, having a half dozen people explain to someone why they're wrong is a lot more convincing to random bystanders than two morons replying "nuh-uh" to each other a few dozen times.
And if no one jumps in to defend you, it's a pretty good signal to step back and re-read everything and have a good think before you have another go at it, at least to make sure you have something to add beyond what you have already said, even if you think you're still right.
> fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you
Fighting every battle is toxic. But calling something out doesn’t need to be a fight. I’m still halfway convinced a lot of Silicon Valley’s success derived from having lots of folks on the spectrum who wouldn’t bat an eye at calling out the CEO for making a mistake. (And said CEO, and everyone around them, having to get accustomed to that.)
I generally agree with the sentiment but the one element I haven’t been able to quite square with it all is how internet debates are about the other people reading. So when someone says something wildly inaccurate/messed up about a topic, say DEI or something, when nobody pushes back and/or they don’t have their comment sufficiently downvoted (if possible) there is an implied “they are right.” Believe it or not a lot of people reading forums are still forming opinions!
To use a charged example but maybe less controversial than DEI on HN, let’s say it’s some ridiculous claim about vaccines (“they cause autism.”) The reason harmful ideas like that spread is because people throw them out online and other people online read them/hear them. I have a hard time believing that loud, public pushback isn’t important. If it’s not, then making those loud, public claims initially wouldn’t be so effective. Grifters making money off scaring people away from life saving vaccines and towards their snake oil supplements wouldn’t be successful if these platforms didn’t convince people. But I also acknowledge that it’s not necessarily my place and it’s not good for my mental health to participate.
So I don’t really know what the answer is. But it just doesn’t feel right to let some of that stuff just sit out in public unchallenged. I know a lot of what I think comes from being “a child of the Internet.” There’s no doubt my personal experience on the Internet was fundamental to my more progressive values I now hold. So again, I have no clue what the answer is here or whose responsibility it is.
Debating is always primarily a game of power and only secondarily about truth or correctness. If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.
But it’s not about truth, it’s about imposing your beliefs on others. And while rational arguments are a socially blessed method for doing so, they don’t change the underlying motivation.
This is true for a very narrow definition of debate though. At work, choosing to debate can make the difference between a software design that solves the problem vs one that doesn't. Deploying code that causes an incident vs lands safely.
In broader life, public debate can reveal new arguments to seeking minds, help influence and educate people other than the debaters. It can even grow the debaters themselves if they approach with the right humility.
That said, many do approach debate in the way you describe. For those of us trying to avoid futile debate in favor of productive debate, the best choice is to detect these bad faith actors, acknowledge the bad faith publicly, and pull away
> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right...
So... how would someone know if they're right? For starters, if we're going to be serious there are a lot of matters where there isn't even such a thing as "right" because the question is how to decide what to optimise for. But more importantly, if you rely on the inside of your own head to try and arrive at the truth the most likely outcome is slop. One of the best parts of being argumentative is finding out what the holes in a view are really quickly.
There seem to be views in the comments and original article that arguments are to be won rather than undertaken and reviewed. They're a man-vs-self story, not man-vs-man one.
> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.
Disagree, if you care about truth, you're not going to just let people spread any opinion as if it were fact. It has societal consequences. That way lies the dark ages, witch hunts, wrong people getting into power. Of course one needs to be judicious in which battles to fight.
If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place
It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.
Yes, my thought exactly.. In my experience it is always how you behave when arguing. If you "blame" the other will become defensive and nothing is accomplished. If you generalize and and talk in a helpful supportive way they will see their fault themselves and correct the fault. I usually get most on my side. We openly discuss and I genuinely look for faults in my own arguments too.
This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.
One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"
> The problem is that the author may have been right
Even worse, it's very likely the author wasn't even right most of the time. They claim a frequent occurrence is that "the room" turns against them. Now, their rationalization is that they are ego-driven, yadda yadda, no other possibility of why "the room" is often against their position. If they were rational as they claim to be, maybe they could show some insight or introspection into the possibility they are wrong about some or all of the details, at least some of the time.
But no, their conclusion is that humans are ego-driven and it's best to disengage and only debate with truly smart people.
This reminds me of the joke about the guy who's driving and hears a warning on the radio: "beware of a madman driving the wrong way on Av XYZ", and he replies "ONE madman!? There are HUNDREDS of them!"
I see your cynicism and it could be correct, I'm not sure. I also could see it being as described but irrelevant in the manager's mind who knows about the pending sale that will put off the pending funding cliff and company collapse. I could also see that the person is, as admitted, technically correct but being such a jerk that no one is interested in letting them have increased influence. So many other possibilities.
Regardless, this story about the situation, especial if true, seems less likely to support them in seeing a richer tapestry of considerations and perspectives.
One thing I genuinely try to do is fully grasp the other persons points, and eventually I back away from an argument because some people will not change their minds, but I do try to have a take away. I also admit if I'm wrong, I hate when people don't do this just to spite you during an argument. I don't care about being proven wrong, especially if we're discussing tech, please show me why I'm wrong, otherwise, if you're wrong, don't take it personal.
Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I'm 52, and over my lifetime I felt that there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff. And, while I agree with the author's approach to let people learn from the consequences of their mistakes, what if the consequences of their mistakes (or the mistakes of the people they elect) affect all of us?
I used to work in politics, where sadly, the goal is to change people's opinions. At this level I did succeed in changing many opinions.
The most effective way to change an individual's opinion is to calmly provide facts to them without commentary or judgement. No insults, no judgement, no snark. Just calmly engage with their points and empathise with them. Most opinions are formed without knowing all the facts. Presenting facts without attacking their ego is the best path for changing an opinion.
This works best on unfamiliar topics people don't yet have strong feelings about. With opinion formation, the side to set the first emotional frame has the advantage. This is why in a referendum campaign it's so critical your message reaches voters before the other side can define the ballot question.
Other things I learned
- Good marketers in politics understand psychology. Repeat exposure better encodes a message into memory. For political ads this means repeating the same key phrases/words over and over again, to a degree you and I would find weird, to ensure you encode them into the viewer's memory. With enough repeat exposure, people feel like the ideas are their own.
- Never repeat your opponent's framing of a lie. To debunk a lie: use a "truth" sandwich. State your truth first -- first frame gets the advantage. Next describe the lie in less incendiary words, debunk it, then repeat your frame on the issue repeatedly.
- Politicians start every day with coordinated key talking points for media interviews because message repetition = encoding.
- Referendum ads are particularly crazy because they have no candidate reputation to protect. They do not need to be reasonable or respectable. A referendum ad's sole purpose is to persuade with the most emotionally resonant messages it can to encode key messages/frames of thinking. Being controversial just helps to create more exposure and people seeing your message. If everybody in the media is "debating" the merits of your message frame you are winning. People vote on the issue, not on the campaign team. E.g. If an ad says X will lead to extremist neo-nazi soldiers goose-stepping the streets, people will scoff at the hyperbole while it still subconsciously encodes into them that maybe I don't want something that risks instability.
- Politics is tribal and people follow the support signals sent by elites on their favoured side. Powerful elites speaking out in favour or against something/someone greatly changes its support among coalitions.
I honestly think a lot of the flat earther types in particular are basically trolls and/or enjoy being stubborn/argue about common knowledge, for no other reason because they can.
I think it used to be like that but then a lot of people were actually convinced, or people who already actually believed it were attracted to the parody argument.
The flat earther I knew was sincere. He had fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole after decades of religious indoctrination had dulled his critical thinking skills.
Another religious friend became a 9/11 truther and Elon-stan (post cave diver).
For a time, I honestly believed the Earth may be only 6K years old because of the magic sky being and similar indoctrination.
> ... there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff.
I think there are multiple things here that need to be disentangled. The first is that just because science "proves" something that doesn't mean the political, civil, or economic path is nearly as clear cut. While there certainly are people who just deny these things outright there's also the camp that accepts the scientific result but disputes how to deal with it as a society.
Second I've seen an alarming rise in what I would characterize as scientism, a belief structure around science itself where the "acolytes" of science do not understand the science themselves, but use it to reinforce their own worldview in the same way that deniers (heretics really) use other sources to reinforce their worldview. I have seen this play out within my own social circle as people will defer to experts as if they are a clerical class with divine authority to determine ultimate truth. To give an example in a much less controversial arena, how often have you witnessed people adopting fad diets because the "science" shows X is good even though the actual backing papers, that no adopter has read, are much more murky at best? This is an understandable consequence of having a limited lifespan where not everyone can know everything therefore heuristics must be used to comprehend the world, but the flexible heuristic which can lead to a change of opinion can be swapped out for a rigid belief that permits no change of opinion unfortunately.
Last I think this ultimately stems from what F.A. Hayek called constructivist rationalism[1], the idea that we can rationally construct our own social order. I share your own concern about mistakes that affect all of us specifically regarding philosophies that adopt constructivist rationalism such as the family of collectivist ideologies (socialism and the like) which are currently on the rise. My conclusion is that civilizations will evolve according to the culmination of all individual actors' actions and I personally have a limited role to play, although I am a classical liberal. Your last question unfortunately can lead some to conclude that a much more dictatorial society is necessary to produce a result that may itself not be possible and instead lead to an even worse result than the alternative.
[1] I highly recommend The Fatal Conceit by Hayek if you want to challenge assumptions your own worldview likely rests on without even knowing it.
Thats the thing. We never really know if there will be consequences. If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election. If Trump becomes president democracy is dead! I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
> If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election.
What if a climate denier became/becomes president? What would be the consequences?
And not just on the planet but more locally: the folks that have to deal with hurricanes or wildfires? What happens to insurance rates? What happens if we stay very dependent on petroleum, and oil prices spike? What happens to people's cost of living (esp. food, which is transported by truck and use oil in fertilizer)?
It does matter because if the former then the people will sit back and watch, but if the later they will rake the president through the coals until he complies with the wishes of his employer, making any personal views immaterial. That said, I think what your comment implies gives us the answer to the original question.
> I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
Um.
What?
As a conservative-leaning registered Republican, I think Trump has brought the US the closest it's been to self-destruction since the Civil War.
His administration has authorized heinous human rights violations repeatedly, and has prevented "law enforcement" agents who killed innocent civilians from being brought to trial multiple times:
The administration has violently pushed away most of its historical allies, and is going to enjoy the privilege of trying to stumble through the world on its own for quite a while.
The economy looks good on paper, but that's almost entirely due to the current genAI bubble, not any intelligent economic choices by the president's office.
Most recently, the utterly idiotic ruination of the reflecting pool in DC, and subsequent insane claims that it was intentionally destroyed by the administration's critics is emblematic of the stupidity and self-destruction inflicted on the nation by President Trump. It's a small thing, compared to many of the issues, but it illustrates the harmful behavioral patterns in a crystal-clear manner:
I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.
> simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack
I think that's because that often is a prelude to an attack.
I know someone who mainly asks for explanations or justifications when they're getting angry about something (and it's obvious). There's high chance the next thing that will happen is some kind of outburst (or quiet seething resentment). With them, the question "why did you do X?" almost never has any element of curiosity to it.
There are certainly lines you don't want to cross if you want to avoid conflicts, and there are ways to ask questions nicely. Maybe it's a professional bias, but when you work in research or engineering, I think it's pretty normal to ask questions or push back on strong claims without proofs, without necessarily sounding like a jerk.
I think I managed to upset people on several occasions as I was just genuinely trying to understand their opinion on some topics.
Or people who pick a nit and then when it turns out the nit they picked wasn't even a nit, they double down and pick an even smaller it and split ever smaller hairs because they just cannot function if they don't "Win" every discussion
It's insane how reluctant some people are just to say "Oh maybe I was wrong or misunderstood"
The problem is conflict avoidance behavior. We are hardwired to prevent conflict with the in-group (family/clan) to prevent loss of life due to strife - at the same time that does not hold up for the out-group.
This could work with someone you don’t know well and should be the default approach. But you also need to trust your instinct and know when debating it’s not worth pursuing. It could be a coworker you have known for years who has certain toxic attitude. Humans are complex beings, we don’t know what’s going on with other people’s lives and minds. It takes years of dedicated study and experience to attempt to understand other people’s issues. You are not going to suddenly become a psychologist or behavioral therapist by just listening and kindly discussing. Some of these attitudes have an underlying problem that has nothing to do with work, it could be upbringing or mental health, or a combination. It just happens that Software Engineers may be more likely to suffer from these problems than people in other professions, just by the nature of it.
There's no mention of anything slightly anecdotal so we could produce our own opinions, so we have to take everything at face value. But even then, if if the author we're completely right technically, he is completely wrong and still is, because it's much more important for the author to change minds than it is to stick with his duty. It's just someone unaware of their own ego thinking there is no ego just because he feels like he is right all the time.
I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.
It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.
Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.
When you say you "give it back the same," are you saying you also are savage in reviewing their PRs, or that you are savage when replying negatively to their feedback?
If just the former, I strongly disagree that the two of you are arguing.
Mostly the former, but occasionally it goes back and forth for awhile as alignment need ironing out. That's the other thing about engineering arguments: both people are aligned in seeing an end result. People in online arguments don't have mutual alignment for a good outcome so they go nowhere.
and honestly, i think we need more of this online. we shouldn’t feel this incessant need to constantly chirp back at someone if we think they’re wrong.
i’d personally like to see us get to a place where we say more often “huh. i disagree with that person and that’s ok” and move on with our day.
i do find it worrying how we get … twitchy … if we can’t respond to literally everything.
I think you are spot on. Also if you are actively listening you may learn that the fault is in how you are communicating your ideas instead of the ideas themselves being flawed
You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.
And yet, a statement is a position, and this blog is stating his case, which is an argument for truth.
So he's still arguing, yet not listening, as it's all one sided now. This isn't actually that unusual, books, newspapers, and more often do one way communication.
But as soon as you state a position, you're arguing it.
> as soon as you state a position, you’re arguing it.
That’s true, but is that the meaning of argue that the author was referring to? Do you see a difference between arguing for something (making a case) and arguing with someone (contradicting them and saying they’re wrong)?
Everything you speak, utter, or do is an output your self-centric view of the world. By uttering anything, you are describing yourself in relation to the world.
Your very existence is an argument against chaos. Your very individuality is an argument against other individualities.
By simply existing, you argue your conscious view of the world.
Even silence in response to a comment, statement, or idea espoused around you is in itself an argument.
Waking up in the morning is an argument.
These are all arguments, in that you believe these are the right things to do. You are taking a position merely by moving your arm because you believe that is the thing that you should do.
Every conscious thought you have is an argument, that said thought is correct.
Even your assertion that someone is not arguing, is an argument.
Not arguing is an argument, for it is a position against arguing the point.
The universe is defined by order. Order is defined by conscious determination. Conscious determination is an argument for something being correct.
Our very existence, spewing from the quantum foam, is the result of us having a conscious and argumentative determination that we exist. Cease to argue, and you may merely dissipate into individual atoms!
By your logic no one should ever talk in meetings or write blog posts or comments (like yours) - stating any case about anything constitutes "not listening." Bollocks. A good listener spends a lot of time listening, but can spend some time talking.
I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.
Exactly. You assume and imply for most of your comment that the OP is wrong about his premise.
But people aren’t equally wrong about things. Some people are more right more often. So how should your POV change if you accept his premise that he’s usually right in these situations? Then could you make a fair reading of his post?
Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).
I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.
>They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right
Everybody assumes they're right when they argue, else they wouldn't be arguing their points.
So for the point this post makes whether they're right or wrong during those times, doesn't matter. Even if they 100% were (by some freak natural phenomenon) always right, the points they make about not arguing would still be valid.
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme. There are countless facts, indisputably so. Gravity, death, the fact you wrote me an answer, the fact I'm writing you an answer. These aren't opinions
Objective reality is complex and hard to explain or list all the facts in a single argument session. People are also good at cherry picking the facts they agree with and disregarding other related facts. As others wrote, there are also bunch of trade offs, not many subjects have clear and low amount of facts that everyone can agree upon. People tend to argue most about society rather than theoretical math or physics. Like you can argue about what is the perfect form of government but you also have to account for the people who are part of the governing and being governed, they are not ideal actors, so the practical reality isn't straightforward.
Coming back, what is objective reality, anyway? Each person perceives the reality differently. And if you go down to measure single basic part of the reality you will find out the act of measurement already changes the outcome. Or we can agree about the final, ideal state but not how to get there.
True, but isn’t the problem here that even though there are many facts, no one of us knows most of those facts with absolute certainty, and we learned them from other people, therefore we primarily hold opinions about facts as opposed to know them first hand.
My experience of gravity correlates with the explanation I was given in physics class, but I haven’t myself proven anything about it, and I just trust other people’s stories when they tell me gravity affects light or time.
I think about this often when contemplating arguments; there’s almost nothing I personally know first hand. Like you I believe in facts, but I recognize that I’m not the source of most facts, and I’m relaying a story someone else told me. I’m guessing this is one of the reasons facts can be so easily argued, because there are gaps between facts being established and facts being told and shared. Like, it’s pretty common for scientific research results to be oversimplified and told & shared in a way that doesn’t capture the entire truth, right?
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme.
No, I am not arguing against the existence of an objective reality. I argue against the capability of most people to accurately assess what that objective reality is. You for example apparently cannot even assess the meaning of my clear and simple sentence, why would I trust you to be able to assess any more complex situation?
I can be absolutely certain of my perception and recollection of what my consciousness is experiencing and has experienced.
Note that the truth of this statement does not depend on any certainty about external reality, nor does it depend on certainty that what I perceive or remember is happening or actually happened.
> nor does it depend certainty that what I perceive or remember is what is
It absolutely assumes a unitary conscious experience versus what increasingly seems to be the case, a bunch of narratives our brains thread into a cohesive story ex post facto.
Put another way, there very well may be hard limits to how much a human-like consciousness can understand itself.
I guess my argument is you can’t be absolutely certain about what your internal reality is. Perception, as a measure, even when pointed entirely internally, is fundamentally fuzzy.
There people that gravity doesn’t exist and it’s some kind of buoyancy.
Death as the final end of existence? There are many religions that claim that isn’t true.
Nowadays it’s even harder who wrote what but next week if I don’t find that text again, can I be sure it was written or could be just in a dream?
Ad 2, How do you define it, precisely? Today we have the technology to keep the body alive even if it would stop functioning long time ago on it's own. Is the person still alive? Is the body still alive? Some bodies need permanent technical devices to be able to live, yet they can reach high age. Is it cheating or not?
Let me be annoying and tell you about your second point as I don't really understand your first one. Your perspective is that of a living looking at a dead body. Death itself though isn't an experience of life, Meaning that we can't really talk about what happens after we die. We just don't know and we probably can't know what or how death is. So any answer goes, really. I mean you are right uncertainty doesn't exclude objective reality, but my question in an argument would be: What do you even mean by objective reality?
When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.
[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.
i disagree that it' warming, so where do you start with me? I'm not being coy, i 100% believe that all of the warming detected is strictly down to poor placement of sensors and incorrect assumptions thereof in the resultant data. So what we will end up arguing about, if we get past that particularity of my thoughts, is about models. And i hate arguing about models.
edit: i think probably the cities are getting "warmer" but that's not climate change that's city change. In that cities are growing, generally, with more stuff paved over. We need to plant more trees and have less concrete/asphalt in cities if we want to reverse this trend. also less people, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Thought I addressed this in my original comment but to make it clear, this is typically where I choose to withdraw from any debate. This is where I would typically take the advice in the article.
I don’t want to convince anyone the data is there and believable or even that even lacking any structured data or scientific method it just seems like a sensible explanation of actual witnessed events. How does polar and glacier ice disappear in such a short time if the climate is not warming? Why are there so many habitats exhibiting “heat stress” that is seen impacting plants/animals/etc? All far away from the concrete heat sinks you mention.
> Why are there so many habitats exhibiting “heat stress” that is seen impacting plants/animals/etc? All far away from the concrete heat sinks you mention.
offhand, if you're looking for heat stress because your funding was granted so you can find heat stress, you're probably going to find heat stress.
My issue is with models. there are models that disagree with the models that the ICCC is using, and models that disagree with both. Are we exiting a global mini ice age? are we about to enter another more severe ice age? the past 50-60 years has been tedious to try and track which way the climate is going.
Do you doubt that greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere have gone up since humans started burning fossil fuels, and do you doubt the physics of how they trap solar radiation? Do you doubt that climate scientists know how to put sensors in the oceans, in rural areas and released in weather balloons along with satellites to measure temperatures across the planet year by year? Or that they can extract ice cores to measure trapped atmospheric gas from thousands of years ago? That sort of thing.
Do I need to hold the opinion that water is wet for it to be factual?
To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".
Yes it's a scientific fact humans have been causing the current warming by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revoluton.
You can make skeptical arguments against this is you're willing to dismiss empirical data and methodology behind scientific facts. The people who do this aren't consistent and cherry pick which empirical data, models and methodologies to dismiss. It tends to align with some belief challenged by the science. Or their financial interests.
It's much harder to be a consistent skeptic, since empirical data is verifiable, and the scientific method works for all sorts of fields and technologies. But it could all be dream of a mental patient in a simulation god programmed while making a bet with the devil.
So it's only a fact if you can verify it, and not if the scientific community can? And you're consistent about this via all scientific findings you haven't verified like the balance in your bank account? You reject as fact any astronomical data or microscopic results you haven't seen with your own eyes? Or any satellite data you haven't analyzed yourself?
Not sure where you are getting this at and what does "scientific community" have to do with anything? There are things that are play and simply facts that are absolute and unquestionable. And then there are things that are open for debate because they are not facts. "Climate change is man-made" is so broad that a 10-year old can easily debate both sides of that argument.
Climate change being man made is a scientific fact as in humans are driving the majority of warming since the industrial revolution by pumping increasing amounts of green house gases in the atmosphere. This warming is simple physics even if the effect on weather is complex. Venus is an example of run-way greenhouse warming.
A ten year old can debate what they want, opinions don't change scientific facts (burning fossil fuels puts greenhouse gases in the air which trap heat from the sun). Consensus meaning most most climatologists agree on what the data and models are telling them.
There are not two sides to the basic facts of the matter (complexities around which models are more accurate or what society should do is a separate matter).
>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
>Arthur: And are you?
>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.
>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.
Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.
I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.
And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.
Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.
There are so many reasons for this. Most people have a real job and want to meet friends in the evening, not challengers. Debating someone with your rules in mind that the others didn't learn also feels like slapping someone who's unarmed. It's even less fun on the receiving end. In jobs, there's now something riding on arguments; In academia you just debate the death sentence or the draft and call it a day. At work if you accept this kid of argument and lose, are you expected to spend the next months implementing someone's else's idea you don't like? In any case, most arguments are futile, since the position you're arguing for is kind of arbitrary and pulling arguments out of a hat doesn't really improve them.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper. With the second, there is no answer being sought, only a self to be defended. Knowing which conversation you’re in is half the battle. The other half is having the discipline to walk away from the second one.
This is something I've learned over the last year and it's made life a lot better.
Once you detect that you're having a battle of egos (not minds/ideas), cut and run is the next best step. I've internalized a little mantra I start saying to myself as soon as I catch it: "they want the fight, you don't." Repeating that internally made it very easy to move away from arguing with others all of the time and knowing when to move away from people who just want to fight to fight.
"Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it."
Most people make their ideas and opinions part of their identity. And so if it turns out they are wrong about something then a part of them has died, or at least severely injured and needs to be healed. A few people are not like this and their ideas are more like a collection of trading cards they keep in their pocket. They think they have a pretty good collection but are not opposed to throwing out one for another if they find something more valuable.
The latter types are the only ones who you can have honest intellectual debates with.
Some people have a consensus-based mechanism for identifying if something is true or moral or fashionable. They basically believe whatever is the majority opinion, weighted for perceived social status or expertise or whatever else. I think this is normal for most non-technical people who don't have strong critical thinking skills themselves. So they outsource all the heavy thinking to the society at large.
In my workplace we argue without ego and with the assumption that we are working together to find the best way to do something. If someone realizes that the other person is right, they will say something like "Ah, OK, yes that's true..." and from that point on it stops being an argument and becomes a collaboration where both of us examine the correct position to make sure we're clear on it and its potential downfalls.
Reading this article has me a bit surprised, and the culture the author describes does not sound like an engineering culture to me. I am a bit saddened to think that people have to work in such an environment, and I am curious what it would take to change such an environment for the better.
Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.
If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.
And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.
I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.
I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.
"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."
I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.
Lot to unpack and there is some real gold here (at least for me).
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet. Only yourself.
A few years ago, working at $PREVIOUS_COMPANY, we had 4-5 hours of company-sponsored time with a a coach/counselor and she also said those words to me. It's something that hit something inside myself and it's really, really true and... liberating, when you fully embrace it. Especially when you are a parent, but also in many other situations. You cannot change the others. You can only change yourself.By changing yourself MAYBE you might influence others - especially kids, by being a virtuous example, and they can decide to follow what you do.
But changing people, let alone by arguing, that's impossible and will only cause you frustration.
"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
Also, attributed to him - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
― George Bernard Shaw
Yeah, I also got suspicious and checked it with Pangram. Sadly 100% AI. Perhaps it still has good points, but my heart drops whenever I sniff the AI prose. I can just query Claude or ChatGPT myself, you know?
That was my impression in the past as well, but by all accounts pangram works well, at least at the moment.
It also seems quite plausible that it can be made to work by training on a lot of model output. Most of us already have become very sensitive to the various idiosyncrasies of model writing, after all. They have a very distinctive style.
It turns out AI writes like that because humans write like this. It seemed like AI to me too but when I read all of it, it definitely does not seem like AI anymore, just the style of self help blog post seem a couple decades ago.
There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.
Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.
I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.
But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.
> I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support
Naturally. What purpose would arguing for what you support serve anyway? The only value argument can offer is an opportunity for you to take an opposing view and try to defend it in order to challenge your preconceived notions. It is pointless to repeat what you already know and believe is over and over again. You already have that information.
There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":
* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.
* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.
I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.
The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.
One thing that I find helps is just avoiding the word "why" as well. Restructuring to say "how come" or "I'm wondering..." or "am I understanding right that..." helps avoid putting people on their guard.
The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost.
Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.
I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.
The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.
I adopted a behaviour at work that if I am fairly convinced about X ending up being wrong, and I see that trying X is not too costly (esp compared to arguing about it), then I just let X eventually fail, and take it from there, already knowing why this happened.
People seem to learn better this way, and there is no better argument than reality itself. Of course it cannot be used everywhere, eg if trying X until it fails takes too long, if it involves buying an expensive machine that we will not be able to change etc, but there is a good portion of stuff it can actually reduce interpersonal friction on. And the process of changing from X to Z happens organically that sometimes I don't even have to explicitly say that "I knew all along" (though I must admit I derive an internal satisfaction that I knew all along).
It was a time when at work there was a widespread interpersonal tension between everyone, and reducing interpersonal friction was more important than spending more or less time on sth that would not work. I dont think arguing and discussing things are to be avoided per se, but in certain circumstances, if one knows that a team will eventually go down on path Z anyway due to necessity, it may not be worth arguing about at all.
I read “how to win friends and influence others” many times but didn’t realize the main lesson is not to argue. That is until I reached 40. So, some lessons will take certain age to understand. I bet the OP is not in their 20s or 30s even.
I think an important realisation for me was this: peoples' egos being involved in their arguments, people being irrational, and so on, these are not merely deviations from an ideal rational self that we could reach were we to put enough effort in. It is just how people are. There's a word for it: politics.
Once I started looking for it, I started noticing some of my colleagues' abilities to navigate their way through meetings and disagreements and getting their way without things even becoming arguments, the ability of some people to just put a room at ease or to communicate. And the inability of others to do so.
"Politics" is an unsavory term for somebody with engineering predilections. It evokes backhandedness and self-interest. But you can't actually both be a human being and be "above it". Every sentence, no matter how concrete and technical, is a social act with social ramifications.
I've come to have a lot of respect for people who are actually able to lead and make things happen. It is not a skill I am terribly practiced with.
This is epic:
"People Are Not Rational
We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Absolutely! And if you are seeing out opposite points of view, don’t underestimate the power of being (or appearing to be) ignorant and/or wrong. Of course, the article’s conclusion about just asking questions, instead of trying to contradict, is also a very good way to seek out points of view and also keep people talking, without making them angry or shut down…
This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.
1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.
2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.
I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).
If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.
I realized many arguments end up not well because we keep focusing on the wrong thing and neglect the question that actually matter: why do you believe in what you believe; asking people to define the terms they use is also helpful and forces them to be precise and think more about their beliefs, which a healthy thing to do.
People are often much nicer than we think when we approach them with kindness and they can see in our eyes that we actually care about them and not just winning.
Yet at the same time we need to lower our expectations. Because we need to be kind to ourselves, otherwise we would feel too frustrated.
I'm talking about daily life arguments. In some online arguments or public debates, sometimes you need to be harsher to protect others from what you claim and believe is wrong.
Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.
I experienced myself at least two of those points. In different words:
Never teach to people that did not ask you to teach them. They will not listen to you. They will forget. They will not thank you. Time wasted. As a corollary, I'm sorry for most teachers at school and even at universities.
You can change your mental state. A friend of mine told me about 3 years ago "When X happens I can't change the way I react" and she was not necessarily reacting in a good way. My answer was "Your mental state is the only thing you can control." She stopped talking and started thinking. I don't know if it had an effect. Changing the way one reacts to a stimulus takes time and effort but it can be done.
One point that was not addressed is the sorry feeling one gets when others are wrong and you are right, but for whatever reason you cannot convince them otherwise, and as a consequence they are going to go in a direction that they will severely regret, or would regret if they survived it, entirely foreseeable (sadly).
I have often had to tell myself "I wish they had listened to me." or, not quite "I wish I was wrong", but at least "I regret that I was right." because it led to a situation where someone suffered without objective need for it. Only a jerk
would proudly state "Ha, of course I was right, they should have listened to me."
Haidt, in his great book "The Righteous Mind," has been arguing that reasoning evolved not to discover truth but to win arguments. There's a lot of scientific research backing his idea.
Haidt's metaphor is the rider and the elephant: the elephant (intuition) leans, and the rider (reasoning) invents the justification afterward and then defends it like a lawyer, not a truth-seeker.
Intelligence doesn't fix this - it just makes people better at coming up with hard-to-defeat arguments; that explains why smart people disagree all the time.
I once had a manager who was extremely quiet and very good at winning arguments. They too would never argue. Instead they would present themselves in as supportive of a way as possible, and then just ask questions. There was never a point in the questioning where he would declare you made a mistake. Instead, he would just remain silent and maybe write something down. It was astonishing to watch. There was no counter to it. Maybe the clock, but he was persistent too, like Colombo.
It's always worth going back to evolution and thinking about why we do things.
Reasoning came through evolution when we learned to communicate and needed to give reasons for things, not because we needed to figure out how to do things.
Caveman you, steals Caveman Dave's berries. You need to give Caveman Dave a good reason for why you did this, else you get bonk on head.
This explains a lot. The brain decides what it wants AND only then, does it decide the reasons why it wants it. It's a justification and excuse making machine.
Which is why people will argue and twist any fact or truth to match what they believe, they don't come up with what they believe through logic, they use logic to try and come up with a reason for what they believe.
When you really stop to think about that, it changes everything and explains a lot.
(This is outlined in the book The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding)
That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.
Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.
I have tried my best to stop arguing period.
I am not the poster boy you want for your cause.
I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.
What I do now:
Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.
For example:
I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.
---
Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!
There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.
A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.
- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.
- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.
- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.
- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.
Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.
> Once you accept this, arguing with logic starts to look absurd. You’re bringing a proof to a feeling. The proof is airtight. The feeling doesn’t read.
> There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic.
Humans don't write like this. "The feeling doesn't read" is nonsense.
I've met quite a few people who see themselves as rare rational individuals in a world full of irrational, emotion-driven people. In each case, when I've gotten to know them better, I realize they actually have pretty low awareness of their own emotions and are as prone to irrational outbursts as anyone.
Saying something like this signals to me not that you've achieved mastery of your emotions, but rather that you haven't even learned to notice when you're having them.
Or, perhaps you're just an AI operating autonomously and in fact have no emotions, in which case well played for making it to the top of HN and successfully wasting my time.
I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.
It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.
I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.
The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.
This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.
I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.
I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.
I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.
If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.
The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.
> Most people don’t reason their way to conclusions and then feel accordingly. They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling.
That is how sales work, if someone is ever interested in increasing sales and one of the pieces of advice that opened my eyes the most. It is like the argument: hey, stop reasoning about features with your potential customer and making them bored: make an impact, something that creates reaction. Good or bad (bad is even better than indifferent sometimes).
Something that provokes emotion. Otherwise they are going to be indifferent.
They are not going to end up buying bc of the features most of the time anyway when there are ten or fifteen similar. They will do it bc you cause some kind of emotional impact, be that trust, authority or something else, though those ones are pretty important.
That blog post is technically correct but not very human. To be curious human to me means questioning other people why they believe what they believe and trying to understand their thinking about it. Of course not always there's good place to have such open minded discussion. If one side, or both sides are only talking and not listening to each other it's pointless monologue and waste of time. It's not helpful to state bunch of facts and let the other person "deal with it". As it's pointed out, often people want to just share something and aren't interested to be lectures or have their opinion changed, that can come later with some introspection, when ready. Personally I wouldn't want to talk to someone who thinks they know it all already and are looking only for arguments.
> There is no “right” without a “wrong” to make it right
> Once I stopped treating correctness as an absolute, I stopped needing to win.
> Arguments Are About Ego
> They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling
> let people meet their own consequences, because that’s the only teacher they’ll actually listen to.
> when someone [asks], I give everything I have.
> Let people disagree. Their disagreement is where the money, and the meaning, is.
> Every hour spent trying to change someone who didn’t ask is an hour stolen from the one person (yourself) you can change
I am sure each person will extract different lessons here from their walk of life, but as an engineer the lines above are a watershed moment on how to view the world. Engineers are quite intelligent creative people who have big dreams. And sometimes in pursuit of those dreams with a feeling of intelligence we swim in creativity ... and put ourselves in a God-complex. We don't judge humans appropriately when we are in this God-complex.
1. Appreciate the wrong. It is a different way of thinking.
2. Stop trying to win. This is not a fight.
3. Arguments are about ego, but ego is about defending yourself. So arguments are really in self-defense.
4. If someone has more emotion than intelligence at a given moment, ignore their ideas. It doesn't count. It is clouded. This is how women judge between informations. They look at the emotion of the person speaking. The calmest one wins.
5. Some people like making bad decisions because it helps them learn. You can't do anything here.
6. Information provided vs Corrections made: But when someone does not seek information, don't give it. And don't correct someone unless you are their boss.
7. You can't change people... is a lesson I can never understand.
In career, I found infrastructure a great place to work in the sense that data wins arguments since the nemesis is physics. In product spaces, I flounder because there is no real data as products depends on people and people can massage data any way they want.
In life, I've learned "don't cast pearls before swine" as you have to understand if someone wants to learn something. I fully accept that I can be wrong, but I look at results I drive and I would like to believe others want similar results. This is far from true since some people just like complaining about problems and doing nothing about it. I don't understand this mindset, at all, but I've come to learn that I will tell what I'm doing, answer questions to the curious, and then stop there.
C. S. Lewis participated in many arguments about Christianity. He was a professor and had a very good memory (the biography says "total recall") so he was a formidable opponent. Yet he himself wrote in private writings that he never felt himself farther from Christianity than after having won in another such dispute. It was around fifty, I think, when he decided to stop doing that and started to write the first book about Narnia.
Sincere communication is only possible when the ego defenses are down; when ego is vulnerable. Ego is scared of that, so this rarely happens. But this is the only true communication; all the rest are status games. (If you haven't read "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, pick it when you have a chance.)
"ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it"
Sorry this just does not work... if what is being shipped is harmful to your own work or the rest of the company I feel I should speak up.
Sometimes the person/people normally doing ego defending often tries to blame everything/one else over their view or project.
If someone is trying to defend a telnet session into a banking server, live on the internet in 2026 then hey dude this has to be called out. (( I am not saying I have been in this position in 2026 )) but even the year I was in this position it was 100% unacceptable and needed fixing. <very simple example>
> I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
There is a certain logic to this. If someone can't reason, there is no point in giving them the truth. You might as well lie to them.
Of course, your ability to assess someone's reasoning depends often on their existing opinions, so there is a circular reasoning here where two sides with the same mindset can each believe the other to be stupid because of their position, and then refuse to engage in good faith discussions.
I don't make a lot of friends this way, but I usually try to just focus on facts no matter what, and do my best to separate the fact that I'm discussing ideas and not people. An idea might be good or bad given a certain situation, but not the people involved.
Tempted to hate this guy but he's probably like, 19? Just starting to learn how humans work but still not aware he is one. Ahh the world, full of humans (always with the pronoun "they" and not "we"), full of ego and totally resistant to being wrong, rejecting my noble and completely egoless resistance to being wrong. As well as my compulsive need to best them in an argument, er I mean nobly rescue them from their ignorance! But sadly they will all have to live their lives first-hand without my help, developing reasons for thinking about certain things in certain ways, as if completely unaware that I was finally born and came to save them from all that!
This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.
That obviously stopped to be a useful indicator two years ago latest too:
I’ve never said that just because you’re invoking the Nazis you’re losing the argument. If you’re going to compare somebody to Hitler or the Nazis or raise the specter of the Holocaust, be sure you’ve got your facts right.
- To convince myself. Sometimes I start writing and convince myself I’m wrong. Other times I just move to a more specific opinion or find a stronger justification
- Because sometimes a responder does convince me to change my opinion. Or they provide some interesting related information I didn't know before
- To be a voice of reason in comments mostly by people dumb enough to feel their surface-level opinion is still worth posting. Although obviously I’m only a voice of reason to those who share my opinions, sometimes even I recognize I’m again restating an obvious observation
- To get better at writing and arguing in case one day it does really matter
- Because I’m bored and have nothing better to do. At least it’s more productive than YouTube
I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.
This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.
This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.
"I would walk away technically right and completely alone."
Seen many great engineers walk that road right into burnout and then exiting tech all together being fed up.
It's a sad and anti social state that drives people to depression and more sad is the fact that all you really can do is just take it and accept at work things just aren't always logical and correct.
It's more and more, unlikely to lessen as more people enter tech with shallower required upfront knowledge due to more advanced tooling being available to them (more often then not, built by that 'grumpy guy' who quit.)
Try to accept it and have hobby projects you can scratch your real engineering itch with, would be my advice.
It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made.
If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.
Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.
Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.
So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.
Arguing has negative connotations and conveys the author is bringing up minor quibbles for the sake of being pedantic: "Is the sky blue?" -> "No, the sky is not blue we just perceive it to be that way due to..."
My main complaint of the article, though, is the lack of nuance. Especially amongst complex topics where, maybe the definition of correct is not established, or there are multiple correct/valid interpretations.
"Most of our so-called reasoning consists of finding arguments to go on believing as we already do." -- James Harvey Robinson.
I've long since come to the conclusion that humans choose their positions based on gut reactions and almost all of their arguments for holding that position come after the fact.
> If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected counterarguments the way I collected patches. I believed that if I just laid out the logic clearly enough, the other person would have no choice but to come around. Truth would win.
This is probably how flat earthers think. If you engage in arguments without being prepared to be proven wrong, and you're hoping people to accept your argument as truth instead of both of you arriving at the truth together, you're not debating, you're being eristic (which is a fancy word I just found).
The author's argument is hilariously wrong because we've been doing something for thousands of years: teaching.
And it works, to some degree.
And how do teachers teach? They don't start by trying to argue or by trying to prove students wrong. They teach by showing what's fascinating.
Taking the time to show people what's fascinating, what's perplexing, where the tension lies, and how it's resolved, is teaching.
Argument construction in social contexts is ironically ego-driven. Demonstrating something interesting, on the other hand, means asking yourself what what they would find interesting about what you want to tell them.
For more advanced students, those with preconceived ideas, teachers use a refutational style of teaching. It's not the same as argumentation because the goal is to find an appropriate bridge from one model (the preconceived, naive model) to another model (the one being taught). It works by pointing out a fascinating explanatory limitation in the naive model and then showing the students how the better model deals with said limitations.
But I think the core part is WHY we want to be right? To prove something to others, or to ourselves? To feel better? As a compulsion? As a gambler's fallacy? Many motivations are less lofty that we dare to admit.
I wasted way to much time arguing online. It was mostly wasted time, and wasted emotions. I mean, I also had many eye-opening and enlightening discussions, but these rarely were fights.
Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.
Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.
I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.
FWIW I appreciate people like the author's old self. I am one of those who hates and simultaneously appreciates being corrected when I'm mistaken. I hate being mistaken and I appreciate the opportunity to correct the mistake.
While much of what the author says is true, I'm not so cynical as to think that it's impossible to change others.
The fact that you can change yourself — as the author acknowledges — means you can change others, because much of self-change comes from your observation of others. Perhaps it's the approach that matters most.
Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):
1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.
2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.
3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.
4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.
5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.
<Many people are ego-driven. Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position. Prove the idea wrong and you haven’t corrected a fact, you’ve attacked a person. So they defend it the way anyone defends themselves: not with reason, but with resistance. The stronger your argument, the harder they dig in.>
Wouldn't it have been easier to say they are idiots? (I guess you needed to explain it, but like you said, it won't help.)
The ego thing is a spectrum and the most powerful treatment I've experienced so far is watching someone with a substantially larger ego trip operate right in front of me. I think this one of the best possible cures. To see yourself in the proverbial mirror.
If you insist on the ego trip, at least make it about how much of a raging badass you are with the customer. The egos that work backward from the technology are a nightmare to deal with.
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help. When someone asks, the cause and effect reverse. You’re no longer imposing your judgment on someone who never wanted it.
Maybe this is why pull request reviews can become contentious. The reviewer thinks the author is open for feedback while in fact it’s just the widely accepted practice and team/company enfored that you are supposed to give feedback.
Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.
I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.
>If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge. The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will. Instead of persuading the skeptic, ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it.
I wonder if victims of religious persecution agree...
Facts do not always win. The evolutionary fitness of an idea is (sadly) not entirely dictated by its truthfulness.
I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.
Someone upthread mentioned that arguments can be about convincing the person you're arguing with or convincing the audience which is absolutely true.
I'd suggest that arguments are frequently not about convincing anyone of anything. They become conversations withe people who already agree with you using the person you're arguing against as a foil.
In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.
Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.
I’ve had friends refer to me as a “yes-man”, because I don’t really care where a group of people decide to go to dinner. It’s of little consequence and doesn’t create any negative downstream effects.
At work, when a poor decision means unnecessary work today, and ongoing maintenance for the next 5-10 years, I will oppose these things quite loudly and tell people they are wrong. I don’t see why I’d sign up for 10 years of thankless work I don’t understand without a fight.
People often need a little nudge not to be on the defensive. I usually try to find a point that I agree with and let them know “that’s a good point”. It takes some listening and a lot of patience, but folks tend to reciprocate. It takes two to tango.
> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference
Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.
Nice quote from Tao Te Ching about complexity and simplicity completing each other.
The rules of go could be explained to a 4 years old. On the other hand, the superficial complexity of so many framworks/systems is just a facade and nothing more.
The same goes for NP-hard problems where complex solutions have trivial verification methods.
Alternatively I’ve found it beneficial to try and clarify and further elaborate on your “opponents” reasoning. If you’re correct, then you should find the errors in their reasoning; without ever actually having to oppose them (your opponent and their arguments).
I love this bit from the documentary "Behind the Curve (2018)." One of the scientists poses the following question: "What evidence could I show you that would change your position?"
If someone can't answer that, it's probably not worth arguing about.
Careful with this philosophy. It does work well for the short term. At some point of constant following of 'disagree and commit' mantra, you'll end up in a world where you have zero agency and zero energy to constantly do the work you hate.
Well I think that a proper implementation of "disagree and commit" differs significantly from what's described in the article.
The author seems to be suggesting that rather than discussing technical trade-offs and nuance, you instead ship whatever the other person proposes, even if you believe it is wrong, without going through the discussion.
I always interpreted "disagree and commit", at least in a healthy form, to be more about cases where, after both sides had presented their interpretation of a technical decision and both had understood the other's point of view, they still differed in opinion as to how it should be handled a meaningful way that was unlikely to be resolved from further communication. From there, rather than wasting more time on debating, simply agreeing to disagree, shipping to move on.
The key difference being that you aren't simply accepting whatever is told you, even if you believe it to be blatantly wrong, and silently shipping based on that feedback. You're actually engaging with each other and trying to solve the problem together but not getting locked in intractable arguments.
What OP is proposing seems significantly more toxic and honestly like something I would expect from someone playing corporate politics rather than trying to excel as an engineer.
I also stopped arguing, I don't waste energy or my focus on random stuff, did happen with the age I think... unless... unless it's my wife or my mum who is wrong. If I think I'm right and they wrong, I will argue with al my energy. Of course!
This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.
Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).
"I don't really like arguing because everyone wants to convince the other person, and in the end, everyone leaves thinking they have convinced the other person, and no one has changed an inch."
What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.
At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.
The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.
I think that there are times as a leader\supervisor\co-worker\parent\coach where you might argue despite knowing you won't change the outcome simply to show that you are willing to fight for those you represent.
There is also some value it stating your beliefs about something going in the wrong direction. Maybe not a full blown argument, but putting it out there so when things eventually fail and blow up, there are no stones cast in your direction for not speaking up earlier. Just be careful to avoid the, “I told you so,” which is also off-putting.
I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.
most arguments are due to differing definition of words in the arguers' minds.
almost every heated argument that I've carelessly gotten myself into, I have gotten out of, by saying :
"let's first start with what we agree upon - does word X mean the same to both of us?"
Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes
I realized long ago that this is a complete waste of time and now I'll usually only argue with people for (blood) sport and love of the game but only if I feel like it.
This is still about being right or wrong. About people and not ideas, otherwise there would be no issue in the first place, there would just be the duty and the acceptance.
people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .
That's true, and avoiding (direct) argument may well be the #1 takeaway in How to Win Friends And Influence People.
I read it in my early 20s and at that time my main takeaway, as I recall, was to (paraphrasing), "carefully plant the evidence, thus making the conclusion something the audience comes to on their own (they 'think of it' themselves)".
In entrepreneurship, this was slightly dangerous to me, since I immediately started implementing this successfully. Before long, I (apparently) took "credit" for "my idea" (that I successfully got the audience to see, oh so carefully), whereas audience thought that we "came up with it together"!
Oy vey! So, a word to the wise. I now subscribe to more of a "plain honesty but with tact" approach.
This is a good reason to argue with people! Forcing yourself to look critically at your own positions via debate is a key self-improvement method. Simply not engaging and never having a back-n-forth is no way to improve. Feedback, critical self-evaluation, and more feedback.
Ofc, that's not encouragement to flame people on the internet or in-person.
A long time ago a wise person said to me is it better to be kind or right. I live with that decision matrix every time I engage with a human. At the end of the day the humans carry significant ego and emotions that for me to be right, most of the time, they have to be wrong. Arguing turns into a zero sum game with only losers on both sides. Until I learned this lesson, I won many arguments but lost the human. This article bears this out from another person learning the same lessons.
I had two reactions, possibly more, as I read this.
First - yes, I agree. This is exactly how I think. I agreed with this.
Then I thought. Why would somebody write something this... simple? true? obvious? Perhaps because they came to this realization a bit later in life, I thought.
Maybe, yes. That must be it.
Then as I read more, I felt a bit incensed. Does this smell of... AI by any chance? The writing looks sincere and simple, but some tell tale signs pointed to AI. The argument structure is awfully well constructed. The inflection is just as the right moment.
Consider this: "Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position."
Or this: "You can’t win an argument like this, because it was never an argument"
Or this: "They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks."
The contrastive negation is tell-tale AI. It could possibly be human, but I've read far too many AI-written articles now to think otherwise.
---
Does it matter, though?
In the large scheme of things, probably not. One reads an article, one moves on.
But in the much grander scheme of things, when tons of articles are AI-written, I believe we will stop paying attention. To a greater or smaller degree.
This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.
The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.
> The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
Setting aside a few levels of irony in arguing with arguers on arguing, I think there are multiple framings for arguments. Things go off the rails all the time when neither party is aligned on what kind of argument the current one is.
Programmers and engineers tend to carry around this worldview that every conversation is about correct information or future decision-making, but everyone is operating on different planes. God help you if you go into an argument with the spouse implicitly about acknowledging how your actions made them feel armed with facts and logic about how this is irrelevant because the problem is solved or there is no new action to take.
Fair point, but I see that as kind of a simplification? It's a perspective, rather than a refutation, but I see any argument about how you made someone feel as either a mistake or an argument about something else.
No perfectly logical actor would ever argue with how someone is feeling. It's impossible for a second party to know or rationalize, and the person with the direct evidence is giving you their best representation of the feelings. To argue that someone doesn't feel what they say they feel is tantamount to ignoring direct evidence which negates any practical value of the argument. It's this not worth having.
On the other hand, if what you are actually trying to argue is whether they are being truthful, or reasonable about their feelings, those are arguments that do have a practical result of deciding something or understanding something better. The more you dig in to why people are feeling the way they are feeling, the more you can reckon with what that means for whatever the disagreement is. Of course, it cuts both ways; if someone telling you that they feel a certain way makes you feel a certain way, it's only reasonable to interrogate why you are feeling that way about it. But then, that gets further toward the most salient part: most of the time when it comes to feelings, an argument is the wrong tool for resolving disagreement. In my experience, open ended discussion that focuses on each individuals' feelings without consideration for correctness is more productive than any sort of confrontational method like an argument.
People will know they are wrong, but if they are supporting a friend's case or boss's they will choose them over you (naturally) even if you can definitively prove them wrong. There's upside and often no downside to being wrong or even outright lying in some cases, so people do it.
People will know 1 of the 4 in the group is right, but they don't want to be outnumbered or cast in an unfavorable light, so they will all choose the "wrong" stance on purpose, to be more socially accepted.
100% of people in a conversation can know that 1 person is right, but because nobody likes that person, nobody will agree with them.
You might be right a lot but that isn't going to help you win any arguments. It nearly means nothing. You get from a group what you negotiate with the group, and short of showering everyone in $100 bills daily nobody is going to worship you for anything, especially not "being right a lot". You're better off being conventionally attractive rather than conventionally intelligent (when it comes to easy social acceptance).
Furthermore, there are so many battlefields, so many arguments to lose, you'll eventually (hopefully) find a better use of your time!
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
Identifying the market is also important. There's the free market of capitalism. Then there are the other powers even in that market that can still say you're wrong, such as regulators, governments, politics, violence, etc.
If you're looking for an outcome, you still need to assess the circumstances that can generate that outcome, even if the author has identified one particular strategy that people often get wrong and one possible alternative.
They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.
Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."
Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."
(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)
I think the main point of the article is sound, the idea that arguing with people puts you in an adversarial position with the person, even if you think you are debating the merits of the ideas.
This is frustrating to those of us who are focused on the project or the task - to try and find the best way to do something and come at the conversation from a place that feels like logic, and be met with ego and emotion.
But I think the overall conclusion lacks subtlety. I don’t think the best response is to disengage completely, then say “I told you so” and/or swoop in to profit off of the mistake.
So yes, recognizing that you also have an ego and can benefit from feedback but just take it a little further. Ask clarifying questions about why their solution is better, come from a place of collaboration rather than competition. Have them explain why their solution is better and once it’s clear you are collaborating, voice your concerns and weight the pros and cons together.
I know this is a simplistic version of how these conversations actually happen, but it’s an example of the fact that you can make more progress by recognizing some subtlety.
A few months ago I came to this same conclusion. I watched this YouTube video[1] that argued needing to be right and thinking we can save people is our own ego at work. It helped me realize why I felt anger towards people I cared about deeply, not seeing what's obviously to me the RightThing™ to do; I think I can save everyone.
Also see this video[2], which extrapolates on the types of people you shouldn't try to save. Gives pointers on how to deal with narcissists (both videos use AI-generated imagery and narration, which I typically despise but I had both playing in a background tab so I didn't have to see it at least).
Either HN has become much more accepting of LLM-generated content or it can't tell the difference. Still, it was a decent skim. These models are fairly smart; I wouldn't say they are complete wastes of time. I find LLM articles are best read impressionistically. Don't take every sentence or even paragraph too seriously as no one, not even the machine put that much effort into it.
You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.
You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.
I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.
This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.
I like this post as it landed at a really good time for me. But, I had a remaining question based on one of the lines:
>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ the kinds of folks the author is describing here? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.
I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational ego-driven people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.
It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!
I'll apply my vast intellect to solving this riddle.
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
This seems more true for the author than everyone else.
They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.
While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.
probably only peoples who has the gift of doubt can argue in the common search of knowledge. Everything else, right or wrong, are, as stated, more about ego, quite useless about real problem solving..
Sure no one like to be wrong, so to argue with is necessary to spark interest in the search of alternative point of view.
Remembering Hagakure: "To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not.
One must become close with him and make sure that he continually trusts one's word."
.....
"Have him receive this in the way that a man would drink water when his throat is dry, and it will be an opinion that will correct faults."
While I like the article there are way too many telltale signs of AI writing. I'm sure the author expresses his direction but I'm just so tired of reading articles where AI has done most of the work. I want to hear from humans, grammar and spelling and punctuation mistakes and all.
>Everything exists only in relation to its opposite
The fuck? Words mean things. The moon does not exist because the Sun exists. And what about Earth? It doesn't have an opposite, therefore it has no way to exist? If this is the logic you're going to use in an argument, you did the right thing by stopping.
A lot of the theoretic today and the 'logic' behind it bears strong resemblance of as it were from a cult follower. Reasoning doesn't really work as a argument.
There have been many books written on cults written by reputable people and some are even on youtube talking about this.
So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.
You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.
Not much about being correct or incorrect, but I recalled myself in a meeting looking at the issue on the screen suggesting "at least leave a typo so it doesn't look auto generated right off the bat". I got laid off that year.
everything being ai is the only reason i stopped arguing hard. because as somebody else today put it, there are notable signs of widespread coordinated activity intended to skew the noise to signal ratio. i see it everywhere on the net nowadays, bots hammering hard on the most minor percievable conflict. this behaviour is technically a simulacrum of real human activity - it closely mimics the training set of reddit comments. but what im seeing is insane amounts of toxicity more than ive ever seen on the net. not worth giving an inch anymore.
I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.
I never really understood the “Being right is overrated” mindset. It’s easy enough to understand the good of harmony, but that’s not really how I see it used. They’re not really oppositional, a person has to see it that way. And to the extent that cohesion is valuable, that's just built in to a better calculation of right. But saying it this way, I suspect means that the person doing the calculating needs to overstate this cohesion beyond its value. This is a convenient sorta trusim to make a case.
The premise is that there are factors beyond accuracy which are for the greater good. That seems reasonable, but what are they? There are things like peace and happiness, which sound great, but aren’t at odds with accuracy, or more precisely the pursuit of it. This isn’t really a tradeoff. When people frame accuracy as overrated, it seems they’re often obscuring and gliding over that they don’t have a counter argument. There isn’t necessarily one discoverable truth, but there are better hypotheses and more sincere attempts. To the degree, that optimizing for peace and happiness can be a better goal, the measure of those things is typically self-centered. They would be happier. It can be group self-centered too, as in our team would be happier. It’s not a neutral truism, it’s a personal weighing, of the value of the better outcome resulting from right/better/good decision and the desire for (at least surface-level) harmony.
But more important than that, even if the group would be happier, there is the false tradeoff thing. Embedded in “being right isn’t what’s most important” is agreement about what’s right. Why are we unhappy with something more right? Accuracy/truth seems conspired against at a dispositional level in this situation. Disagreement and disharmony are not the same thing. So it’s not even disagreement leading to disharmony. It seems more of a personal desire against either a particular outcome or against disagreement generally. Both questionable. Relatedly, diplomacy is not a bad trait exactly, but I don’t see it as essentially positive. It betrays a lot. It is a kind of tax, which can be worth it up to a point (there is value in the internal functioning of the group), but probably not as often as the truism has it play out. Something should be questioned when a person/team diverges so much from better/accurate/right.
The idea of picking your battles makes a form of self-centered sense, while also making a (I think large) form of nonsense outside it. There are many forms of dissent that occur before cussing or violence, it is much different to (1) disagree, (2) disagree, but go along, (3) disagree, but say you agree, (4) disagree, but convince yourself to agree for harmony (and perhaps eventually forget that you disagree). A phrase I’ve come to dislike is “I wouldn’t die on that hill”. People should defend, if not die on, more hills. It also might recruit others. We have all these hills that have been ceded because we weren’t willing to say we liked them.
"Argumentation" is one of the necessary rhetorical modes. You cannot escape it altogether in human interactions since it is central to conflict resolution and negotiation. The key is to understand psychology/sociology of both oneself/others along with rational approaches and know when to emphasize one over the other.
As others have discussed, people argue for many reasons, ego being one of them.
I didn't really understand this. I grew up before the internet, and I have ADHD, which essentially means I have limited working memory.
One of my compensatory strategies for this is to have a fairly comprehensive world model at the ready in long-term memory.
If you told me something that contradicts my mental model, I might argue, in order to figure out whether I need to update my model or not.
The argument between someone ego-driven operating on a motte-and-bailey basis, and someone who just truly wants to understand, but won't let it go because they feel they need to understand, gets ugly quickly.
Fortunately, I'm older, my model doesn't need to change as often, I'm better at discriminating about things I care about or that are irrelevant, and, of course, I can always disengage with "that's interesting; I'll have to research it" and go down a rabbit hole on the internet if what they are saying doesn't seem to make a lick of sense.
I will say that the need to be right -- not the need to lord it over others, or the need to prove I'm right -- has probably helped my programming career immensely.
The burning desire to be right can be completely orthogonal to giving a shit about whether others think you're right or not, or giving a shit about others when they're wrong and it doesn't adversely affect you.
I don't know, arguing gives me kind of a high, even when my position is weak. I don't go out of my way to argue (especially about politics) but if you bring up a point I oppose, I don't stay quiet.
I interpret all posts online to be micro-essays intended to sway the multitude of anonymous readers in some way. When I argue with a post, I am not in dialogue with the poster, not really; I am working to counteract the first micro-essay's sway with my own ideas.
Kantian ethics indicate that it would be unethical for me to allow posts I consider harmful in sway to remain unargued. I am fighting for truth or what I think should be truth.
> Sometimes I won on points and lost the person. More often I won nothing at all: I’d watch someone grow more certain of the very thing I had just disproven, while the room quietly drifted to their side. I would walk away technically right and completely alone.
This is why debating is taught in school in the Netherlands (and I'm sure other countries, too). Winning an argument is not the same as convincing someone they were wrong: that's something you need to learn how to do and then something you need to actively practice with others.
Just having good arguments makes you a dick. Having good arguments and being able to empathize with the opposition's and conceding their position on any merit, while showing there's a solution that'd they'd prefer even if they don't know that yet, makes you someone helpful and trustworthy.
I would rather sit alone in truth than with a million friends in fiction.
I don't think we need to disengage in debate with everyone. That said, you have to know if you're talking to someone who's willing to reason, and you have to be open to their reasoning as well. There is absolutely no sense in contradicting the opinion of an irrational person who has made their beliefs part of their core identity. That person will hate you for showing them the truth, no matter how clear.
I used to think, when I disagreed with someone, we were on a journey together to find out what the truth is. Maybe my understandng was wrong, maybe theirs, maybe it's something neither of us thought of.
But then I realized that most people don't think that way. It's more important to not be alone than to know the truth, and people tie their individual identity to their group identity - if a fact contradicts their group identity's approved list of observances, they'll take it as a personal attack. So I just say 'ok' now.
How do I pass this to coworkers without coming off as passive aggressive? Because this article pretty much sums up what adds a lot of stress for me currently.
Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .
I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /
the main pieces that i had to truly understand in order to recognize and stop most online arguing were:
1) performativeness. if the person responding to you is performing for other readers rather than having a genuine good-faith discussion with you, just move on. i still catch myself being performative sometimes and it grosses me out when i recognize it lol.
2) real world vs online behaviors. if someone is an asshole in the real world, we just wouldnt talk to them. not sure how we've convinced ourselves that online is different. if someone refuses to take the time to respond in a socially normal way, then why would you take the time to respond? if they wont take the time to be social, why would you?
little ass kids learn this shit in like kindergarten. if someone is a dick, no one is friends with them. if my friends and i are in a bar and some random is being an asshole, we dont "debate" them, we move on. again, tiny children learn this shit lol.
3) real people whose opinions you care about. make a list. when i did it, it turned out to be less than 20. the people on your list are the only people you should feel any obligation towards. not randoms on the internet. dont spend your valuable time/energy/mental arguing with random internet assholes. your list of real people are the only ones you should feel any obligation towards because if you value them, they likely value you opinions as well.
4) good faith. you'll know in one or two responses if the person replying is there in good-faith. if they're not, move on.
5) knowledge peers. its ok to recognize that someone is not on the same knowledge level as you in a topic. whether they know more or know less, either way, its ok. if we're lucky we are experts in one or two topics and dipshits in most topics. accept that fact. i know this is tough in our industry, we are overflowing with people who think they're smarter than they are. its ok to recognize that the other person is not your knowledge peer on the topic and adjust accordingly: up, down, or out.
6) conversation vs debate. if someone doesnt recognize there is a vast difference between normal conversation and debate, dont waste your time. honestly, they're typically gross to engage with.
and of course, find real world hobbies. once you have the hobby, it naturally becomes "why would i argue with this dickbag online when i could be doing something way more fun."
Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.
> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.
=====
re: the content
You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.
This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.
Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.
Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.
----
The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.
the author is 100% correct. this is why i find it pointless to debate politics and social issues with most people. far too often people are not arguing for an idea, they are arguing to defend something that has become their identity and it is fused with their ego.
I like to think that I change my mind based on evidence, but the more I battle test my ideas in a specific thesis, the less reluctant I am to give it up, and prefer to see a synthesis incorporating the new arguments.
Often though, I find the arguments are things I have already heard before and either incorporated or debunked - either way they do not affect my positions.
I removed myself from Facebook years ago because of all the toxic arguments about politics - almost entirely whataboutism and name calling. I've recently rediscovered Facebook and came up with a little game: sit back, watch all the political arguments, and take a drink every time someone concedes a point (not the whole argument, just a single point), as in, "Shit, you're right. I didn't realize that." I'm probably gonna quit soon because it's been around 2 months and I haven't taken a single drink.
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.
There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.
The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.
Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.
I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s
Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.
I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.
One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?
You aren't answering the question. You are reframing the question so you can give the answer you want, thereby avoiding giving the real answer to the question presented.
either you're still fat, or at 45 you should be long past boasting on the internet about your muscle gains. "SOME of the 8 billion people on Earth aren't adequately described by a system with only four outputs"? See comedian physicist Dara O'Briain saying that comedically:
"""Racism is way better than Astrology - Racism is one of the worst social evils they can imagine. “How dare you do that?” they say. "How dare you ascribe to me personality traits? You don’t even know me, but you tell me that you know me, and you know these things about me, and you say I share these personality traits with this huge group of people, and I don’t know them, you don’t know them, and you say not only do we have the same character traits, but we have some sort of common history and some common destiny, and you make all of these horrible presumptions on the back of what? On the back of a fluke of birth. How dare you do that?
Come on, try commenting something more effortful, interesting, or substantial than "do you really believe <strawman they didn't say>?" or at least, something funnier? We've all got to while away the time until death arguing on the internet forever, at least give it some oomph.
No, but I also didn't say that. I'd say that some arguments are also interesting instead of right or wrong. Some people just have interesting brains. This thread is very meta.
democracy demands that a drooling idiot gets to have equal say as any genius with his vote. since there are far more drooling idiots than geniuses we can easily see why democracy has typically been so dystopian, and only seems to get worse over time.
maybe you should educate us as to why democracy like this belongs in professional settings where efficiency and correctness determine outcome and profit/ job security.
Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
And three interpretations to consider:
0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.
2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?
I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.
My style of online participation has been shaped by 2 ideas:
1. I rarely fully understand my own positions on minutia 2. Writing is rewriting.
I write forum posts to solidify my understanding of my own interests, beliefs, and reasoning. I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter. I can reference them and have to other people who ask my opinion. Sometimes I do respond back to replies immediately, and sometimes I revisit days later, after I've had time to put it in my day-to-day context. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Posting stopped being about convincing someone else maybe 20 years ago (around age 30). I do post to look back and understand myself. To others, I'm sure this sounds like existential navel-gazing and self-centered blathering, but I don't mind.
I do the same, except mostly I delete the responses. The writing was important to me, but the reading is rarely important to someone else. It would be wasting their time.
I would guess I post about 40% of the comments I write.
Lincoln famously wrote and never mailed letters as a way to vent emotions.
It's so bizarre to me that this works and I can't say I believed it until I tried. I shouldn't be surprised that it's so easy to trick our brains.
I assume the phenomenon where I write 90% of an email, save it as a draft to finish later, never remember to finish it, get asked about it and have irrefutable certainty I sent it, then finally discover it as an unfinished draft is a facet of the same trickery. Stupid brain... Grrr.
I think one of the drivers of arguments is we are trying to understand something, and the argument is subconsciously a way to not just bash their ideas, but test the strength of our own.
In the effort to create a written response we:
1. Find it takes more effort than we imagined to nail down our views, and describe them well.
2. Often have to adapt our own ideas more than we expected to make a clear description possible. Achieving a "better understanding of ourselves" is almost always a reassuring euphemism for "fixing our own surprisingly under-developed/under-coherent ideas".
3. This puts in a more humble mood.
4. Realize the issue is more nuanced than we imagine, and better assess the depth of conversation that even the most constructive engagement would require.
5. Realize we don't have energy left for that.
6. Feel good about having put our ideas to the test and "understanding them better". So a good place to stop.
The practical need to argue (test our ideas in battle) was real, we just didn't need the other person to have the argument. Their imagined pushback forced us to improve our thinking, probably more than we acknowledge.
When preparing for a race, the best thing anyone can do is tell you your opponent is achieving better times than they are. You will achieve more gains by competing with an imaginary competitor, who always sees all your weaknesses, than a real one who likely would not.
Journaling sounded stupid to me, until I tried it; and then the whole “do you really think that?”, “is that true?”, “what about this?” and “why are you lying to a sheet of paper?” started happening and I was like, “oh I get it.”
Come to think of it, that’s a major reason why fully agentic coding doesn’t resonate with me and/or feels like I’m not growing or learning. I’m short-circuiting the “journaling” step where I mentally attack my own thoughts and assumptions.
You should try writing a design doc with the AI before you have it write the code. It will make random extrapolations from your first prompt, some good and some bad. Then you get a chance to argue back and forth with yourself with the robot as a helper.
Oh yes! I find an argumentative rubber duck to be one of the best uses of AI for myself!
“Are there any ambiguities, open questions, or hidden assumptions in spec? Please think deeply.”
I wrote an email to my titanically incompetent leasing office mostly to vent emotions, then sent it anyway so I could receive proof that they had read it in writing for any future issues. It was quite cathartic.
> I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter.
"Sorry this letter is so long as I did not have time to make it shorter."
* https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
1000% this. I write to force myself to think deeply and crystallize my opinion on things.
> What if their position represents their values
One of my best professors often asked me:
"what are you trying to achieve here?"
Every time they asked this, it always put me into a deep thinking mode. In some cases it did trigger defensive mindsets, but I think having to actually engage by taking a step back and think deeply is for the best if you want to have any hope of changing your mind on something.
“What can I do to resolve this?”
“Hmmm. I cannot go back in time, but if you’d like I can sit quietly with a contrite look while you spew abuse at me for 10 minutes. Does that work?”
In some cases it's worth arguing even if you know you can't win in order to provide pushback against really dumb ideas. This doesn't happen nearly enough in standardisation work, where a small number of professional meeting-goers can railroad through unbelievably bad, broken standards because no-one pushes back.
Anyone who's ever worked on a standards body will be getting flashbacks at this point.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
> this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
And what of people that were convinced by rational argument that a God must exist? To some (Aristotle, Plotinus, Leibniz, etc) it is irrational to deny such existence:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
You also seem to imply that rationality is a single monolithic thing:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Justice%3F_Which_Rationa...
Do people really lose their religion because of logic and reason? I’ve never seen this. There is usually some deeper story. If someone asks me why I don’t believe, despite being raised in the church, I’ll simply say it didn’t make sense and babble on about reason and logic if they push. This is just a shield to avoid sharing the truth with people I don’t trust on a very deep level.
Yes. Your experience is not every experience.
This is why I said “usually”, and provided an example from my life, instead of saying “always” as if it was a universal fact.
No, but it's extremely common.
Whenever I've met people who claim to have "reasoned" their way out of religion it has always been extremely shallow teenage rebellion, and always driven by feelings.
Even aalewis was "euphoric".
Yes, it tends to be the youths who reason themselves out of religion precisely because they don't have a strong emotional connection to it.
> every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
Do you know any specific examples of this? All examples I know are like people collected some experiences, they needed some mental map for it, and they've built one that doesn't involve religion. In the process of building they really listened to rational arguments, but rational arguments were not the reason for the change, they were the means.
The author of the article complain that people do not listen to their arguments, but if we take a closer look, and look for bigger things, not things like the best way to write bubblesort, people are not ready to change their views while in an argument. They could listen for arguments, but they wouldn't change their position. It would be stupid to change the position in a heat of an argument. It may be stupid to change the position as a result of an argument. People needs time and may be a lot of conversations to look at things from different angles, to think it through. And after that it is very hard to pinpoint what was the reason of the loss of the religion. People talk with other, get new ideas, and they live their lives applying these ideas to the reality. Sometimes it leads to changes in their worldview.
I always interpreted it more as saying that the person has to reason themselves out of their position.
A similar saying that I think I picked up here would be, "I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
> I always interpreted it more as saying that the person has to reason themselves out of their position.
But that interpretation would make the second half a moot point, wouldn't it?
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
If you want to say a person can only reason themselves into any position, it could become "You can't reason someone out of a position."
No because I believe you CAN reason a person out of a position they reasoned themselves into, but if they hold a position that they DIDN'T reason themselves into, THEY have to do the reasoning.
I had a little chat recently with a glaciologist and he told me about a student who had come from a very religious family. The guy had to learn all about the formation of Earth, etc, and decided to give up geology because it would put him at odds with his family and friends and he decided that they were more important.
So, you could say he rationally decided to keep his irrational beliefs.
Isn't that just point #2 from above? He rationally decided that his friends and family, and the values he is a part of, are more important to him, then being in geology, and some deep truth that it would supposed show him. Maybe he just didn't care enough about _this_ truth, compared to being part of the world he is in.
People aren't convinced by rational arguments. Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence, and someone with faith will not become an atheist because someone debunks the proof.
The rational arguments form a structure that beliefs can hang on, but the core process of changing ones mind is not rational. Like many people, I have changed my thinking on many topics over the course of my life, and arguments that I used to find convincing I now consider to be filled with holes, and arguments I used to think were paper-thin now seem stronger than steel. You can find a rational argument for most beliefs, and you can tear down a rational argument for most beliefs.
Reason just isn't how we form our beliefs at all, it's how we convince ourselves that the things we believe are true.
> Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence
I'm sure some atheists could be convinced. The rule "all atheists will reject evidence of God" seems false. The rule "all atheists will accept evidence of God" also seems false. Life is more complicated than that. It depends on the atheist and on the evidence.
This is not true, Atheists position is that there is no God. Agnostics position is that there may, or may not be a God.
In this case, you're talking about Agnosticism rather than Atheism.
My entire point was that some people are able to change their position.
The distinction has always been assinine.
An agnostic and atheist both live their lives as though there is no god. Because it is equally meaningless to say "there might be a god" but describe no further characteristics of such an entity, akin to "their might be faires but you can't see them, hear them, touch them and they have no effect on the world in anyway".
People trying who insist on a difference are just emotively trying to find some perceived middle ground from which they will claim intellectual superiority.
> Someone who does not believe in god will not be convinced to believe by a proof of god's existence.
But of course that's not true. I would believe in a God with proof of their existence. I simply have not encountered such proof that hold up to my standards of proof of such an extraordinary claim.
> I simply have not encountered such proof that hold up to my standards of proof of such an extraordinary claim.
And you never will. This is pretty much my point!
If the skies errupted with the sound of trumpets and an angel descended to tell me to do something, my first thought would probably be that I'm having some sort of mental break, but if the person standing next me is seeing it, too, then I'll be the first one carving some commandments or whatever. There's a perfectly achievable standard of proof for you.
Isn't the Atheistic position that there is a rational, scientific explanation for everything? Thus we don't need to reach the realm of divine?
This basically eliminates any occurrences of God, Angels and so on.
What I'm trying to say is this: if you can scientifically proof the existence of supernatural , then by logic there's no such thing as supernatural.
Defining God as supernatural and unprovable would lead the absurd situation that if God made Themselves self-evidently provable to everyone (say, with the whole trumpets and angels routine), then the alleged faithful would reject Him for not being their God, while He would only be believed by nonbelievers.
Sure, an Angel descending from the heavens would shatter our existing scientific understanding of the world, but that wouldn't make it intrinsically supernatural. It just would reveal a whole branch of knowledge that we didn't previously have any lines of inquiry into.
I do not believe it exists. If it is never, then it must not exist.
proofs I would accept:
(for Christianity)
Biblically accurate angels descend onto earth, to everyone, and submit themselves to scientific testing, which conclude they are made of something non-physical.
Divinity is proven to be a measurable and testable attribute of reality.
Reality warping magic, demonstrated to not be any sort of trick or technology, and limited to those devout to said religion.
God shows his ass to everyone, the only part of him that - according to the bible - won't make a human insane.
the basis of these proofs can be distilled down to some basic requirements: - It must happen in 'reality' not 'in my head'. - It must be testable, and repeatable. - It must have no 'natural/scientific' explanation. - It must be viewable by everyone.
That's not 'all' of the requirements, but regardless of which religion we are talking about: those are the common primitives.
Nothing I've encountered have met these standards. But if those standards of mine are met...
> "But if those standards of mine are met..."
> "Biblically accurate angels descend onto earth, to everyone, and submit themselves to scientific testing, which conclude they are made of something non-physical."
You would easily agree that something which can be seen, touched, measured, interact with the sky, your eyes, and measuring equipment is "non-physical"? You wouldn't suspect the angels are instead aliens?
> "Divinity is proven to be a measurable and testable attribute of reality."
At this point, if it happened then it's unlikely to be in the macro-scale world that we could all test with an easily available and usable thermometer or film camera or alkalinity measuring strip, because we would probably have noticed that by now. Imagine instead it's a paper from CERN and the Large Hadron Collider where in some extreme situation there's a deviation of 0.0000000<whatever>% from an expected value and experts in Quantum Theology claim that's a testable, repeatable, measure of Divinity. Are you tempted to believe this could happen, or are you already full of reasons to dismiss it?
> "Reality warping magic, demonstrated to not be any sort of trick or technology, and limited to those devout to said religion."
Mass warps spacetime and curves light rays. That's neither trick nor technology. It's arguably "limited to those devout to physics" in the sense that Flat Earthers might not accept it and primitive/uneducated tribes have no grounds for understanding what it means at all and no ability to build machines to test it. Similar with Young's double slit experiment, Lorentz contraction, entanglement, and others (reality warping, or brain warping?).
> "God shows his ass to everyone, the only part of him that - according to the bible - won't make a human insane."
What would it take for you to agree that that's whose ass it was?
But you DID NOT reason themselves out of a religion. You might have planted a seed that then the other person developed on their own. Still no small feat, but it's fundamentally different.
This is conflating all religious following with lack of reason. There are those that are fully unreasonable and those that find it reasonable from their current perspective.
It's also conflating holding a rational position as coming to hold that position by rational means
You can believe the right thing for the wrong reasons, and I would argue all humans are in that bucket nearly all the time.
3. Are you really really sure that person is wrong?
Excellent!
> 0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
Disagree here, because:
* Most of us have an irrational attachment to many of our positions. Arguing may or may not be futile, but if you can't "walk away" from most people (except if you sit at home and do nothing, and maybe not even then).
* These people may well be your coworkers on your project or at the organization you work for. So there is no "walk away", you're working with them and will continue working with them.
With people I'm invested in, like a community (which includes co-workers), I start with some experience that they are good people, which provides an incentive to ask whether options 2 or 3 (or both) would work. Option 3 in particular leaves open the possibility that I will be convinced to support what they have in mind once we move from "that seems unreasonable" to "this is aligned with your values, could it align with some of mine?"
Ever heard of quiet quitting. The momen someone labels you as what you describe - they will do minimum they have to do to interact with you and then move on with their day.
Being hard wired to non logical believes is just not good in this regard.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
That's demonstrably not true, people deconvert from religion and other irrational beliefs all the time.
I don't really like that quote, what is a position but an opinion and how do you reason about options? It doesn't really make sense. Its like when liberals say "reality has a liberal bias", its not a very useful thing to say either because it doesn't work that way in practice. Why do you support abortion? Why do you oppose abortion? People will give perfectly reasonable answers to either question.
This article really resonates with me. During college and graduate school studying philosophy, picking apart someone's argument and pointing out the esoteric and nuanced ways which made it wrong was celebrated. The general attitude in my cohort was:
"I want to be wrong, because when I realize I'm wrong, I've become smarter."
This was probably the most intellectually fulfilling period of my life.
(Note here: some of the greatest moments were realizing when I was wrong in my criticism of an argument. It wasn’t about me “winning.” It was about collaboration)
After graduate school, I literally had to re-learn how to interact with people. No conversation was good faith. Everyone cared much more about the vibe of the conversation -- even when discussing highly nuanced political opinions suggesting they were genuinely curious for feedback -- more than they cared about having a coherent view on the topic.
I slowly realize that the best way forward was to have three interaction profiles with people. Generally there is the "I don't know you" profile, with all Dale Carnegie's rules fully in place. After that, there is the "we know each other" profile, where I would occasionally offer some probing questions on more or less uncontroversial topics to see whether or not good faith disagreement is allowed. And lastly there is the "we know and trust each other" profile, where I can actually have the open and honest real discussions with people that were so trivially normal in the philosophy department lounge.
Learning to do this was honestly one of the saddest and most disheartening things I've gone through in my life. It's genuinely stupid that we can't just talk to each other like adults.
We can talk to each other like adults, the key is understanding what the goal of any given conversation is. Truth-seeking is just one possible goal among many.
Part of becoming an adult is learning how little most people care about that particular goal, and how big the buffet of alternatives is: creating shared meaning, understanding each other's values, building trust, giving/receiving emotional support, processing grief, etc. (Think of this as an upfront taxonomic exercise, followed by lots of in situ calibration exercises.)
Even for something like "decision making", which, naively, one might assume should be grounded in facts, a lot of the "facts" wind up being fuzzy and subjective. This is baked into the social fabric.
Of course there can be different goals, but I think there's something omitted. It's not quite neutral to put aside some goals for other goals. Reading that your friend wants emotional support rather than truth seeking or to understand their coworkers different values is fine, but also sometimes it's not for the best. The choice of when and when not is a choice, it's fuzzy and reflective of one's values. It's not the sole choice of one person that the other has to then read and adhere to either.
Sometimes friends are wrong to the point of the truth being more important than emotional support. More important for them to hear, or for you to stay aligned to your own values, or for the parties they're mentioning to get fair treatment. It's not so interesting me saying that broadly as I have, it matters where one has chosen that point to be, not that the point exists somewhere.
It's not neutral of me to recognize that the jokey casual conversation I'm having at a bbq is a vibes convo and thus if the jokes start suggesting distorted assertions about different races I should adhere and join (or even just nod politely). Or more mildly, as my friend starts complaining about their boss, who I think might be right, there is some point when I think it might be best for them to know.
Most of these goals are not strictly opposed to each other. They only look opposed when the thing we want starts to contradict with some of the agreed upon "facts" of the situation, and then we say the facts aren't always what matters. To oversimplify, if you choose to give your friend emotional support over truth then they will get the support and be wrong (or vice versa). This is okay if that's the right tradeoff here, but it shouldn't be distorted into belief that your friend is right. And being willing to do that in circumstances A and not in circumstances B is reflective of one's values.
Went from working in a highly specialized DoD lab to corporate america, and this too was a horrific surprise. Everyone turning work into the promotion hunger games was great for the mental health.
“Promotion Hunger Games” is so much better than “Lord of the Flies” (usually my name for it) — so many more people will understand it
I've come to view a lot of these things as questions of a kind of conversational (/computational) tractability. People have limited time and so most discussions are subject to numerous constraints.
People communicate the main thing they want to say and hope the decompression algorithm on the other side sorts the rest out. Most of the time it's very lossy or just broken. But satisfices over the alternative.
This resonated with me. I'm a bit struck by a theme in the comments around whether it's worth one's time to argue their side. The logic is understandable, but just the vantage point I see from. I think if this means stating your view and then after that deciding how hard to push it, that's one thing and fine. But I think a lot of people just see a potential disagreement and then don't state their view, or not uncommonly even say the opposite and agree with the person (a la "The best way to get someone to shut up is to agree with them"). I think this is fairly bad all around, and disheartening as you've said. Not only because it's self-centering in the mindset and self-defined in value, but it's also just kind of dismissive.
I think I have a similar style, I can sound like I’m ‘arguing’ with a person but really I’m arguing with my own internal model. If I say “but what about….”, “what if…..” or “then how….” I probably mean it literally as a question, not “I’m trying to poke holes in your argument and prove you wrong”. I’m trying to poke holes in MY understanding.
I respectfully submit that your neat categorization of interactions into those three profiles may reflect a gap in your understanding of others. Namely, that your definition of what makes a "good faith" conversation may not be the only one, nor the only correct one.
The vibe that people care about - that's the unspoken channel in any conversation. Physical, emotional, thoughts that don't get said. Perhaps to the one you're talking to, a good faith conversation is one that cares about or prioritizes the vibes.
IANAP (I am not a philosopher)
People are allowed to care about what they care about, I think you're right there.
My only point is that, for me, if I'm discussing a subject where I'm exasperated and am complaining in a questioning way, say (to take a random example):
>Why are my local supervisors are advocating and incentivizing return to office!?! Having to go into the office is pointless and terrible!
Suppose this policy seems insane to me, and I can only suggest that it is happening because my local politicians are corrupt jerks who only care about corporate interests.
But, now, suppose that someone in the conversation is a municipal finance nerd and believes that since dangerous local budget deficits are being driven by work from home policies, that city finances and looming cuts to important services might be what is pushing the return to office mandates, not is something the politicians want, but as a kind of compromise.
So, for me personally, I very much want this person to suggest new paradigm as an alternative explanation. I many not be satisfied with the explanation, but it has more explanatory power than "the politicians are crazy" theory that I currently hold.
I have found, however, that a huge number of folks that would pose these questions aren't actually looking for an explanation, they are just trying to express their frustration, and seek reassurance that they are in good company and are being heard. If that's what people want, I'm now happy to oblige them. I just don't understand why they would want that from the conversation, but to each their own.
I’m someone who operates in both modes on the receiving end, so I think I can answer some of this.
I’m going to come at it from a slightly different angle, but I think the spirit will get there.
Sometimes, I’ve been working on troubleshooting my PC for hours already. I’m tired. I’m angry because I’ve spent all that mental capital, etc., so I come to friends to rant a little bit.
And then they start offering solutions. Solutions I’ve definitely already tried. Solutions that don’t work for a multitude of reasons that I’m not expressing because, again, I already spent hours on this. But they keep blasting me with troubleshooting tips and “have you tried this yet?” and “what’s the text say in this folder?”
But I’m already at my wits end, and now they’re wanting me to keep pushing, to do more labor to solve the problem. A problem I don’t want solved. I just want someone to hear my struggle and go “that sucks man, let’s have a beer”.
For me, sometimes it’s “I’m out of spoons”, sometimes it’s “I just want someone to see *my* struggle, too”. Sometimes I want to be validated for my current plight.
And when I’m reached with solutions and/or explaining, at the wrong time, sometimes that can be very invalidating.
In circumstances like this, when I’m on the end where I want to be the fixer or the explainer, I’ll even ask, “do you want fixer me? Or just company?”
You don’t have to lie and say XYZ are bad for that; but you can instead say something like “oh yeah that sucks when you’re already doing all this elsewhere”. Because it does suck. Even if it has a logical reason, it does suck.
Edit: Okay, I want to add a bit more. When someone is stressed or exhausted to a high enough degree, they literally cannot range in new information, no matter how well-meaning. So sometimes the commiseration and/or presence without offering solutions is just one of many steps to help them relax enough that they can even *hear* the new thought or suggestion. As well-meaning as advice or a reality check can be in those situations, until the stress is reduced, it’s literally falling on deaf ears.
When I find myself feeling like that, a good reframe I like using is to turn those comments into commiseration; “What about trying A?” — “Yeah it’s f*ked aye, I tried A, B and C and it STILL didn’t work!”.
I usually ask people straight at that point whether they want solutions for me or if they just want me to listen with empathically. Depends on the person how I bring this though, but it tends to work.
I mean, I understand what you're saying. I guess the main way I can explain it isn't in any idealized case, but in the transitional case.
I completely agree that people might not be looking for a solution in a discussion. My point is that transitioning from a place where there are plenty of people, having plenty of discussions, and ideas flow freely back and forth is normal and welcome. And then moving to a place where people have plenty of discussions, but more often than not, ideas flowing back and forth are treated with outright hostility...
I mean, for me, it was very obviously a completely jarring transition. It's not that there are times when solutions aren't welcome. It's that the vast majority of the time, with the vast majority of people, alternative paradigms aren't welcome.
I suppose I’ve found myself lucky when many* people are open to new and even contradictory ideas, one on one**, and when they feel respected and calm.
* but definitely not all
** because there’s no more ego, status nor hierarchy to defend.
Why can't it be the other way around, you don't know that I am out of spoons too and rather than talk about why I am out spoons I should not be expected to validate other people's vibes or spoonfeed them... And so forth.
As an exhausted person the issue is not being given advice. It is being given wrong, ignorant, or inappropriate advice.
How does someone know what is wrong, ignorant, inappropriate advice without first finding out from you, through communication, what kind of state you’re in and what you’ve already tried.
And if the “listener” / fixer is in a state where they can’t do the work of finding out what kind of help and/or fixing is needed, then maybe *they* need to step back and have a break, too.
In my experience, fixers tend to completely miss the cues of “please stop word-vomitting at me, you’re not helping” and continue offering unsolicited suggestions. And then it’s my job, as the person that was talked at, to make them feel better, *further* exhausting my current state.
The solution to both of our problems is to ask and listen and hear. And then move forward. It’s true, we both exist. (Though I would argue that sometimes “bad advice” is just “advice I already tried, or that doesn’t work, but you don’t know that because you didn’t ask”).
And the solution to both is setting ground rules about what each person in the conversation can give and is expected to give.
If a fixer can’t empathize for a bit, and that’s what the other person needs, they should be allowed to step out of the conversation, too.
Context, as always, is basically everything.
Well that's the basis of rationalism. Many important truths don't depend on the details of someone's state or someone's life history. To require it is to commit an ad hominem and destroys rationalism.
For example whether to drink alcohol is entirely unsafe at any level, according to the WHO. Expressing this as common knowledge is a counterexample of the popular heuristic to "listen to people's context".
Communicative empathy is still a heuristic, it is not an absolute rule. There are times when the message really is more important than how it is being conveyed. And actually people who run out of spoons know that all too well.
Incoming wall of text, because this is topic that hits close to home for me, and I've spent a lot of time in the last few years exploring it. So, knowing absolutely nothing about you or your life or how it compares to my own, I'll proceed.
I personally agree with you. I want that municipal finance nerd to speak up and tell me that as well. I think I get a little jolt of endorphins whenever I learn something new, so for me there's actually almost a physical draw to people who can give that to me. I wonder if it's the same for you.
I think you're describing a position of resignation on your part: you've almost sort of given up, and tried to convince yourself that you're ok obliging people in the surface level conversation that they seem to want. And I suspect, resigned yourself to the fact that most people you meet day-to-day won't be able to give you those little endorphin boosts.
I struggled on this path myself. First: recognizing that you seem to want more from conversations than most other people are willing/able to give. Second: finding that your mind, which naturally draws you to learning new information, is not the mind that everyone has. Third: developing almost a sort of disdain for people who you find do not meet your imagined bar. Fourth: identifying the disdain and feeling bad about it. Fifth: telling yourself that ok, you'll just give up looking for it and also you'll stop being disdainful towards others for not being able to give it.
The sixth part is the first big leap: realizing that it's not that you want more from conversations, you want different. And what is engaging for you is not necessarily engaging for someone else. And that neither of you is righter or wronger in that.
The seventh, hard part that I suspect you may not have gotten to yet. You can't expect that people can give you the kind of connection you're looking for, that they can scratch that itchy brain of yours, without first allowing yourself to truly believe that their mind is just as deep and rich as your own, and accept that it's just rich and deep in different ways. The challenge, then, is to stop asking yourself "what is it that I have that all these other people don't seem to have" and start asking "what am I missing? what are all these other people experiencing that I am not?"
If it helps, you can consider it an intellectual challenge. Try to really empathize, imagine what it's physically like to exist in their body. Force your brain to consider the fact that in this moment, in this conversation, their experience may actually be richer than yours - just in ways that you can't, by default anyway, see.
> municipal finance nerd and believes that since dangerous local budget deficits are being driven by work from home policies, that city finances and looming cuts to important services might be what is pushing the return to office mandates, not is something the politicians want, but as a kind of compromise.
I mean, in that case, the municipality needs to get rid of that nerd asap. And the companies can and should push against that nerd asap.
Why do companies accommodate people with color blindness but not people with vibe blindness?
Vibes was perhaps a poor choice of words. Work with me here people, what else do you call the unspoken part of conversation.
Thanks for sharing, your comment made me teary.
I don't know how else to put it but I feel surrounded by automatons. I would do a lot to only interact with people like you on a daily basis. I was toying with doing the Mensa tests. Maybe I need to go back to school and take night philosophy classes ?
I sometimes feel sad "talking" to an AI because it is one of the few places where I feel like I can reach that third interaction profile you mention. Even writing it now makes me quite sad. My closed ones will never have any interest in the benevolant truth-seeking that I long for, and it always pains me to accept it.
If I meet someone like you, how could I reach you on that third level as fast as I can ? Maybe we meet on a waiting line for coffee. Maybe we will sit close to each other on a subway. How to tear through the bullshit of small talk to have a bit of that deep conversation I clearly lack ?
Again, thanks for the catharsis.
I understand completely. I have colleagues who have been denied promotions and bonuses due to their way of communicating, which was indeed pointing out esoteric and nuanced ways that their colleagues are wrong. There was a specific scenario were someone held a slightly incoherent opinion, yet somehow it was "wrong" to correct that opinion for the rest of the meeting.
In some ways, I feel like everyone should start by reading the HN guidelines as a way to structure their communication around.
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.
This is indeed part of the problem. Life today is just too complicated. Take a simple topic like wind turbines: there is so so much to truly understand about materials, net lifetime carbon offset, environmental issues, recycling, capacity, placement, etc. that is is all but impossible to become a true subject matter expert on this one issue alone. Even gaining a cursory understanding of the issues at hand requires many many hours of reading and research from all positions. And this just makes you knowledgeable on this one small subject.
So what we do in practice is this: Pick the issue I care most about, then assume that any group that agrees with me on that position is a safe source to trust for ALL issues. This is our human need to belong (and tribalism). The problem is that the groups pushing these positions leverage this other'ing to create divisiveness for the sole purpose of making more and more money.
Yeah. We love the comfort of "getting it", but most of the easy problems have been solved, and we're only left with the hard ones.
People are pleasure-seekers, not truth-seekers. People demand what they can understand and feel good about, even if wrong. There's plenty of supply too. Radical free speech allows anyone to spread lies for huge financial upside, and we don't have any check on this particular type of weapon which is mass-destroying society.
Is life too complex or do we fail to teach and learn enough about it to have an educated perspective?
I don't have to be a wind turbine expert to know that they're overall better than coal plants. Because at a minimum their source is not finite and their output hasn't been linked to increases in cancer and breathing problems.
but you don't need to be a subject matter expert on wind turbine material strength and recycling options to accept that President Trump's claims that they kill whales is nonsense: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66928305
"I want to be a whale psychiatrist" - President of the United States of America Donald Trump, interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience, October 2024.
And you don't need to be an expert on wind turbine placement to have an opinion on whether putting one in view of Donald Trump's golf course, and then having President Trump scupper them for revenge, is a sensible way to govern the world's most powerful country's energy economy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo
From that article: "Before making the transatlantic crossing for his Scottish summer jaunt, the US president urged the UK to "get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil".". The Conservative government under David Cameron made a change to planning policy in 2015 where a single objection could block a whole wind farm - and those planning changes only applied to wind turbines and no other structures - a situation described as a "de facto ban" of on-shore wind farms in England (not Scotland), which lead to a 96% drop in on-shore wind development compared to previous years 2011 to 2015. It continued until Rishi Sunak eased it in 2023 and Labour removed it in 2024.
You don't need to be an expert on wind farm placement or capacity to have a valid opinion on that.
Since it seems like you may have research this, how do you feel about wind turbines?
Honestly, I have barely looked into it. The main thing I know is that there is currently about ~7 year payoff in terms of carbon. My general sense is that we should be investing in solar and batteries and not doing wind except in specific isolated situations but I don't have the knowledge to back that up right now.
I'd also argue that people above are making my point for me. It isn't enough to say that wind is better than coal. Lots of things are better than coal. That still doesn't mean that it is the right choice or best use of our time and resources to help combat climate change. The switch to EV is going to be long and slow but attacking electricity generation carbon is something we can do more directly more quickly (assuming the political will). The calculus on the quickest and biggest bang for our buck is insanely complicated.
> One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
A takeaway from that: if you think you're right about everything and rarely find yourself in situations where you're forced to doubt your ideas (at least a little), it's possible what's actually going on is you're just too isolated from others.
That’s if you are trying to learn. Many of these know exactly what they’re doing, on purpose.
Knowing when to stop is a key learning in wisdom.
When I reflect on it, we are in a state of hyper-individualism on every single front. Is it wrong? Well, yes and no. It is a consequence of freedom. What I ultimately see happening is that we solved evolution on a biological level. Now, it is evolution on an ideological level.
What makes me sad is that some people don't have friends that can call them out and argue in good faith. I'm a very disagreeable person, and I have a good friend group that I can argue with without any fear.
Even worse than "a bunch of people" is when the majority behaves like that.
My definition of a cult is a group where members don’t trust people outside the group. We have a lot of news sources saying that we should not trust other news sources. Especially statements like “that other news source lied once, so you should never trust them.” I think this promoted mistrust has created a lot of cults.
When members of a cult don’t trust outsiders, it allows their beliefs to drift away from reality. They’re not getting the feedback necessary to keep information grounded. And reality is a great mechanism for keeping beliefs unified. The creation of cults has splintered the USA.
I think the Internet has helped foster this. It made it cheaper and easier to create a new news source. It is cheaper and easier to fund that news source through ads or direct payments from customers. And the resulting market incentivizes news sources to keep customers by denigrating the competition, which creates cults.
We need to redesign the market for news sources, to disincentivize that behavior.
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
It's just such a waste of energy.
> At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started.
I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.
Text is a hard medium to have a back-and-forth in. The features that make it useful for explaining also make it easy to feel ignored and insulted.
I think a lot of people also go online and write things when they feel argumentative, so comment sections self-select for people who want to argue.
Whenever I feel intellectually superior to someone, I try to remind myself that I can barely change the oil filter in my car, and there's a lot of people out there who can't write a line of Python but who save tens of thousands of dollars doing their own maintenance.
The problem, fundamentally, is that unlike a computer program that won't compile if there's syntax errors, or that will crash on null pointer dereference, etc.
There's no such mechanisms in place to ensure logical consistency and coherance of made claims.
Thus the onus is on you to quickly realize that the other party "doesn't have what it takes" and bail out, or you're arguing with a person that doesn't have the mental capacity to recognize syntax errors and subtle bugs, they are simply interested in arriving at their destination and couldn't care less if they arrived there with an unbroken chain of valid chess moves.
> I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.
I love how you don't even care if it's true, merely how you think at any given moment (and this changes with mood) and how those thoughts makes you feel.
If you're unable to entertain the idea significant amount of people don't have "what it takes" (which is a fact, btw), have you ever been able to engage constructively?
One of the hallmarks of a person who isn't interested in playing chess is a person who focuses not on what IS true, but "what they think" or "how they start feeling" about chess moves at any given time, etc. Ie. focus is about vibes.
Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the most outlandish and direct.
Agree, mostly. On the internet, I like to be selective about only addressing new substantial claims.
In person, at work, etc, it makes sense to spend more energy, be more patient to get on the same page, and you get more benefit if you succeed.
It's generous to assume all the difficult accounts you encounter are lacking mental faculties. Many are participating with the goal of wasting your energy.
This site in particular is infested with accounts that seem to have some real intelligence behind them, but they use that intelligence to respond to the most absurd and frustrating interpretation of your comments.
> It's generous to assume all the difficult accounts you encounter are lacking mental faculties.
It's also not uncommon for people who are arrogant to think that most people who disagree with them are stupid. They assume they're right so disagreement is a sign of a defect (and helps avoid uncomfortable thoughts like, "could I be wrong?").
> Many are participating with the goal of wasting your energy.
> This site in particular is infested with accounts that seem to have some real intelligence behind them, but they use that intelligence to respond to the most absurd and frustrating interpretation of your comments.
That sounds like software engineers being software engineers. They often think they show off how smart they are by missing the point and nitpicking on some quibble.
> "They assume they're right so disagreement is a sign of a defect"
Take a step back and look at the original linked blog post through this lense, and you'll see an article where the author is a priori correct and other people are only wrong because they are too irrational and emotional to accept the author's flawless logic. There's no mention that author might be wrong about anything, e.g. for the author to argue so that they can learn things and change their mind. There's no room for the author failing to change someone's mind because the author's communication skill, reasoning, logic, isn't strong enough, only because the other person is defective and cannot be reasoned with. (Having taken those positions, the author declares themselves humble).
(Let's quickly address "the moment you insist on standing on the high ground, you’ve created the low ground someone else must stand on" by observing that we can all stand on "murder is bad" and nobody needs to stand on "murder is good"; and wonder how the author managed to miss that. (My answer: because this isn't about logic; if not-arguing is doing other people a favour, then it's a virtue and the author can feel good about it. It's a defense so the author doesn't need to change)).
> [article] "Worse, most people don’t learn from advice at all. They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks"
That this is an example which applies to children. Adults do not have to jump off a cliff to accept that jumping off a cliff is a bad idea. But it's still a weak argument. The experience of being burned by a stove includes the sensation of hot metal, pain, burnt skin, burnt hair smell, lingering pain, blistering, scabbing, healing... to suggest that the words "it will burn you" is the territory, and that the words adequately communicate the lived experience to someone who has not had that experience, is the Detached Lever fallacy[1]; it's something that a person who lives with text would argue.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zY4pic7cwQpa9dnyk/detached-l...
If they take the most absurd interpretation or nitpick about irrelevant details that doesn't take away from the crux of the point you're making - and that's the best they can do - are they really intelligent?
Or are you simply dealing with people that "don't have what it takes" to do better?
They simply don't have the faculties to make a better argument or approach from a different angle, it's the best they can do, and the best they can do is just not enough.
Many people just don't care about honoring the integrity of the game, if they can gain advantage in the meta game. Of course motivation for the game dissolves under such conditions.
Tying a tangible score number to 'vague social approval' hits very hard. There's a sense in which people care about that by default, but have to make themselves care about the inner game. But appearing to have integrity about the inner game is a good move in the meta game, so of course the default move of those who don't care about the game but want to appear to for the sake of the meta game is to put up a front: the trick is that it's not real. If playing the inner game faithfully, it becomes trivial to disassemble their (fronted) position. But it's not really a game, because they're not playing but pretending to play. You're costing them meta-score! How dare you!
Anyway, I digress. This dynamic falls out of the incentive structure of sites like HN/reddit/etc which embed discussion/argumentation into quasi-anonymous social-approval-point-ranked contexts. Moderation can temper the most egregiously obvious of such behavior, but only that.
A reasonable strategy if you're interested in actually playing the inner game is to carefully check if there's any meta game focused cheesing going on before bothering to enter against someone. Do they make mistakes in rule adherence due to inexperience, or do they make mistakes in rule adherence that conspicuously always puts them in a meta game advantage? Do they adhere to rules even when it's _disadvantageous_? That kind of thing.
To return to the chess analogy... Don't play with people who blatantly return their own downed pieces to the board (or similar hijinks). They're just there to look like they're the kind of person who wins at chess, not to play chess.
> 1. Infinite supply of people.
Untrue. On the internet there are no people, only computers.
As the great Marshall McLuhan once said: the medium is the message.
Nowadays, you can even get twenty sycophantic AIs to reinforce your beliefs daily.
I dunno, I think this is only really true online. Once you step out into the real world people are a lot more moderate and reasonable. I'm the Enlightened centrist of my friend group and my friends from both sides of the political centrum give me plenty of shit but are still good buddies, which doesn't happen so much online ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
yep, i just wrote an overly long comment that was trying to get across what you said in a paragraph. if its a random online, dont over think it. i started to pay way more attention to the real world people in my life and im much much much happier for it.
Be careful what you’re centering yourself between. If one side is trying to build decent policy with a small fringe that has almost no political power, and the other side’s fringe has cemented itself as the new mainstream and fights classic liberalism, institutions, and science, you’re now in a very different center.
> isolating themselves & having their [...] views spread far and wide
> most cancerous developments & the less contentious it becomes
Your comment complains that people cannot articulate their reasons, while making a sweeping, emotionally loaded claim whose reasons are themselves barely articulated.
That doesn't read as a complaint, it's a realization, and the argument is articulated enough.
Are you challenging the idea that echo chambers facilited by modern tech are harmful, or that people get better at expressing themselves as they get older? From here it looks like you're doing neither, just taking a stab at the comment's author.
Was discussing the content, not the author. Yes, I am challenging vague discourse about echo chambers, since the mechanism behind an echo chamber is selectively listening to some opinions, while dismissing other sources of authority or correction. To see why this is a problem, consider that parent comment is compatible with both:
"Flat Earth is a cancerous echo chamber"
"As I grew older and became better at arguing, I learned to explain why universities teaching that the Earth is spherical are cancerous ideological echo chambers."
That's how claims work. Why would I argue against nobody? Happy to engage if you disagree with the claim.
I only somewhat disagree with the post in the second part, with reasons enough to start the conversation.
孟子曰：「人之患在好爲人師。」
Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."
仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。
The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.
孟子曰：「愛人不親，反其仁；治人不治，反其智；禮人不答，反其敬。行有不得者，皆反求諸己，其身正而天下歸之。《詩》云：『永言配命，自求多福。』」
Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"
`Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."`
I never thought about this but I really believe it to be true and would love to know why is that. For example, whenever I want to get an interaction going with very small kids, I would pretend to not know something and they'd be super happy to teach me - works every time.
People feel competent and important when they teach others. This desire is so primal, as you said, that it can even be seen in young children. That's why people unconsciously try to teach others, and it often creates problems in relationships.
The reason arguments are dangerous is that while they look like an attempt to correct someone's knowledge, in reality they easily mix with the desire to place yourself in the 'teacher's seat.'
However, Confucianism places great value on teaching, and at first glance this might seem contradictory to Mencius's words. But it explains that the purpose of teaching is different. Good teaching aims to bring out the best in others and nurture them, and it should come after self-cultivation. On top of that, it requires the other person's consent, such as when they are in need. Bad teaching, on the other hand, is about self-display, the desire to feel superior, and interfering without being asked.
In reality, it's hard to draw a perfect line between the two, but I think the effort is to keep trying.
Thank you.
I can see how one’s tendency to preach being associated with their ego
I would also make a distinction between kids’ ‘teaching’ behaviors you describe and the one in Mencius’s quote
A slightly more charitable interpretation might be: sharing useful information creates the possibility of reciprocity.
> I never thought about this but I really believe it to be true and would love to know why is that
Would suggest possible explanation by adding Orwell's quote: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
This is generally rooted in the Confucian thought that is broadly spread across Northeast Asia.
To think about your logic a bit more precisely, Orwell's metaphor is about why the power to trample others ultimately arises. In Confucianism, it's usually said:
孟子曰: 君子以仁存心，以禮存心。仁者愛人，有禮者敬人。 (Mencius said: The noble person keeps benevolence in their heart and keeps propriety in their heart. The benevolent person loves others, and the person who has propriety respects others.)
論語: 不憤不啟，不悱不發。 (The Analects: If the learner is not eager to know, do not enlighten them; if they are not struggling to express themselves, do not inspire them.)
孟子曰: 教亦多術矣，予不屑之教誨也者，是亦教誨之而已矣。 (Mencius said: There are many ways to teach. My refusing to teach someone because I deem them unworthy is also a form of teaching.)
This can be summarized as: 'When that desire passes through benevolence and propriety, it becomes good teaching. When it loses benevolence and propriety, it becomes scolding, interference, and self-display.'
From this, teaching can be understood as having different stages. Teaching is meaningful only when the other person is ready to receive it. Teaching is not about pouring out explanations; sometimes not teaching, stepping back, and letting the other person reflect on themselves is also a form of education.
The extreme of power that Orwell speaks of is, in other words, a kind of 'forcing' upon someone who does not want it. This means that the same desire can lead to completely different outcomes depending on which ethical filter it passes through.
However, this is also a very fragmented explanation when viewed in the full context. In modern society, we rarely live out classical thought as a complete system; instead, we cut out fragments of it and use them to explain current problems. I am not trying to explain Confucianism as a whole either. I am simply using the Confucian sensibility that is relatively commonly spread in Korea to try to understand this issue. So I cannot claim that the passages I cited are arranged in a completely rigorous way.
Perhaps the reason I feel this way is because I was born and raised in Korea, and I am currently active there. I am just active on HN because it is the metropolis of the programming world.
I feel that Western individualism treats the individual as a more autonomous unit. In contrast, in the Confucian sensibility I am familiar with, an individual is less like an independent point and more like an intersection of multiple relationships.
I think both Western and Eastern thought have their strengths and weaknesses, and they arrive at similar insights through different paths.
Orwell starts from a macroscopic, top-down perspective and examines how power tries to subjugate humans. This is a response to the macroscopic question, as seen in Machiavelli, of 'power as a matter of order and domination.'
As seen in Orwell's 'Notes on Nationalism,' his thinking is about the problem of proxy power: the attitude where an individual dissolves their identity into a group and pursues that group's power and prestige.
In other words, I think Confucianism asks questions about how to solve this problem at the microscopic level, while Orwell's work is closer to an explanation of how unresolved problems at the microscopic level can cause trouble.
Of course, what I have read is only at a university-level introduction to philosophy, so I hope you will take my answer as being just as superficial. For more detailed explanations, I suspect wild philosophers hungry for questions will appear and take over.
p.s. The irony is that this very comment is basically me pouring out content you probably didn't ask for. The biggest contradiction is that I'm talking about controlling the urge to act like a teacher, while I'm not practicing it myself. In fact, I think Confucianism also has macroscopic discourses, and Orwell also has microscopic explanations, so they don't fit together perfectly. There are also points where they conflict
It's not that I didn't ask for content - it's more like I would rather appreciate your genuine thoughts instead of AI output.
But if I had to write briefly without actually searching anywhere, this is what I think. Normally, before writing a comment, I search for other people's thoughts and filter my own through them. But if I had to be sincere, without searching anywhere, or if I had to write briefly, I would say this:
'We are all trapped in a desire for recognition, and it's hard to control that desire. And when that desire loses its way, we try to teach others, try to control them, and ultimately try to take their place. True learning only begins when we put that position down, but we are too afraid of letting go.'
I hope this is the answer you were looking for.
I often see variations on this exact comment on HN lately, even in response to things that are clearly genuine. Sometimes it's just ESL. In my opinion, whenever there is plausible deniability, just pointing it out is almost always the wrong move anyway.
Proliferation of AI "content" and people regurgitating the AI slop makes it extremely likely to be AI slop. You know, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.
If you look at HN comments in pre-"AI" era, you will see posts were way shorter and way more concise. While I am certainly could be in wrong, it does look like AI output.
I'm sorry, but I didn't use AI. The thing that's really hard about this is that the language I write in is Korean, and in the process of translating my words, the sentences and context I can use are limited.
Most of the time, I use officially translated versions of Confucian classics, but I'm actually using Google Translate and Papago (a Korean translator) to translate them. The words I use are fixed, and since the rich vocabulary I use in my native language is restricted, I guess it's inevitable that it looks like AI.
(The people here who reach for accusations of AI are saying they are not ready to learn, imho. Though your immediate preceding replies about Orwell flow less well than your usual writing?)
How would you judge the urge to teach people who have power or influence?
Your previous comments about Narcissism in Western economies come to mind.
It seems to me that Mencius was often talking down to his interlocutors. Maybe that would have worked out for him, but it didn't work out for many officials who got decapitated for speaking out. But am I an inferior person for thinking they weren't wrong not to control their urge to teach "tyrants"?
It seems that Stoics, Cynics etc escaped such punishment even though there were no equivalent advice in their worldview? Besides Socrates obviously. It could be that Westerners are simply better with manipulating emotions. And Socrates was complicated, but he'd never worm away from teaching.
I also think "hubris", a not very Asian concept, is something easier to address than narcissism (which has Asian versions).. maybe we can start there. (I am thinking of hubris in Greek stories or law, not the modern translation as "arrogance")
Consider Wu Kong. That's narcissism, not hubris, because he essentially had the powers of (most of) the gods. Whereas what Mencius had, and what the mods here have, could be called hubris. Hubris can be invisible to mortals, but not to gods. Hubris can be very abstract injuries to human dignity.
It feels like Orwell was being intimate with hubris. Big Brother. The Inner Party. And so on. Even "The Boot". Were carefully short of being "egoistic".
One caveat. It's very common in Chinese popculture to call someone competent a god, a goddess, almost always humourously. Interesting way to nip hubris in the bud?
Hubris is easier to correct than narcissism because sometimes all you have to do is point it out. Or wait for the AI bubble to pop.
Mencius would already have enjoyed his passive act of teaching before a bubble actually popped? Did he feel a need to buy puts?
It seems like I know programming terminology pretty well, but philosophical terms aren't my specialty, so it doesn't come out as smoothly. As you know, when you translate high-level vocabulary from a Chinese-character cultural sphere into English, a lot gets lost, doesn't it? Philosophy isn't my field, so I think that's especially the case.
I think we and Westerners think differently when it comes to the concepts of narcissism and hubris. I'm not very familiar with the Stoics or the Cynics. As you know, we East Asians don't really learn Western philosophy much, right? It's mostly Confucian thought.
Anyway, as you said, 好爲人師 (loving to teach others / being fond of acting as a teacher to others) doesn't mean one shouldn't remonstrate with those in power. However, in Asia — especially in Korea — while Confucius is famous, Mencius is treated as almost his equal. I've heard that in China, Mencius is ranked a little lower. I'm particularly fond of Mencius, and I especially love this passage:
(居天下之廣居, 立天下之正位, 行天下之大道: 得志, 與民由之; 不得志, 獨行其道. 富貴不能淫, 貧賤不能移, 威武不能屈, 此之謂大丈夫.)
"To dwell in the wide house of the world, to stand in the correct station of the world, to walk in the great path of the world; when one achieves his ambition, he shares it with the people; when he fails to achieve it, he walks his path alone. Riches and honors cannot corrupt him, poverty and low status cannot make him waver, power and force cannot bend him. this is what is called a great man."
Personally, I think Wukong was actually more of a case of hubris, wasn't he? Because whether he had power or not, he fought against the heavens. Perhaps he could also be seen as an embodiment of Mencius's concept of the "great man."
I sometimes think about this. because we're in different language spheres, the vocabulary we think in evaporates so much. It saddens me that I can't express things at a high level in English.
Haha there is something right about Wukong being a great monkey who either shares his spoils with other monkeys or suffers alone, so that it's exactly the hubris I was accusing Mencius of.
Otoh there is the famous story of young Confucius getting "rejected" by Laozi.. (Sima Qian, Shiji)
孔子適周，將問禮於老子。
老子曰：「子所言者，其人與骨皆已朽矣，獨其言在耳。且君子得其時則駕，不得其時則蓬累而行。吾聞之，良賈深藏若虛，君子盛德容貌若愚。去子之驕氣與多欲，態色與淫志，是皆無益於子之身。吾所以告子，若是而已。」
..."I have heard that a shrewd merchant hides his wealth deeply, appearing as if he has nothing; a gentleman of abundant virtue keeps a demeanor that looks like foolishness."...
This way of avoiding (direct!) teaching & sharing sounds both more actionable and appealing to me :)
For Westerners, Court Jesters? Korean movie King's Man?
But like you, I habitually do the opposite..
Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.
Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).
However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:
- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.
- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.
- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.
- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.
These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.
But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.
You would be steel-manning his essay if you assume he’s right in these arguments. Unless you believe that no position is more correct than another or that no one is more often correct than others, you can imagine scenarios where the author is often more correct than the people he is dealing with.
Isn't that what I'm already doing? I assume that the author believes that he's right often enough to argue his position(s), but feels dejected without being proven wrong at the end of the argument.
But there's another important point here: the answer to the "am I really right?" question isn't always clear at the start of every argument.
Unless you believe there's room for (dis)proving your position, or getting some nuance on a topic [1], it's not a debate or an argument - it's a lecture. And lectures depend on other social dynamics which don't apply here.
[1] For example, maybe there are other reasons behind the position that the person can't express easily, or maybe you're actually arguing about different things.
There are 2 very different kinds of arguments. Arguments where you're trying to convince the other person. And arguments where you're trying to convince bystanders. These require completely different tactics.
If you're trying to convince the other person, be humble. Be gentle. Be subtle. Ask them questions. Let them think they came up with the idea entirely on their own. If any bystanders are watching this discussion, they are more likely to think that the other person is right, or that they are "winning". But this will give you the best possible chance of convincing the person you're talking to.
If you're trying to convince bystanders, project confidence. Present compelling evidence. Pick apart the other person's arguments and show why its flawed. Chances are, this will make the other person dig in even more strongly and resent you. But this will give you the best chance of convincing neutral bystanders.
Use the right tool for each job. If you're using "debate tactics" in a 1:1 discussion, you will never get the desired results, no matter how data-driven and logical your arguments are. I've made this mistake far too many times, and this seems to be what OP is getting at as well
I like this distinction, but it reminds me to cherish the people who don't require such confidence games.
Feynman has a famous anecdote about sitting around the table with senior scientists in contentious argument where he was perplexed because it was obvious to him who was right. They argued all sides, and ultimately agreed, having proofed the idea and its alternatives.
That's who I want on my team: people who can shake things out without needing to be right or needing others to be humble, and without playing games. After viability, that's my primary criterion for a position.
If you're trying to convince an audience, it matters how you treat the person you're arguing with. Don't be a jerk. People notice that, and judge you for it. They judge your position for it - perhaps not intellectually, but emotionally.
The best possible thing to do in that situation is to out-evidence them, out-argument them, and out-nice them. And really, if the facts are on your side, you shouldn't have to be a jerk or manipulative.
Semi-related piece of advice for younger folks:
When you join a new team, don't try to change team tools, processes etc. starting in the very first week.
Most things are the way they are for a reason. Your "obviously better" idea may lack the full context. Start with observing the situation, talking to people to build understanding and historical context, and don't jump to conclusions too early.
Sometimes you'll be right, and things are suboptimal and based on long-outdated assumptions. Then, it's great to change them and improve! Freshman eyes are great for spotting such inefficiencies, and "new blood" is critical to make the team well-functioning and to improve the legacy stuff.
But improving and rewriting everything all the time has a cost. If you do too much of it too quickly, the team loses the understanding of long-stable processes and things. You may become a bottleneck as the "last person who touched this" in too many areas. People also have limited bandwidth to support your "rewrite everything" ideas every day, while trying to move on with their tasks.
Don't hesitate to suggest improvements, but please be mindful about the volume - especially in times of AI where everything can be vibecoded in an hour.
Finally, some "objectively better" things have no business justification. Improving performance of a piece of code than runs once a month? There's probably 10 more important things to do in your backlog.
Chesterton's Fence. I recommend people read more into this and other concepts in mental models, such as logical fallacies.
It isn't even necessarily just Chesterton's Fences. The problem can just be picking your battles. Processes that are working well enough for the team don't need to be fixed right away to be better, and that'll dump a bunch of cognitive load onto the team in the short term. If you show up and on day one you want to fix 4 different processes, the team is going to hear that over the next 3 months you want to completely change how they do all their work, while they need to keep the rest of their work going. That is moving a whole lot of proverbial cheese all at once. Of course, teams can stagnate, and some of this can be good, but you need to spread it out, do the politics up front to get people to agree that processes need to get upgraded, and ease them into the changes over time.
They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.
How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.
I could well be wrong about this :)
The point being made is to pick your battles.
The author’s point is that, even if you are correct 100% of the time, fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you.
They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Now, I will attempt to put down my phone and not respond to any replies I get to the contrary.
Sweating intensifies…
I've been reading the writings of stoic philosophers each morning and journaling about what I read and I think this fits in well with that philosophy. We're all here on Earth to enrich ourselves (and I don't mean materially) and those around us. Arguing with strangers online is antithetical to that premise. You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling, and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so. They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?
Epictetus writes that the truely educated aren't quarrelsome. "The beautiful and good person neither fights with anyone nor, as much as they are able, permits others to fight.. this is the meaning of getting an education - learning what is your own affair and what is not. If a person carries themselves so, where is there any room for fighting?"
What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
For me the goal is twofold. I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I know it's nearly impossible to convince someone you are arguing with. But also I do try and have an open mind. It's not common that I change my position, but it does happen.
For example, I was once a climate change denier. It was debating with people online which caused me to reflect and change that position.
> I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake.
I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online. All too often these days, folks are just engaging in point scoring type arguments and readers just agree with their tribe.
Not saying it doesn't happen, nor that it's a good goal taken with care. But me personally the ROI just isn't there (your calculus is different, and that's okay!)
A lot of times when I engage in arguments online, I think of it more as showing nuance to a person. I'm not trying to persuade them, I'm not trying to win, I'm just trying to show them that the problem space is a bit more complicated than their view is showing them. At least that's how I justify it to myself when I do engage. And of course, I'm no where close to perfect, I engage in petty point scoring arguments because it feels good at the time but isn't fruitful or healthy in the long run.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online
I do, and I have. I’ve also argued something with someone and come out the other side convinced of their position. (Sometimes immediately. More often down the road. Nevertheless, a valuable exchange.)
A very similar experience here. Reading comment threads over the years has absolutely turned me on to perspectives I never even conceived of previously. I've reconsidered my positions (on political and technical matters, mainly) by reading the discourse in comment threads.
Sometimes I post to clarify my own position. Writing helps with that.
There's a whole field of street epistemology which is about persuading people. Arguing with them is one of the least effective ways to do that. Socratic dialogue sometimes works, although for any belief that has an emotional root you're likely to hit a crash out point.
It turns out the most effective techniques are manipulative. The best persuasion doesn't look like argument or persuasion, it looks like something self-evident you can't help agree with.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online
HN comments sway me more than any other source nowadays. Reading comments not directed at myself probably makes it easier because my ego does not feel attacked.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online.
Counterpoint, literally doing that right now in this thread as I’m considering the merits of online discourse in the context of stoicism.
I'm glad to be wrong!
The only times it has helped is when I am researching something like say gardening or researching a product. I find the back and forth between people helpful in making my decision on what to do.
Personally, I really enjoy reading the back and forth :-)
Honestly if you change your opinion under effect of some online strangers then it wasn't a strong conviction in the first place
The online stranger's argument was convincing because they brought a lot of evidence from research papers to general climatologist opinions which completely debunked a lot of the talking points I'd used (without me exposing those in the conversation).
It also made me go back on my own sources and question where they were coming from. Let's just say the anti climate change positions become a lot less convincing when you dig into their sourcing and find a large number of them literally funded by the likes of Koch industries or Glenn Beck's personal companies.
Climate change being anthropogenic is so easy to verify nowadays that when someone has contrary conviction it isn’t because they don’t know the data.
Data won’t help it at all. It’s available two clicks away, there is no shortage of it.
People want to believe otherwise and you will never actually convince anyone on the internet using data on anything in 99% of the cases.
Persuasion is an art and most of the people on the internet have no clue how to manipulate human mind to instil beliefs.
I can give a short rundown on persuasion as non autistic individual actually having those skills:
1. Always say that you understand somebody point of view. Appear interested in what they have to say and respect their beliefs.
2. Intertwine few uncomfortable questions in their point of view, very gently and non argumentative. These are the seeds of doubt.
You are a farmer it’s like gardening and watering a flower. You must be gentle with new sprouts of doubt. Tend to the garden of new beliefs and one day they will bear fruit.
> Climate change being anthropogenic is so easy to verify nowadays that when someone has contrary conviction it isn’t because they don’t know the data.
I agree and this is true. But my opinion and position there shifted around 2010 or so.
It's true the data was there and available in a few clicks. But I wasn't seeking it out and instead was relying on trusted sources that were lying to me.
Now-a-days, though, even my parents are on board with climate change being real. It's just too apparent for anyone that can remember what the world was like 10 or 20 years ago.
Why? If the argument is well argued, and makes you have better understanding of the issue, does it teally matter who you argue with? Can you only have your deeply held convictions changed from your own sphere? The implications are a bit disheartening in that case.
Nobody thinks this way about actual strong convictions they held like belief in god or abortion or polygamy.
This works only for very narrow set of topics about numbers and data.
Even the same academics that would change their mind quickly about some theory would never actually change their mind on their strong ideological convictions. I know it from real life examples.
Strange that it needs to be articulated so loud and clear.
So I repeat again if you changed your mind under influence of an internet stranger then it wasn’t a very strong conviction.
> Nobody thinks this way about actual strong convictions they held like belief in god or abortion or polygamy.
There's no need to change that kind of strong convictions, what needs to change is the desire to use such convictions as justification for policies imposed onto others.
> Even the same academics that would change their mind quickly about some theory would never actually change their mind on their strong ideological convictions
Again, that wouldn't be a problem if they recognized the right of others to think differently. Their propensity to invoke "science" to justify intrusive policies, one way or the other, is the real problem.
> So I repeat again if you changed your mind under influence of an internet stranger then it wasn’t a very strong conviction.
To paraphrase Keynes here, those who don't change their minds when facts change are simply fools or trolls. And the realization of change may come from a single word, of people known or unknown, or even without words - it doesn't matter, change must take place when change is due.
We could argue about the semantics of "very strong convictions" until the cows come home, but it won't do any good if we haven't beforehand agreed upon "why we argue".
If they believe something is right, or even “good” then of course they think everyone else should probably do alike.
Look, I don’t even know why are we arguing over what exactly? I don’t know. Seems like truisms
I don’t even know what is exactly your opposite view on anything right now and if it indeed exists or what is the point of this exchange.
I just said basic truth - majority of people won’t change mind under influence of online strangers and if they do their convictions weren’t that strong to begin with.
You could of course provide me with data that this is not true and people change mind under online strangers persuasion all day everyday
> I just said basic truth - majority of people won’t change mind under influence of online strangers > You could of course provide me with data that this is not true
Actually, it's the other way around - you have to provide data showing that the majority of people won't change their minds under the influence of online strangers regardless of the quality of arguments and the time they spare to participate in discussions. That's how proper studies are done.
> Look, I don’t even know why are we arguing over what exactly?... Seems like truisms
As I said, that depends on the semantics of "strongly held convictions". Do all people have them or are they just for bigots?
See, you fail to convince me not because you're stranger but because the quality of your arguments is lacking - you seem to conflate these and then, instead of finding a productive reason to participate in the discussion, you jump to the defensive "I'm just writing truisms".
The thing is: your inability to understand this is not my responsibility.
I am content with knowing what I know and more people joining this particular abstract group makes no difference to my wellbeing or sense of satisfaction.
I think that you are thinking of faith rather than something reasoned.
You say that like it's a bad thing, and not the defining characteristic of an well educated and well rounded human.
One of the best ways humans have developed for information transfer is rhetorical debate. You're supposed to argue for whatever you believe in vehemently, but critically, abandoning it as much as necessary to adopt a better, more accurate understanding or model.
Unquestioned or unchallenged ideas are significantly less valuable than challenged or improved ones. Arguing for and defending what you know is a good thing, holding on to convictions that aren't improving your life or the life of others is fucking stupid. And the idea that you can't learn something from another human because the medium is the Internet, is certainly a take to read from someone making a comment on the internet.
people tend to like things more the more times they're exposed to it.
that includes other people, ideas, and arguments.
people dont change their mind by considering the evidence, its emotional and you confabulate the new reason for your new preferences
Of course, the genetic fallacy is just that: a fallacy.
I waver between "I'm not going to convince anyone anyway, and they'll retreat to their echo chamber and be right back where they were" and "The world would be better if we fight for what's right, and speech is the only ethical way to do that".
I'm tired, Boss...
> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
I'm sure this is some sort of confirmation bias, I've noticed fewer stupid talking points for topics where I argue about online. I doubt it has any impact in people's political beliefs, but people end up being slightly less ideological and more hedgey. IMO, establishment figures are too dismissive about engaging with the public because they think they're above it, but this is how you end up with DOGE laying off departments only to beg for them back.
Also, honestly, I just enjoy the feeling of putting a dumb person in their place. Occasionally, I'm the dumb person, but I don't really mind that since I'm not really tied to any viewpoint. Being more informed also satisfies my mild superiority complex. Also, even if I don't learn from others, generally learn from the process of defining my arguments.
Check out the sceptic Sextus Empiricus. Hackett has a collection of his writings. Admittedly he was strongly opposed to the stoics as he considered them dogmatists, but at its heart scepticism is the idea that we should hold all arguments about non-evident things in suspension of judgement, because against any argument put forward we can balance an equally plausible argument. Instead, we should "turn our back upon the whole dispute and go back to talking and acting like a civilised, common-sensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist".
I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.
I will do that, thanks for the recommendation. Stoics are a mixed bag for me, I definitely had a better opinion of them before I actually read their works. Most of my journalling is about how blatantly obvious and non-helpful their writings often are, or how they miss the point. But there are certainly value in the general guidelines and they certainly have nuggets of value. I find they add flavor to my personal philosophy, but don't dictate it. After I get through my book of writings, I was planning on moving on to humanists and Camus.
Put me in the Nietzsche camp: stoicism is self-tyranny. It's a denial of feeling disguised as overcoming it.
Do you have a recommendation to start reading about stoicism, but potentially not the early philosophers? A more modern text?
Check out Ryan Holiday's books! There's the Daily Stoic that is a daily meditation on a stoic writing, one page to read and think about each day, and then there's also a journaling prompt one. I use the meditation book, and then often find Ryan Holiday's curation useful, but his trimming of context a bit too aggressive to give him the ability to put it all on one page, so I might read the source along with what is written there.
Most of the stoic writings are letters and aren't super long. They're very approachable!
Thank you!
>They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?
The outcome is not foretold. I have learned a lot from being corrected by someone who knows more than me or points out a fault in my assumptions/logic. I have also learned from seeing subject matter experts arguing with each other.
> You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling
Not always, but it is at least always entertainment. If the alternative you would have chosen is watching a mindless movie then you're no worse off.
> and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so.
It is inherently a solitary activity. You are right that the likelihood of a bystander gaining anything from it is nearly zero, but there was never any reason to think they would. It was never about them. Squabbling, as you call it, happens so you can learn about yourself.
Engage in arguments that decide the direction of a project.
The goal is karma farming and the feeling of smug superiority over others, especially when they get downvoted or flagged and you don't.
The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.
So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)?
I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics.
No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.
But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy.
If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot.
So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this.
What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning.
Boom.
> No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.
I disagree, and offer the world of 2026 as anecdotal evidence lol. Most of what you wrote implies that every person participates in arguments honestly, with full faith, and are both cognitively capable of, and actively willing to, receive, evaluate and ultimately accept the argument as a zero-sum "winner". In reality, illogical appeals to emotion tend to win the day.
This also kind of refuses to acknowledge that a lot of people simply don't feel the need to be right; some people move in silence, others just don't care for the friction, or need the accolades. Still others don't enjoy the company of self-righteous, unbending, argumentative people, or have wildly different perspectives on a topic due to life experiences that are unfathomable to the rest.
I believe that multiple things can often be right simultaneously, and it's exactly that kind of positive sum philosophy that drives the most argumentative and need-to-be-right people completely insane haha. Different strokes for different folks man.
> In reality, illogical appeals to emotion tend to win the day
Not to a neutral party. Debates and arguments that can change the course of a project happen in front of a neutral committee (ideally) in that case logic can win.
> This also kind of refuses to acknowledge that a lot of people simply don't feel the need to be right; some people move in silence, others just don't care for the friction, or need the accolades. Still others don't enjoy the company of self-righteous, unbending, argumentative people, or have wildly different perspectives on a topic due to life experiences that are unfathomable to the rest.
I didn’t refuse to acknowledge. Did you even read my post? I said people feel both. The need to argue and the need to avoid it. Most people feel it on sort of an even 5050 ground but there are some people who of course swing one way or the other. If you describe the human condition in general and not get into specifics or edge cases. Overall the most apt description is a duality.
> I believe that multiple things can often be right simultaneously, and it's exactly that kind of positive sum philosophy that drives the most argumentative and need-to-be-right people completely insane haha. Different strokes for different folks man.
Did you read my post? I feel you read the first part and felt the need to argue your point without consideration to the topic at hand. My entire post is about a conflicting duality when it comes to arguing. You embody your own stereotype you describe.
I almost never reply to replies on something that I wrote in a public forum, because I stand by what I wrote as a complete statement and don't feel the need to defend it further. In this particular case, because the whole topic is about "argument", I found it funny enough to break my own rule.
For what it's worth, I did read your post twice before I replied, just to see if I didn't get it on the first pass. What I took from it, and maybe I'm thick as molasses, was that humans defacto love to argue due to biological imperative, we stratify social value based on the success of arguments, and ultimately promote argument as a contact sport that you can dominate in for personal gain and personal validation. Dominate instead of mediate, which I've found through life experience to come most often from people who are deeply insecure with themselves.
When I came back to the thread, I noticed that the submission title had been updated to Most arguments are about ego, not ideas and saw your replies to my post + siblings, and felt like that new title encapsulated your responses perfectly. You and I simply disagree on the purpose and value of argument.
Persuasive people rarely argue. Persuasive people do not need to be unequivocally right. The most persuasive people do get what they want in the end, but you often don't even realize you've been persuaded.
Argumentative people leverage power if they have it, and data, and sometimes "win", but rarely succeed in persuasion.
And that's just my opinion! Feel free to disagree, I've no interest in an argument LOL
It’s just wording for the same thing. Arguments can be persuasive.
When you say you persuaded someone it meant you gave a persuasive argument. You’ve turned the discussion into word play but essentially we are in agreement that I am right. No need to argue when we both agree.
> The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right
Frequently accompanied by a feeling of despair when you are dominated by another.
> The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.
Dialog brings clarity. Clarity helps build tools. Tools help survival. So, if there is anything to seek, try clarity of understanding - not being right, and being right stands in the way of understanding.
> Frequently accompanied by a feeling of despair when you are dominated by another.
Take a few minutes to read the entire post. I talk about this. In fact the entire point of my post is about this. If you missed the point I can only assume you decided to respond without reading everything.
> Dialog brings clarity. Clarity helps build tools. Tools help survival. So, if there is anything to seek, try clarity of understanding - not being right, and being right stands in the way of understanding.
The dialog itself is not what I’m referring to. I’m referring to empathetic relation. This “dialog” or thread exists because participants in this thread relate to all the emotions described in said topic. Please finish reading my post before responding.
Ease off the adderall bud.
There's a lot of sloppy thinking in that post, starting with the pseudo-scientific framing in terms of evolutionary psychology... which is ironic given then ScIeNcE-bro tone... couched against an artificial and incorrect taxonomy of reason into "philosophical, logical and scientific"... in reality those are intersecting at times, orthogonal at others, and the devil is generally in the details... but it certainly doesn't make sense to impose some kind of juvenile "batman vs superman" power scaling hierarchy on top of them...
The reduction of the results of an argument to a binary win/loss between two people is probably the most humorously absurd bit. There are many outcomes of an argument. Sometimes it pivots research in a fruitful direction. Sometimes it leads to compromise. Sometimes parties talk past one another. Sometimes it serves to create an artifact for later analysis/reflection. Sometimes it causes us to pause and re-evaluate before acting. Sometimes it plants a seed that bears fruit later. Sometimes it strengthens both parties by refining their respective views. Sometimes it wastes everyone's time and nothing valuable comes of it.
Pursuit of knowledge or aligning action to truth isn't an arm-wrestling contest with winner-takes-all outcomes. That's just a silly framing that doesn't reflect reality, it's the kind of way you see the world of you aren't actually part of knowledge production and consume "debates" as influencer-slop from Ben Shapiro types.
I argue with people all the time. At work, with friends. It's generally a form of productive commerce. I see things one way and have knowledge/strengths that I bring to bear through my perspective. Others have their own knowledge/strengths. Working together, we might build a scalable data system, prioritize a road map, design a better game, make food decisions at a restaurant, have an enlightening political conversation, improve a speedrun. Whatever, the ends are various. The means are often spirited debate, in which, generally, everybody wins. That's just kind of the first principal of macro economic theory, if you need a bro-system to cash things out into.
> Ease off the adderall bud.
This is kind of rude, implying I’m on drugs. It’s a cheap way to win an argument to sort of degrade your opponent before even talking.
I prefer to keep what’s underneath my post is as a discussion rather then play games or engage in arguments like this. So I’m sorry to say, everything you wrote underneath that initial paragraph you can just throw it in the trash because I’m not reading it. Apologies and thank you.
Yeah, I agree somewhat.
But I also got the feeling when reading this article that this guy loves motte-and-bailey. People don't intentionally set out to do motte-and-bailey arguments, but they often do it by accident. When people realize that they're arguing the losing side but can't admit it, they subtly shift their argument, and shift, and shift again until they're out of the bailey and inside the unassailable motte. Now they're the "winner" of the argument and can maintain their 100% argument success rate. Nice, and since nobody's recording the conversation, nobody can prove that they changed their argument in order to get on the winning side.
Motte-and-bailey is a common strategy for people who think they've won every argument they've ever been in. Nobody is so logically perfect that they actually win every argument without resorting to some kind of fallacy. I can't prove it. I just speak from experience. When I first learned about motte-and-bailey, I realized I had used it myself without realizing it. It's a natural tendency because it's so easy to do without really thinking.
Once we've learned all the fallacies and recognize them in ourselves, we finally realize that arguing is stupid and stop doing it so much. :)
Now listen, I think you are dead wrong about this.
:)
It's a healthy attitude I believe. I think a little argument is fine, but there does need to be a time when you learn to stop. A lot of people want to get the last word in and I'm at the point where I just let that happen generally (though I do often want that last word myself :) )
What I've found is that when an argument feels like it's running in a circle, that's the time to bow out. You don't need to say anything or point anything out, just stop responding. The person with the last word doesn't automatically "win" and you certainly aren't always the one to "win". Winning doesn't really matter, the argument and the persuasion of the readers of the comment chain is what matters more.
But also real life isn't the internet and how you write shouldn't mirror how you talk. I have loads of family members I disagree with, and we do argue about hot button issues. But everyone approaches it with a "we love each other" and we listen and respond to what's being said. In fact, I generally make it a point in conversation to find common ground and agree with the person I'm talking to. Unlike an internet comment train where I know I'm probably going to disappear from memory, with real relationships I know I'll see my family again, a lot.
At a reply depth of 4, the parent can never have the last laugh.. unless he replies to himself.
Or, if that reply link/button doesn't show up, click on the timestamp of the comment you wish to rebut/remark/comment, then you will see a comment box with button.
I think the parent's point is that if you are genuinely open to losing, the arguments can be productive because you can learn something instead... So stopping arguments is just another way of closing yourself off.
> even if you are correct 100% of the time
Probably a sign of something larger if you think this, which OP apparently does.
If he knew so much, he wouldn't be an engineer complaining about how everyone's stupider than him
There's (probably) a correlation between things you know well and things you're willing to argue about.
Care about thing -> learn more about it
Care about thing -> argue about it
The misanthropic lover of chaos in me hears you trying to be a better person and wants to shout "no you're wrong, this is what he really means!"
https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-comic-misanthrope-in-a-...
But I guess I should try to be a better person too, ugh.
on edit: I put in the link because while off subject does sum up the misanthropic personality pretty well, and their impulses.
> They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Sometimes it's worth considering what the effort is on. Another assumption is that you should effort is in convincing someone rather than understanding them: play dumb on the topic, and perhaps ask the other person questions to see why they think the thing(s) they do.
Knowing other people's cognitive blindspots may help you avoid them yourself. Perhaps make the effort on understanding.
Language is a flawed vessel for conveying truth and the more people accept that they will never truly (like at a deep, fundamental level - not just truth-like via utility) be understood or understand, the more humility they might approach difficult discussions with, potentially facilitating the cooperation and coordination that language can be great for, rather than the dharma-combat people’s egos have them fighting every time they perceive a verbal slight or challenge.
> Now, I will attempt to put down my phone and not respond to any replies I get to the contrary.
I know you were joking, but you should try it sometimes. It's very cathartic to get things out of your system and then ignore any replies. It's my default mode.
I often write a comment in a thread here and, satisfied I got it out of my head, hit the back button without hitting reply. I know, you might look at my comment history and say I don't do that enough, but imagine how bad it would be if I always replied!
I've done this, and even more: very often lately I've written a response on HN, let it sit for a few minutes, then delete it.
Not because I think I'm right (I think I'm aware of my flaws), but because I realize I don't feel like arguing about it, maybe my reply is closer to a belief of mine I've no wish to defend, and I suspect any snarky replies might incite a bad back-and-forth that never ends well online, bet it HN or elsewhere. So having gotten the reply out of my system, I delete it before anyone has a chance to reply.
Somehow my brain gets tricked into thinking I've replied, and allows me to drop the whole conversation in peace. It's a neat trick.
Also, even if you can't resist looking, not replying to every single person arguing against your position is a powerful tool on the internet.
If you're right, or at least, not making a complete ass of yourself, chances are someone else is going to come along and argue back for you. And besides the benefit that someone else will likely explain your position in a slightly different way, and the multiple POVs might combine more effectively, having a half dozen people explain to someone why they're wrong is a lot more convincing to random bystanders than two morons replying "nuh-uh" to each other a few dozen times.
And if no one jumps in to defend you, it's a pretty good signal to step back and re-read everything and have a good think before you have another go at it, at least to make sure you have something to add beyond what you have already said, even if you think you're still right.
> fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you
Fighting every battle is toxic. But calling something out doesn’t need to be a fight. I’m still halfway convinced a lot of Silicon Valley’s success derived from having lots of folks on the spectrum who wouldn’t bat an eye at calling out the CEO for making a mistake. (And said CEO, and everyone around them, having to get accustomed to that.)
I generally agree with the sentiment but the one element I haven’t been able to quite square with it all is how internet debates are about the other people reading. So when someone says something wildly inaccurate/messed up about a topic, say DEI or something, when nobody pushes back and/or they don’t have their comment sufficiently downvoted (if possible) there is an implied “they are right.” Believe it or not a lot of people reading forums are still forming opinions!
To use a charged example but maybe less controversial than DEI on HN, let’s say it’s some ridiculous claim about vaccines (“they cause autism.”) The reason harmful ideas like that spread is because people throw them out online and other people online read them/hear them. I have a hard time believing that loud, public pushback isn’t important. If it’s not, then making those loud, public claims initially wouldn’t be so effective. Grifters making money off scaring people away from life saving vaccines and towards their snake oil supplements wouldn’t be successful if these platforms didn’t convince people. But I also acknowledge that it’s not necessarily my place and it’s not good for my mental health to participate.
So I don’t really know what the answer is. But it just doesn’t feel right to let some of that stuff just sit out in public unchallenged. I know a lot of what I think comes from being “a child of the Internet.” There’s no doubt my personal experience on the Internet was fundamental to my more progressive values I now hold. So again, I have no clue what the answer is here or whose responsibility it is.
I agree. Despite ending on a note of self-improvement, I wasn't really convinced that the author has any self-awareness to speak of. For example:
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
Oh, they're going to acknowledge that there are emotional reasons for their addiction to arguing.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people
Oh, never mind.
Especially in software.
Approach A: implementation is hands-down the fastest.
Approach B: implementation is written so clearly and concisely that it's essentially self-documenting.
Approach C: a lot of attention paid to future proofing the code, parameter checking, sanity checking…
Which of the above was the most "logical" approach that the recipient was just not understanding?
(EDIT: Approach D: adheres closely to coding patterns in the rest of the framework.
I could probably come up with others…)
Debating is always primarily a game of power and only secondarily about truth or correctness. If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.
But it’s not about truth, it’s about imposing your beliefs on others. And while rational arguments are a socially blessed method for doing so, they don’t change the underlying motivation.
This is true for a very narrow definition of debate though. At work, choosing to debate can make the difference between a software design that solves the problem vs one that doesn't. Deploying code that causes an incident vs lands safely.
In broader life, public debate can reveal new arguments to seeking minds, help influence and educate people other than the debaters. It can even grow the debaters themselves if they approach with the right humility.
That said, many do approach debate in the way you describe. For those of us trying to avoid futile debate in favor of productive debate, the best choice is to detect these bad faith actors, acknowledge the bad faith publicly, and pull away
Ok, I definitely don't agree with this. It's so reductive as to be absurd. It almost reads as rooted in personal resentment.
> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right...
So... how would someone know if they're right? For starters, if we're going to be serious there are a lot of matters where there isn't even such a thing as "right" because the question is how to decide what to optimise for. But more importantly, if you rely on the inside of your own head to try and arrive at the truth the most likely outcome is slop. One of the best parts of being argumentative is finding out what the holes in a view are really quickly.
There seem to be views in the comments and original article that arguments are to be won rather than undertaken and reviewed. They're a man-vs-self story, not man-vs-man one.
> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.
Disagree, if you care about truth, you're not going to just let people spread any opinion as if it were fact. It has societal consequences. That way lies the dark ages, witch hunts, wrong people getting into power. Of course one needs to be judicious in which battles to fight.
> The author assumes they’re always right
If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place
It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.
Yes, my thought exactly.. In my experience it is always how you behave when arguing. If you "blame" the other will become defensive and nothing is accomplished. If you generalize and and talk in a helpful supportive way they will see their fault themselves and correct the fault. I usually get most on my side. We openly discuss and I genuinely look for faults in my own arguments too.
> They never mention they could’ve been wrong.
I noticed that as well. He's oblivious to why he enjoys correcting people in the first place, the emotion that compels him to do it.
The black and white, right or wrong thinking is also a fallacy.
It also reeks of an engineer with no real appreciation of how to run a business, who's never had to fire someone, or make tough financial decisions
This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.
One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"
> The problem is that the author may have been right
Even worse, it's very likely the author wasn't even right most of the time. They claim a frequent occurrence is that "the room" turns against them. Now, their rationalization is that they are ego-driven, yadda yadda, no other possibility of why "the room" is often against their position. If they were rational as they claim to be, maybe they could show some insight or introspection into the possibility they are wrong about some or all of the details, at least some of the time.
But no, their conclusion is that humans are ego-driven and it's best to disengage and only debate with truly smart people.
This reminds me of the joke about the guy who's driving and hears a warning on the radio: "beware of a madman driving the wrong way on Av XYZ", and he replies "ONE madman!? There are HUNDREDS of them!"
I see your cynicism and it could be correct, I'm not sure. I also could see it being as described but irrelevant in the manager's mind who knows about the pending sale that will put off the pending funding cliff and company collapse. I could also see that the person is, as admitted, technically correct but being such a jerk that no one is interested in letting them have increased influence. So many other possibilities.
Regardless, this story about the situation, especial if true, seems less likely to support them in seeing a richer tapestry of considerations and perspectives.
One thing I genuinely try to do is fully grasp the other persons points, and eventually I back away from an argument because some people will not change their minds, but I do try to have a take away. I also admit if I'm wrong, I hate when people don't do this just to spite you during an argument. I don't care about being proven wrong, especially if we're discussing tech, please show me why I'm wrong, otherwise, if you're wrong, don't take it personal.
Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I'm 52, and over my lifetime I felt that there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff. And, while I agree with the author's approach to let people learn from the consequences of their mistakes, what if the consequences of their mistakes (or the mistakes of the people they elect) affect all of us?
I don't think that was really the author's approach--to let them learn from their own mistakes.
It was to quit wasting his time trying to correct their mistakes when they weren't ready to accept criticism.
Do you think you've changed many votes with your corrections? Even in arguments you won?
I used to work in politics, where sadly, the goal is to change people's opinions. At this level I did succeed in changing many opinions.
The most effective way to change an individual's opinion is to calmly provide facts to them without commentary or judgement. No insults, no judgement, no snark. Just calmly engage with their points and empathise with them. Most opinions are formed without knowing all the facts. Presenting facts without attacking their ego is the best path for changing an opinion.
This works best on unfamiliar topics people don't yet have strong feelings about. With opinion formation, the side to set the first emotional frame has the advantage. This is why in a referendum campaign it's so critical your message reaches voters before the other side can define the ballot question.
Other things I learned
- Good marketers in politics understand psychology. Repeat exposure better encodes a message into memory. For political ads this means repeating the same key phrases/words over and over again, to a degree you and I would find weird, to ensure you encode them into the viewer's memory. With enough repeat exposure, people feel like the ideas are their own.
- Never repeat your opponent's framing of a lie. To debunk a lie: use a "truth" sandwich. State your truth first -- first frame gets the advantage. Next describe the lie in less incendiary words, debunk it, then repeat your frame on the issue repeatedly.
- Politicians start every day with coordinated key talking points for media interviews because message repetition = encoding.
- Referendum ads are particularly crazy because they have no candidate reputation to protect. They do not need to be reasonable or respectable. A referendum ad's sole purpose is to persuade with the most emotionally resonant messages it can to encode key messages/frames of thinking. Being controversial just helps to create more exposure and people seeing your message. If everybody in the media is "debating" the merits of your message frame you are winning. People vote on the issue, not on the campaign team. E.g. If an ad says X will lead to extremist neo-nazi soldiers goose-stepping the streets, people will scoff at the hyperbole while it still subconsciously encodes into them that maybe I don't want something that risks instability.
- Politics is tribal and people follow the support signals sent by elites on their favoured side. Powerful elites speaking out in favour or against something/someone greatly changes its support among coalitions.
> Whether the earth is round
I honestly think a lot of the flat earther types in particular are basically trolls and/or enjoy being stubborn/argue about common knowledge, for no other reason because they can.
I think it used to be like that but then a lot of people were actually convinced, or people who already actually believed it were attracted to the parody argument.
The flat earther I knew was sincere. He had fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole after decades of religious indoctrination had dulled his critical thinking skills.
Another religious friend became a 9/11 truther and Elon-stan (post cave diver).
For a time, I honestly believed the Earth may be only 6K years old because of the magic sky being and similar indoctrination.
> ... there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff.
I think there are multiple things here that need to be disentangled. The first is that just because science "proves" something that doesn't mean the political, civil, or economic path is nearly as clear cut. While there certainly are people who just deny these things outright there's also the camp that accepts the scientific result but disputes how to deal with it as a society.
Second I've seen an alarming rise in what I would characterize as scientism, a belief structure around science itself where the "acolytes" of science do not understand the science themselves, but use it to reinforce their own worldview in the same way that deniers (heretics really) use other sources to reinforce their worldview. I have seen this play out within my own social circle as people will defer to experts as if they are a clerical class with divine authority to determine ultimate truth. To give an example in a much less controversial arena, how often have you witnessed people adopting fad diets because the "science" shows X is good even though the actual backing papers, that no adopter has read, are much more murky at best? This is an understandable consequence of having a limited lifespan where not everyone can know everything therefore heuristics must be used to comprehend the world, but the flexible heuristic which can lead to a change of opinion can be swapped out for a rigid belief that permits no change of opinion unfortunately.
Last I think this ultimately stems from what F.A. Hayek called constructivist rationalism[1], the idea that we can rationally construct our own social order. I share your own concern about mistakes that affect all of us specifically regarding philosophies that adopt constructivist rationalism such as the family of collectivist ideologies (socialism and the like) which are currently on the rise. My conclusion is that civilizations will evolve according to the culmination of all individual actors' actions and I personally have a limited role to play, although I am a classical liberal. Your last question unfortunately can lead some to conclude that a much more dictatorial society is necessary to produce a result that may itself not be possible and instead lead to an even worse result than the alternative.
[1] I highly recommend The Fatal Conceit by Hayek if you want to challenge assumptions your own worldview likely rests on without even knowing it.
It's like that political cartoon. "What if climate change is false and we've made the world a better place for no reason?"
Perhaps you could expand upon the parallels you’re seeing as it seems like you’ve fundamentally misunderstood my post.
> what if
Thats the thing. We never really know if there will be consequences. If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election. If Trump becomes president democracy is dead! I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
> If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election.
What if a climate denier became/becomes president? What would be the consequences?
And not just on the planet but more locally: the folks that have to deal with hurricanes or wildfires? What happens to insurance rates? What happens if we stay very dependent on petroleum, and oil prices spike? What happens to people's cost of living (esp. food, which is transported by truck and use oil in fertilizer)?
Depends: does the public consider this climate denying president to be a supreme dictator or an employee of the public?
Doesn't matter. His policies are to defund clean energy and promote continued fossil fuel use.
It does matter because if the former then the people will sit back and watch, but if the later they will rake the president through the coals until he complies with the wishes of his employer, making any personal views immaterial. That said, I think what your comment implies gives us the answer to the original question.
> I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
Um.
What?
As a conservative-leaning registered Republican, I think Trump has brought the US the closest it's been to self-destruction since the Civil War.
His administration has authorized heinous human rights violations repeatedly, and has prevented "law enforcement" agents who killed innocent civilians from being brought to trial multiple times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alex_Pretti
The administration has violently pushed away most of its historical allies, and is going to enjoy the privilege of trying to stumble through the world on its own for quite a while.
The administration got the US embroiled in an utterly stupid, optional war that was guaranteed to have the harmful results it has: https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/
The economy looks good on paper, but that's almost entirely due to the current genAI bubble, not any intelligent economic choices by the president's office.
Most recently, the utterly idiotic ruination of the reflecting pool in DC, and subsequent insane claims that it was intentionally destroyed by the administration's critics is emblematic of the stupidity and self-destruction inflicted on the nation by President Trump. It's a small thing, compared to many of the issues, but it illustrates the harmful behavioral patterns in a crystal-clear manner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial_Reflecting_Po...
I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.
> simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack
I think that's because that often is a prelude to an attack.
I know someone who mainly asks for explanations or justifications when they're getting angry about something (and it's obvious). There's high chance the next thing that will happen is some kind of outburst (or quiet seething resentment). With them, the question "why did you do X?" almost never has any element of curiosity to it.
On the other hand on this web site at least I think people ask questions passive aggressively at times.
Instead of honestly saying "I think you are wrong because..." they passive aggressively pretends they are "just asking questions."
Of course on non controversial topics a question is likely to just be a question.
There are certainly lines you don't want to cross if you want to avoid conflicts, and there are ways to ask questions nicely. Maybe it's a professional bias, but when you work in research or engineering, I think it's pretty normal to ask questions or push back on strong claims without proofs, without necessarily sounding like a jerk.
I think I managed to upset people on several occasions as I was just genuinely trying to understand their opinion on some topics.
Or people who pick a nit and then when it turns out the nit they picked wasn't even a nit, they double down and pick an even smaller it and split ever smaller hairs because they just cannot function if they don't "Win" every discussion
It's insane how reluctant some people are just to say "Oh maybe I was wrong or misunderstood"
The problem is conflict avoidance behavior. We are hardwired to prevent conflict with the in-group (family/clan) to prevent loss of life due to strife - at the same time that does not hold up for the out-group.
This could work with someone you don’t know well and should be the default approach. But you also need to trust your instinct and know when debating it’s not worth pursuing. It could be a coworker you have known for years who has certain toxic attitude. Humans are complex beings, we don’t know what’s going on with other people’s lives and minds. It takes years of dedicated study and experience to attempt to understand other people’s issues. You are not going to suddenly become a psychologist or behavioral therapist by just listening and kindly discussing. Some of these attitudes have an underlying problem that has nothing to do with work, it could be upbringing or mental health, or a combination. It just happens that Software Engineers may be more likely to suffer from these problems than people in other professions, just by the nature of it.
Isn't that what they mean by "changing yourself"?
It is exactly that. You aren't crazy to question this.
There's no mention of anything slightly anecdotal so we could produce our own opinions, so we have to take everything at face value. But even then, if if the author we're completely right technically, he is completely wrong and still is, because it's much more important for the author to change minds than it is to stick with his duty. It's just someone unaware of their own ego thinking there is no ego just because he feels like he is right all the time.
I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.
It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.
Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.
When you say you "give it back the same," are you saying you also are savage in reviewing their PRs, or that you are savage when replying negatively to their feedback?
If just the former, I strongly disagree that the two of you are arguing.
Mostly the former, but occasionally it goes back and forth for awhile as alignment need ironing out. That's the other thing about engineering arguments: both people are aligned in seeing an end result. People in online arguments don't have mutual alignment for a good outcome so they go nowhere.
ironically, you wont get a reply from the author...
and honestly, i think we need more of this online. we shouldn’t feel this incessant need to constantly chirp back at someone if we think they’re wrong.
i’d personally like to see us get to a place where we say more often “huh. i disagree with that person and that’s ok” and move on with our day.
i do find it worrying how we get … twitchy … if we can’t respond to literally everything.
I think you are spot on. Also if you are actively listening you may learn that the fault is in how you are communicating your ideas instead of the ideas themselves being flawed
You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.
And yet, a statement is a position, and this blog is stating his case, which is an argument for truth.
So he's still arguing, yet not listening, as it's all one sided now. This isn't actually that unusual, books, newspapers, and more often do one way communication.
But as soon as you state a position, you're arguing it.
> as soon as you state a position, you’re arguing it.
That’s true, but is that the meaning of argue that the author was referring to? Do you see a difference between arguing for something (making a case) and arguing with someone (contradicting them and saying they’re wrong)?
sometimes a statement is just a statement. not everyone is taking a “position”.
sometimes a conversation is just a conversation and not a debate.
Everything you speak, utter, or do is an output your self-centric view of the world. By uttering anything, you are describing yourself in relation to the world.
Your very existence is an argument against chaos. Your very individuality is an argument against other individualities.
By simply existing, you argue your conscious view of the world.
Even silence in response to a comment, statement, or idea espoused around you is in itself an argument.
Waking up in the morning is an argument.
These are all arguments, in that you believe these are the right things to do. You are taking a position merely by moving your arm because you believe that is the thing that you should do.
Every conscious thought you have is an argument, that said thought is correct.
Even your assertion that someone is not arguing, is an argument.
Not arguing is an argument, for it is a position against arguing the point.
The universe is defined by order. Order is defined by conscious determination. Conscious determination is an argument for something being correct.
Our very existence, spewing from the quantum foam, is the result of us having a conscious and argumentative determination that we exist. Cease to argue, and you may merely dissipate into individual atoms!
To exist? Is to argue.
By your logic no one should ever talk in meetings or write blog posts or comments (like yours) - stating any case about anything constitutes "not listening." Bollocks. A good listener spends a lot of time listening, but can spend some time talking.
This is why we can't have good things :)
I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.
His point is, it didn't matter if he was wrong or right about the topic because he admitted he was wrong about the reason: his ego.
> I could well be wrong about this :)
Exactly. You assume and imply for most of your comment that the OP is wrong about his premise.
But people aren’t equally wrong about things. Some people are more right more often. So how should your POV change if you accept his premise that he’s usually right in these situations? Then could you make a fair reading of his post?
Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).
I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.
I'd love to know what one of those conversations looked like.
"Using this construct in this part of the code increases it's performance by half of a percent. Obviously, this should be changed."
"That code isn't in a hot loop and doing it that way makes it much less clear about what's going on there."
(rolling their eyes) "Using this construct..."
>They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right
Everybody assumes they're right when they argue, else they wouldn't be arguing their points.
So for the point this post makes whether they're right or wrong during those times, doesn't matter. Even if they 100% were (by some freak natural phenomenon) always right, the points they make about not arguing would still be valid.
>They never mention they could’ve been wrong
As thrw045 has pointed out, they do precisely this toward the end of the post.
Or maybe they are rational and just let go of their mistakes once they have seen sufficient data to prove them otherwise?
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
Every "fact" you state really includes the opinion that the "fact" is indeed a fact.
Is climate change man-made?
Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme. There are countless facts, indisputably so. Gravity, death, the fact you wrote me an answer, the fact I'm writing you an answer. These aren't opinions
Objective reality is complex and hard to explain or list all the facts in a single argument session. People are also good at cherry picking the facts they agree with and disregarding other related facts. As others wrote, there are also bunch of trade offs, not many subjects have clear and low amount of facts that everyone can agree upon. People tend to argue most about society rather than theoretical math or physics. Like you can argue about what is the perfect form of government but you also have to account for the people who are part of the governing and being governed, they are not ideal actors, so the practical reality isn't straightforward.
Coming back, what is objective reality, anyway? Each person perceives the reality differently. And if you go down to measure single basic part of the reality you will find out the act of measurement already changes the outcome. Or we can agree about the final, ideal state but not how to get there.
> There are countless facts, indisputably so.
True, but isn’t the problem here that even though there are many facts, no one of us knows most of those facts with absolute certainty, and we learned them from other people, therefore we primarily hold opinions about facts as opposed to know them first hand.
My experience of gravity correlates with the explanation I was given in physics class, but I haven’t myself proven anything about it, and I just trust other people’s stories when they tell me gravity affects light or time.
I think about this often when contemplating arguments; there’s almost nothing I personally know first hand. Like you I believe in facts, but I recognize that I’m not the source of most facts, and I’m relaying a story someone else told me. I’m guessing this is one of the reasons facts can be so easily argued, because there are gaps between facts being established and facts being told and shared. Like, it’s pretty common for scientific research results to be oversimplified and told & shared in a way that doesn’t capture the entire truth, right?
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme.
No, I am not arguing against the existence of an objective reality. I argue against the capability of most people to accurately assess what that objective reality is. You for example apparently cannot even assess the meaning of my clear and simple sentence, why would I trust you to be able to assess any more complex situation?
Nobody’s asking you to trust peoples’ assessments, this is why reproduction exists in science.
Your sentence was very much ambiguous, you should think before writing
There is nothing ambiguous about my sentence. Once you learnt thinking, read it again.
If you can't find the issue with your statement, you should probably not be giving anybody lessons about thinking or learning...
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality?
I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.
I can be absolutely certain of my perception and recollection of what my consciousness is experiencing and has experienced.
Note that the truth of this statement does not depend on any certainty about external reality, nor does it depend on certainty that what I perceive or remember is happening or actually happened.
> I can be absolutely certain of my perception and recollection of what my consciousness is experiencing and has experienced.
There's abundant evidence to the contrary — at least as far as your recollection of what your consciousness previously experienced.
(IOW: Memory is extremely fallible.)
Way to miss the point.
I said I can be sure of what I am recollecting, not whether the my recollection actually matches what happened.
Please reread my comment — yours has two possible meanings.
> nor does it depend certainty that what I perceive or remember is what is
It absolutely assumes a unitary conscious experience versus what increasingly seems to be the case, a bunch of narratives our brains thread into a cohesive story ex post facto.
Put another way, there very well may be hard limits to how much a human-like consciousness can understand itself.
> a bunch of narratives our brains thread into a cohesive story ex post facto
That is exactly the reality I am asserting, whether or not they actually describe an "external" reality
I guess my argument is you can’t be absolutely certain about what your internal reality is. Perception, as a measure, even when pointed entirely internally, is fundamentally fuzzy.
My internal reality I hope tracks external reality.
And what I can be certain about is what my internal reality is.
And if you think I cannot be sure of that, I think I can be certain about I think my internal reality is.
And if you think I cannot be sure of even that, I think I can be certain about I think what I think my internal reality is.
It's perception all the way down, recursively. The reality is result of this taken to infinity.
There is of course absolute certainty and there is a lot of it, absolute and unquestionable
About abstract notions, maybe. About anything physical or emergent from physical processes, I don’t think so.
There people that gravity doesn’t exist and it’s some kind of buoyancy. Death as the final end of existence? There are many religions that claim that isn’t true. Nowadays it’s even harder who wrote what but next week if I don’t find that text again, can I be sure it was written or could be just in a dream?
1. yes they are objectively wrong, a persons belief does not need to be tied to a fact
2. death as in death of the body, it's very much inescapable
3. the last part is just uncertainty, hardly an argument against objective reality
Ad 2, How do you define it, precisely? Today we have the technology to keep the body alive even if it would stop functioning long time ago on it's own. Is the person still alive? Is the body still alive? Some bodies need permanent technical devices to be able to live, yet they can reach high age. Is it cheating or not?
Let me be annoying and tell you about your second point as I don't really understand your first one. Your perspective is that of a living looking at a dead body. Death itself though isn't an experience of life, Meaning that we can't really talk about what happens after we die. We just don't know and we probably can't know what or how death is. So any answer goes, really. I mean you are right uncertainty doesn't exclude objective reality, but my question in an argument would be: What do you even mean by objective reality?
> Is climate change man-made?
When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.
[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.
i disagree that it' warming, so where do you start with me? I'm not being coy, i 100% believe that all of the warming detected is strictly down to poor placement of sensors and incorrect assumptions thereof in the resultant data. So what we will end up arguing about, if we get past that particularity of my thoughts, is about models. And i hate arguing about models.
edit: i think probably the cities are getting "warmer" but that's not climate change that's city change. In that cities are growing, generally, with more stuff paved over. We need to plant more trees and have less concrete/asphalt in cities if we want to reverse this trend. also less people, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Thought I addressed this in my original comment but to make it clear, this is typically where I choose to withdraw from any debate. This is where I would typically take the advice in the article.
I don’t want to convince anyone the data is there and believable or even that even lacking any structured data or scientific method it just seems like a sensible explanation of actual witnessed events. How does polar and glacier ice disappear in such a short time if the climate is not warming? Why are there so many habitats exhibiting “heat stress” that is seen impacting plants/animals/etc? All far away from the concrete heat sinks you mention.
> Why are there so many habitats exhibiting “heat stress” that is seen impacting plants/animals/etc? All far away from the concrete heat sinks you mention.
offhand, if you're looking for heat stress because your funding was granted so you can find heat stress, you're probably going to find heat stress.
My issue is with models. there are models that disagree with the models that the ICCC is using, and models that disagree with both. Are we exiting a global mini ice age? are we about to enter another more severe ice age? the past 50-60 years has been tedious to try and track which way the climate is going.
but i'm sure this time we're all correct!
Do you doubt that greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere have gone up since humans started burning fossil fuels, and do you doubt the physics of how they trap solar radiation? Do you doubt that climate scientists know how to put sensors in the oceans, in rural areas and released in weather balloons along with satellites to measure temperatures across the planet year by year? Or that they can extract ice cores to measure trapped atmospheric gas from thousands of years ago? That sort of thing.
> in rural areas
how many? how many with long records?
hint:
it's less than 10
hint 2:
there's less than 3 in the northern hemisphere in rural areas.
It's too early in the morning for this much sophistry.
Do I need to hold the opinion that water is wet for it to be factual?
To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".
Is water wet though? It’s the substance that makes other things wet, but is it wet itself?
If we go full on aykchyually on this, technically no, sure. I however assume most English speakers would be familiar with the idiom lol
Yes it's a scientific fact humans have been causing the current warming by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revoluton.
You can make skeptical arguments against this is you're willing to dismiss empirical data and methodology behind scientific facts. The people who do this aren't consistent and cherry pick which empirical data, models and methodologies to dismiss. It tends to align with some belief challenged by the science. Or their financial interests.
It's much harder to be a consistent skeptic, since empirical data is verifiable, and the scientific method works for all sorts of fields and technologies. But it could all be dream of a mental patient in a simulation god programmed while making a bet with the devil.
I made $xxx,xxx.00 last year, that is a fact, I can definitively prove it via deposits to my bank account. It is a fact.
Climate change being man-made or not definitely does not fall into “this is a fact”
So it's only a fact if you can verify it, and not if the scientific community can? And you're consistent about this via all scientific findings you haven't verified like the balance in your bank account? You reject as fact any astronomical data or microscopic results you haven't seen with your own eyes? Or any satellite data you haven't analyzed yourself?
Not sure where you are getting this at and what does "scientific community" have to do with anything? There are things that are play and simply facts that are absolute and unquestionable. And then there are things that are open for debate because they are not facts. "Climate change is man-made" is so broad that a 10-year old can easily debate both sides of that argument.
Climate change being man made is a scientific fact as in humans are driving the majority of warming since the industrial revolution by pumping increasing amounts of green house gases in the atmosphere. This warming is simple physics even if the effect on weather is complex. Venus is an example of run-way greenhouse warming.
A ten year old can debate what they want, opinions don't change scientific facts (burning fossil fuels puts greenhouse gases in the air which trap heat from the sun). Consensus meaning most most climatologists agree on what the data and models are telling them.
There are not two sides to the basic facts of the matter (complexities around which models are more accurate or what society should do is a separate matter).
>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
>Arthur: And are you?
>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.
>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.
Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.
I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.
And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.
Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.
There are so many reasons for this. Most people have a real job and want to meet friends in the evening, not challengers. Debating someone with your rules in mind that the others didn't learn also feels like slapping someone who's unarmed. It's even less fun on the receiving end. In jobs, there's now something riding on arguments; In academia you just debate the death sentence or the draft and call it a day. At work if you accept this kid of argument and lose, are you expected to spend the next months implementing someone's else's idea you don't like? In any case, most arguments are futile, since the position you're arguing for is kind of arbitrary and pulling arguments out of a hat doesn't really improve them.
This article and your comment really resonates with me. My experience in the philosophy department was almost identical.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper. With the second, there is no answer being sought, only a self to be defended. Knowing which conversation you’re in is half the battle. The other half is having the discipline to walk away from the second one.
This is something I've learned over the last year and it's made life a lot better.
Once you detect that you're having a battle of egos (not minds/ideas), cut and run is the next best step. I've internalized a little mantra I start saying to myself as soon as I catch it: "they want the fight, you don't." Repeating that internally made it very easy to move away from arguing with others all of the time and knowing when to move away from people who just want to fight to fight.
"Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it."
Most people make their ideas and opinions part of their identity. And so if it turns out they are wrong about something then a part of them has died, or at least severely injured and needs to be healed. A few people are not like this and their ideas are more like a collection of trading cards they keep in their pocket. They think they have a pretty good collection but are not opposed to throwing out one for another if they find something more valuable.
The latter types are the only ones who you can have honest intellectual debates with.
I don't think that's opinions, but, rather, going wherever the wind blows.
Some people have a consensus-based mechanism for identifying if something is true or moral or fashionable. They basically believe whatever is the majority opinion, weighted for perceived social status or expertise or whatever else. I think this is normal for most non-technical people who don't have strong critical thinking skills themselves. So they outsource all the heavy thinking to the society at large.
In my workplace we argue without ego and with the assumption that we are working together to find the best way to do something. If someone realizes that the other person is right, they will say something like "Ah, OK, yes that's true..." and from that point on it stops being an argument and becomes a collaboration where both of us examine the correct position to make sure we're clear on it and its potential downfalls.
Reading this article has me a bit surprised, and the culture the author describes does not sound like an engineering culture to me. I am a bit saddened to think that people have to work in such an environment, and I am curious what it would take to change such an environment for the better.
My human-written summary:
Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.
If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.
And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.
"With those who will not listen, it is useless to have a conversation."
I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.
I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.
"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."
I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.
Lot to unpack and there is some real gold here (at least for me).
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet. Only yourself.
A few years ago, working at $PREVIOUS_COMPANY, we had 4-5 hours of company-sponsored time with a a coach/counselor and she also said those words to me. It's something that hit something inside myself and it's really, really true and... liberating, when you fully embrace it. Especially when you are a parent, but also in many other situations. You cannot change the others. You can only change yourself.By changing yourself MAYBE you might influence others - especially kids, by being a virtuous example, and they can decide to follow what you do. But changing people, let alone by arguing, that's impossible and will only cause you frustration.
"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” -- Mahatma Gandhi
Also, attributed to him - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” ― George Bernard Shaw
Reeks of AI prose past the first paragraph or two. I don't need to know a bot's opinion on how to convince others.
Yeah I enjoyed the first bit, then “the one exception” made me go “hey, Claude does this to me all the time” and then it ruined the article for me.
Yeah, I also got suspicious and checked it with Pangram. Sadly 100% AI. Perhaps it still has good points, but my heart drops whenever I sniff the AI prose. I can just query Claude or ChatGPT myself, you know?
AI detectors are notoriously bad at actually detecting AI. I would not take those things at face value at all.
That was my impression in the past as well, but by all accounts pangram works well, at least at the moment.
It also seems quite plausible that it can be made to work by training on a lot of model output. Most of us already have become very sensitive to the various idiosyncrasies of model writing, after all. They have a very distinctive style.
Yeah, disappointing to see it so highly upvoted. So many tells of AI slop:
> There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic.
> If letting go of the argument sounds like pure loss, here’s the reframe that turns it into a gain.
> The ego is lowered. The defenses are down. The advice lands.
Even if there was some human insight that went into it, the output could be reduced in length by 80+% without any loss of substance.
It turns out AI writes like that because humans write like this. It seemed like AI to me too but when I read all of it, it definitely does not seem like AI anymore, just the style of self help blog post seem a couple decades ago.
I thought the same thing. I do think the first section was written or at least edited by hand. The rest could've been an email, so to speak.
I wouldn't be surprised if the author wrote the beginning and then asked Claude to take it from there.
What's that old saying?
> "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
Due to my odd approach to life, I'm not competitive. Haven't been, for most of my life. It hasn't been a problem.
I always find it fascinating, that folks can't just be good at something; They have to be better than someone else.
I know that it happens, because I see it all the time, but I can't actually understand it.
There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.
Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.
I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.
But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.
> I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support
Naturally. What purpose would arguing for what you support serve anyway? The only value argument can offer is an opportunity for you to take an opposing view and try to defend it in order to challenge your preconceived notions. It is pointless to repeat what you already know and believe is over and over again. You already have that information.
There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":
* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.
* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.
I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.
The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.
> Why did you do it this way?
One thing that I find helps is just avoiding the word "why" as well. Restructuring to say "how come" or "I'm wondering..." or "am I understanding right that..." helps avoid putting people on their guard.
It even works on AIs, interestingly enough.
The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost. Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.
I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.
The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.
I adopted a behaviour at work that if I am fairly convinced about X ending up being wrong, and I see that trying X is not too costly (esp compared to arguing about it), then I just let X eventually fail, and take it from there, already knowing why this happened.
People seem to learn better this way, and there is no better argument than reality itself. Of course it cannot be used everywhere, eg if trying X until it fails takes too long, if it involves buying an expensive machine that we will not be able to change etc, but there is a good portion of stuff it can actually reduce interpersonal friction on. And the process of changing from X to Z happens organically that sometimes I don't even have to explicitly say that "I knew all along" (though I must admit I derive an internal satisfaction that I knew all along).
It was a time when at work there was a widespread interpersonal tension between everyone, and reducing interpersonal friction was more important than spending more or less time on sth that would not work. I dont think arguing and discussing things are to be avoided per se, but in certain circumstances, if one knows that a team will eventually go down on path Z anyway due to necessity, it may not be worth arguing about at all.
I read “how to win friends and influence others” many times but didn’t realize the main lesson is not to argue. That is until I reached 40. So, some lessons will take certain age to understand. I bet the OP is not in their 20s or 30s even.
I think an important realisation for me was this: peoples' egos being involved in their arguments, people being irrational, and so on, these are not merely deviations from an ideal rational self that we could reach were we to put enough effort in. It is just how people are. There's a word for it: politics.
Once I started looking for it, I started noticing some of my colleagues' abilities to navigate their way through meetings and disagreements and getting their way without things even becoming arguments, the ability of some people to just put a room at ease or to communicate. And the inability of others to do so.
"Politics" is an unsavory term for somebody with engineering predilections. It evokes backhandedness and self-interest. But you can't actually both be a human being and be "above it". Every sentence, no matter how concrete and technical, is a social act with social ramifications.
I've come to have a lot of respect for people who are actually able to lead and make things happen. It is not a skill I am terribly practiced with.
This is epic: "People Are Not Rational We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Thanks for sharing
One reason TO argue is to seek out opposite points of view, which you can then use to hone your own thinking, including doing a 180.
Yep!
I do it all the time, just to listen to a completely different POV from mine.
It's like the good old trick to get an answer on Reddit:
Create Account #1.
Ask your question.
Wait.
Create Account #2.
Post a confidently wrong answer.
Watch 37 people rush in to correct you.
Another reason is to refine your point of view, which is most effectively done when it is challenged.
Absolutely! And if you are seeing out opposite points of view, don’t underestimate the power of being (or appearing to be) ignorant and/or wrong. Of course, the article’s conclusion about just asking questions, instead of trying to contradict, is also a very good way to seek out points of view and also keep people talking, without making them angry or shut down…
This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.
1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.
2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.
I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).
If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.
IDK, I’ve had my mind changed on music and art that I saw little value in.
I realized many arguments end up not well because we keep focusing on the wrong thing and neglect the question that actually matter: why do you believe in what you believe; asking people to define the terms they use is also helpful and forces them to be precise and think more about their beliefs, which a healthy thing to do. People are often much nicer than we think when we approach them with kindness and they can see in our eyes that we actually care about them and not just winning. Yet at the same time we need to lower our expectations. Because we need to be kind to ourselves, otherwise we would feel too frustrated. I'm talking about daily life arguments. In some online arguments or public debates, sometimes you need to be harsher to protect others from what you claim and believe is wrong.
Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.
I added this post to my HN favorites.
I experienced myself at least two of those points. In different words:
Never teach to people that did not ask you to teach them. They will not listen to you. They will forget. They will not thank you. Time wasted. As a corollary, I'm sorry for most teachers at school and even at universities.
You can change your mental state. A friend of mine told me about 3 years ago "When X happens I can't change the way I react" and she was not necessarily reacting in a good way. My answer was "Your mental state is the only thing you can control." She stopped talking and started thinking. I don't know if it had an effect. Changing the way one reacts to a stimulus takes time and effort but it can be done.
One point that was not addressed is the sorry feeling one gets when others are wrong and you are right, but for whatever reason you cannot convince them otherwise, and as a consequence they are going to go in a direction that they will severely regret, or would regret if they survived it, entirely foreseeable (sadly).
I have often had to tell myself "I wish they had listened to me." or, not quite "I wish I was wrong", but at least "I regret that I was right." because it led to a situation where someone suffered without objective need for it. Only a jerk would proudly state "Ha, of course I was right, they should have listened to me."
I would question how effective this would be in any kind of professional engineering setting.
Oh your math is wrong? Well i guess i cant discuss this...
Haidt, in his great book "The Righteous Mind," has been arguing that reasoning evolved not to discover truth but to win arguments. There's a lot of scientific research backing his idea.
Haidt's metaphor is the rider and the elephant: the elephant (intuition) leans, and the rider (reasoning) invents the justification afterward and then defends it like a lawyer, not a truth-seeker.
Intelligence doesn't fix this - it just makes people better at coming up with hard-to-defeat arguments; that explains why smart people disagree all the time.
If you enjoyed TRM, his other book The Happiness Hypothesis surprisingly covers this and other concepts in much better detail relative to the OP.
I once had a manager who was extremely quiet and very good at winning arguments. They too would never argue. Instead they would present themselves in as supportive of a way as possible, and then just ask questions. There was never a point in the questioning where he would declare you made a mistake. Instead, he would just remain silent and maybe write something down. It was astonishing to watch. There was no counter to it. Maybe the clock, but he was persistent too, like Colombo.
It's always worth going back to evolution and thinking about why we do things.
Reasoning came through evolution when we learned to communicate and needed to give reasons for things, not because we needed to figure out how to do things.
Caveman you, steals Caveman Dave's berries. You need to give Caveman Dave a good reason for why you did this, else you get bonk on head.
This explains a lot. The brain decides what it wants AND only then, does it decide the reasons why it wants it. It's a justification and excuse making machine.
Which is why people will argue and twist any fact or truth to match what they believe, they don't come up with what they believe through logic, they use logic to try and come up with a reason for what they believe.
When you really stop to think about that, it changes everything and explains a lot.
(This is outlined in the book The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding)
That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.
Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.
I have tried my best to stop arguing period. I am not the poster boy you want for your cause. I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.
What I do now:
Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.
For example:
I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.
---
Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!
There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.
A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.
- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.
- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.
- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.
- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.
Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.
> Once you accept this, arguing with logic starts to look absurd. You’re bringing a proof to a feeling. The proof is airtight. The feeling doesn’t read.
> There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic.
Humans don't write like this. "The feeling doesn't read" is nonsense.
I've met quite a few people who see themselves as rare rational individuals in a world full of irrational, emotion-driven people. In each case, when I've gotten to know them better, I realize they actually have pretty low awareness of their own emotions and are as prone to irrational outbursts as anyone.
Saying something like this signals to me not that you've achieved mastery of your emotions, but rather that you haven't even learned to notice when you're having them.
Or, perhaps you're just an AI operating autonomously and in fact have no emotions, in which case well played for making it to the top of HN and successfully wasting my time.
I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.
It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.
I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.
The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.
This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.
I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.
I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.
I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.
If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.
The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.
> Most people don’t reason their way to conclusions and then feel accordingly. They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling.
That is how sales work, if someone is ever interested in increasing sales and one of the pieces of advice that opened my eyes the most. It is like the argument: hey, stop reasoning about features with your potential customer and making them bored: make an impact, something that creates reaction. Good or bad (bad is even better than indifferent sometimes).
Something that provokes emotion. Otherwise they are going to be indifferent.
They are not going to end up buying bc of the features most of the time anyway when there are ten or fifteen similar. They will do it bc you cause some kind of emotional impact, be that trust, authority or something else, though those ones are pretty important.
That blog post is technically correct but not very human. To be curious human to me means questioning other people why they believe what they believe and trying to understand their thinking about it. Of course not always there's good place to have such open minded discussion. If one side, or both sides are only talking and not listening to each other it's pointless monologue and waste of time. It's not helpful to state bunch of facts and let the other person "deal with it". As it's pointed out, often people want to just share something and aren't interested to be lectures or have their opinion changed, that can come later with some introspection, when ready. Personally I wouldn't want to talk to someone who thinks they know it all already and are looking only for arguments.
Some key lines:
> There is no “right” without a “wrong” to make it right
> Once I stopped treating correctness as an absolute, I stopped needing to win.
> Arguments Are About Ego
> They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling
> let people meet their own consequences, because that’s the only teacher they’ll actually listen to.
> when someone [asks], I give everything I have.
> Let people disagree. Their disagreement is where the money, and the meaning, is.
> Every hour spent trying to change someone who didn’t ask is an hour stolen from the one person (yourself) you can change
I am sure each person will extract different lessons here from their walk of life, but as an engineer the lines above are a watershed moment on how to view the world. Engineers are quite intelligent creative people who have big dreams. And sometimes in pursuit of those dreams with a feeling of intelligence we swim in creativity ... and put ourselves in a God-complex. We don't judge humans appropriately when we are in this God-complex.
1. Appreciate the wrong. It is a different way of thinking.
2. Stop trying to win. This is not a fight.
3. Arguments are about ego, but ego is about defending yourself. So arguments are really in self-defense.
4. If someone has more emotion than intelligence at a given moment, ignore their ideas. It doesn't count. It is clouded. This is how women judge between informations. They look at the emotion of the person speaking. The calmest one wins.
5. Some people like making bad decisions because it helps them learn. You can't do anything here.
6. Information provided vs Corrections made: But when someone does not seek information, don't give it. And don't correct someone unless you are their boss.
7. You can't change people... is a lesson I can never understand.
In career, I found infrastructure a great place to work in the sense that data wins arguments since the nemesis is physics. In product spaces, I flounder because there is no real data as products depends on people and people can massage data any way they want.
In life, I've learned "don't cast pearls before swine" as you have to understand if someone wants to learn something. I fully accept that I can be wrong, but I look at results I drive and I would like to believe others want similar results. This is far from true since some people just like complaining about problems and doing nothing about it. I don't understand this mindset, at all, but I've come to learn that I will tell what I'm doing, answer questions to the curious, and then stop there.
Exactly.
C. S. Lewis participated in many arguments about Christianity. He was a professor and had a very good memory (the biography says "total recall") so he was a formidable opponent. Yet he himself wrote in private writings that he never felt himself farther from Christianity than after having won in another such dispute. It was around fifty, I think, when he decided to stop doing that and started to write the first book about Narnia.
Sincere communication is only possible when the ego defenses are down; when ego is vulnerable. Ego is scared of that, so this rarely happens. But this is the only true communication; all the rest are status games. (If you haven't read "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, pick it when you have a chance.)
"ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it"
Sorry this just does not work... if what is being shipped is harmful to your own work or the rest of the company I feel I should speak up.
Sometimes the person/people normally doing ego defending often tries to blame everything/one else over their view or project.
If someone is trying to defend a telnet session into a banking server, live on the internet in 2026 then hey dude this has to be called out. (( I am not saying I have been in this position in 2026 )) but even the year I was in this position it was 100% unacceptable and needed fixing. <very simple example>
And is Claude the one that got frustrated arguing with people? If not, why is Claude the one writing this?
> I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
There is a certain logic to this. If someone can't reason, there is no point in giving them the truth. You might as well lie to them.
Of course, your ability to assess someone's reasoning depends often on their existing opinions, so there is a circular reasoning here where two sides with the same mindset can each believe the other to be stupid because of their position, and then refuse to engage in good faith discussions.
I don't make a lot of friends this way, but I usually try to just focus on facts no matter what, and do my best to separate the fact that I'm discussing ideas and not people. An idea might be good or bad given a certain situation, but not the people involved.
Tempted to hate this guy but he's probably like, 19? Just starting to learn how humans work but still not aware he is one. Ahh the world, full of humans (always with the pronoun "they" and not "we"), full of ego and totally resistant to being wrong, rejecting my noble and completely egoless resistance to being wrong. As well as my compulsive need to best them in an argument, er I mean nobly rescue them from their ignorance! But sadly they will all have to live their lives first-hand without my help, developing reasons for thinking about certain things in certain ways, as if completely unaware that I was finally born and came to save them from all that!
This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.
If both are equally persistent, I’d say the first one to fulfill Godwin's law is the loser.
That obviously stopped to be a useful indicator two years ago latest too:
I’ve never said that just because you’re invoking the Nazis you’re losing the argument. If you’re going to compare somebody to Hitler or the Nazis or raise the specter of the Holocaust, be sure you’ve got your facts right.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-la...
Some reasons I still argue over the internet
- To convince myself. Sometimes I start writing and convince myself I’m wrong. Other times I just move to a more specific opinion or find a stronger justification
- Because sometimes a responder does convince me to change my opinion. Or they provide some interesting related information I didn't know before
- To be a voice of reason in comments mostly by people dumb enough to feel their surface-level opinion is still worth posting. Although obviously I’m only a voice of reason to those who share my opinions, sometimes even I recognize I’m again restating an obvious observation
- To get better at writing and arguing in case one day it does really matter
- Because I’m bored and have nothing better to do. At least it’s more productive than YouTube
I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.
This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.
This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.
'Intelligence is what you do when you don't know, -> came up somewhere, I think on LinkedIn but stuck in my head.
"I would walk away technically right and completely alone."
Seen many great engineers walk that road right into burnout and then exiting tech all together being fed up.
It's a sad and anti social state that drives people to depression and more sad is the fact that all you really can do is just take it and accept at work things just aren't always logical and correct.
It's more and more, unlikely to lessen as more people enter tech with shallower required upfront knowledge due to more advanced tooling being available to them (more often then not, built by that 'grumpy guy' who quit.)
Try to accept it and have hobby projects you can scratch your real engineering itch with, would be my advice.
It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made. If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.
Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.
Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.
So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.
Arguing has negative connotations and conveys the author is bringing up minor quibbles for the sake of being pedantic: "Is the sky blue?" -> "No, the sky is not blue we just perceive it to be that way due to..."
My main complaint of the article, though, is the lack of nuance. Especially amongst complex topics where, maybe the definition of correct is not established, or there are multiple correct/valid interpretations.
See below "The Blind Men and the Elephant" fable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
I was about to start arguing why I don't agree but then I thought it was better not to :P
What are you, weak? This is what comments are for!
One of the quotes that always sticks with me is:
"Most of our so-called reasoning consists of finding arguments to go on believing as we already do." -- James Harvey Robinson.
I've long since come to the conclusion that humans choose their positions based on gut reactions and almost all of their arguments for holding that position come after the fact.
> If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected counterarguments the way I collected patches. I believed that if I just laid out the logic clearly enough, the other person would have no choice but to come around. Truth would win.
This is probably how flat earthers think. If you engage in arguments without being prepared to be proven wrong, and you're hoping people to accept your argument as truth instead of both of you arriving at the truth together, you're not debating, you're being eristic (which is a fancy word I just found).
The author's argument is hilariously wrong because we've been doing something for thousands of years: teaching.
And it works, to some degree.
And how do teachers teach? They don't start by trying to argue or by trying to prove students wrong. They teach by showing what's fascinating.
Taking the time to show people what's fascinating, what's perplexing, where the tension lies, and how it's resolved, is teaching.
Argument construction in social contexts is ironically ego-driven. Demonstrating something interesting, on the other hand, means asking yourself what what they would find interesting about what you want to tell them.
Teachers teach people who don't know the answer yet. So they aren't wrong when you teach them. They will (gladly) accept the knowledge.
Once they know the answer, it gets more difficult to convince them that the answer they know is incorrect.
For more advanced students, those with preconceived ideas, teachers use a refutational style of teaching. It's not the same as argumentation because the goal is to find an appropriate bridge from one model (the preconceived, naive model) to another model (the one being taught). It works by pointing out a fascinating explanatory limitation in the naive model and then showing the students how the better model deals with said limitations.
This comment is so brutally ironic. Wow.
Meaning?
There was "It’s Not Enough to Be Right – You Also Have to Be Kind" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21490714
But I think the core part is WHY we want to be right? To prove something to others, or to ourselves? To feel better? As a compulsion? As a gambler's fallacy? Many motivations are less lofty that we dare to admit.
I wasted way to much time arguing online. It was mostly wasted time, and wasted emotions. I mean, I also had many eye-opening and enlightening discussions, but these rarely were fights.
Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.
Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.
I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.
FWIW I appreciate people like the author's old self. I am one of those who hates and simultaneously appreciates being corrected when I'm mistaken. I hate being mistaken and I appreciate the opportunity to correct the mistake.
While much of what the author says is true, I'm not so cynical as to think that it's impossible to change others.
The fact that you can change yourself — as the author acknowledges — means you can change others, because much of self-change comes from your observation of others. Perhaps it's the approach that matters most.
Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):
1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.
2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.
3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.
4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.
5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.
would you like to argue about this?
I'm both happy to argue about it, and have someone tell me why I'm wrong.
<Many people are ego-driven. Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position. Prove the idea wrong and you haven’t corrected a fact, you’ve attacked a person. So they defend it the way anyone defends themselves: not with reason, but with resistance. The stronger your argument, the harder they dig in.>
Wouldn't it have been easier to say they are idiots? (I guess you needed to explain it, but like you said, it won't help.)
Do you know that feeling you feel when you are correct?
Well, it's the exact same feeling as when you are wrong.
This is something that has always stuck with me, and handy to keep in mind when arguing.
The ego thing is a spectrum and the most powerful treatment I've experienced so far is watching someone with a substantially larger ego trip operate right in front of me. I think this one of the best possible cures. To see yourself in the proverbial mirror.
If you insist on the ego trip, at least make it about how much of a raging badass you are with the customer. The egos that work backward from the technology are a nightmare to deal with.
> It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth, and only speaks when he is questioned.
Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help. When someone asks, the cause and effect reverse. You’re no longer imposing your judgment on someone who never wanted it.
Maybe this is why pull request reviews can become contentious. The reviewer thinks the author is open for feedback while in fact it’s just the widely accepted practice and team/company enfored that you are supposed to give feedback.
Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.
I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.
This is very correct.
However, occasionally you’ll see code so bad you need to leave.
You need to lie in your next interview. Your co workers, who are doing such a poor job it’s borderline fraud, are fantastic smart people.
You have a great relationship with your manager who knows the code pretends to do things it actually doesn’t, and tells you the KPIs come first.
But some mean ole man who you’ve never met is trying to lay everyone off.
That’s the only reason to ever quit a job. Pending blameless layoffs.
>If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge. The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will. Instead of persuading the skeptic, ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it.
I wonder if victims of religious persecution agree...
Facts do not always win. The evolutionary fitness of an idea is (sadly) not entirely dictated by its truthfulness.
"We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Well said.
I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.
Someone upthread mentioned that arguments can be about convincing the person you're arguing with or convincing the audience which is absolutely true.
I'd suggest that arguments are frequently not about convincing anyone of anything. They become conversations withe people who already agree with you using the person you're arguing against as a foil.
In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.
Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.
I’ve had friends refer to me as a “yes-man”, because I don’t really care where a group of people decide to go to dinner. It’s of little consequence and doesn’t create any negative downstream effects.
At work, when a poor decision means unnecessary work today, and ongoing maintenance for the next 5-10 years, I will oppose these things quite loudly and tell people they are wrong. I don’t see why I’d sign up for 10 years of thankless work I don’t understand without a fight.
People often need a little nudge not to be on the defensive. I usually try to find a point that I agree with and let them know “that’s a good point”. It takes some listening and a lot of patience, but folks tend to reciprocate. It takes two to tango.
Sometimes, the point of argument is not to convince the ego-driven person you're arguing with, but the others who are watching.
The author put it very well (with a little ai writing help :-)
I have come to the same conclusion; I saw my own journey in the author’s story.
At work, one of the statements I make to mentees, if asked, and to colleagues, if they lament people not listening to their advice, is this:
You’re only an expert if you’re invited to be one.
This is a way of saying that unsolicited advice is always unwelcome no matter how correct it is.
as they say it wastes your time and annoys the pig
That’s funny, I thought you were referring to the Shaw quote [1], I had never heard that one from Heinlein.
[1] “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
Never wrestle with a pig; you both get muddy, and the pig's enjoying himself.
> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference
Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.
Mythical place to argue with people:
1. Your anonymous or whatever you say can't be used by another party against you.
2. There is a code of conduct that is strictly held (no interrupting, no ad hominem etc)
3. You can ask for time-outs and think before answering.
4. There is a bank of known knowledge that is considered true, very strict standards, as unbiased as possible, including confidence scales.
5. You are face to face.
I would like to point people to the book "difficult conversations" from the harvard negotiation project.
for instance: all difficult conversations are about feelings.
Everyone believes they are right until they are shown otherwise. What matters most is not just what you say, but how you say it.
> …most people don’t learn from advice at all. They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks.
It hurts to see your child in this position but it (often is) a quick learning, and we hope that it is no more than a 1st degree burn.
Nice quote from Tao Te Ching about complexity and simplicity completing each other.
The rules of go could be explained to a 4 years old. On the other hand, the superficial complexity of so many framworks/systems is just a facade and nothing more.
The same goes for NP-hard problems where complex solutions have trivial verification methods.
Yeah, state your case. Done.
Thinking that a back-and-forth would eventually result in a "winner" and a "loser" was the way I used to think too.
Throw out your idea (counter-point, whatever) and then leave it for them to accept it or reject it.
Alternatively I’ve found it beneficial to try and clarify and further elaborate on your “opponents” reasoning. If you’re correct, then you should find the errors in their reasoning; without ever actually having to oppose them (your opponent and their arguments).
I love this bit from the documentary "Behind the Curve (2018)." One of the scientists poses the following question: "What evidence could I show you that would change your position?"
If someone can't answer that, it's probably not worth arguing about.
Careful with this philosophy. It does work well for the short term. At some point of constant following of 'disagree and commit' mantra, you'll end up in a world where you have zero agency and zero energy to constantly do the work you hate.
Well I think that a proper implementation of "disagree and commit" differs significantly from what's described in the article.
The author seems to be suggesting that rather than discussing technical trade-offs and nuance, you instead ship whatever the other person proposes, even if you believe it is wrong, without going through the discussion.
I always interpreted "disagree and commit", at least in a healthy form, to be more about cases where, after both sides had presented their interpretation of a technical decision and both had understood the other's point of view, they still differed in opinion as to how it should be handled a meaningful way that was unlikely to be resolved from further communication. From there, rather than wasting more time on debating, simply agreeing to disagree, shipping to move on.
The key difference being that you aren't simply accepting whatever is told you, even if you believe it to be blatantly wrong, and silently shipping based on that feedback. You're actually engaging with each other and trying to solve the problem together but not getting locked in intractable arguments.
What OP is proposing seems significantly more toxic and honestly like something I would expect from someone playing corporate politics rather than trying to excel as an engineer.
Why was the title changed? It no longer reflects the original title but did previously
I also stopped arguing, I don't waste energy or my focus on random stuff, did happen with the age I think... unless... unless it's my wife or my mum who is wrong. If I think I'm right and they wrong, I will argue with al my energy. Of course!
This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.
I like the author’s viewpoint, but I would have appreciated mentioning that:
1. Truth does not always rely on Boolean logic. Both A and non A can be true at the same time
2. Truth is often relative, so it may change depending on the viewpoint
>1. Truth does not always rely on Boolean logic. Both A and non A can be true at the same time
"Sometimes the opposite of a good idea is another good idea"
https://youtube.com/shorts/0AOumbVT30w
Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).
"I don't really like arguing because everyone wants to convince the other person, and in the end, everyone leaves thinking they have convinced the other person, and no one has changed an inch."
Jean-Luc Godard, 28th May, 1982
What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.
At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.
The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.
I think that there are times as a leader\supervisor\co-worker\parent\coach where you might argue despite knowing you won't change the outcome simply to show that you are willing to fight for those you represent.
There is also some value it stating your beliefs about something going in the wrong direction. Maybe not a full blown argument, but putting it out there so when things eventually fail and blow up, there are no stones cast in your direction for not speaking up earlier. Just be careful to avoid the, “I told you so,” which is also off-putting.
One can argue without being argumentative. The latter is poor form, but there are many benefits to the former.
Worth knowing which hills to die on and having a strategically chosen intention that is not rooted in ego. Ego is the enemy.
Makes sense.
I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.
most arguments are due to differing definition of words in the arguers' minds.
almost every heated argument that I've carelessly gotten myself into, I have gotten out of, by saying : "let's first start with what we agree upon - does word X mean the same to both of us?"
— Lao Tzu said this too, 2,500 years ago. In chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching:
True words are not fine-sounding; Fine-sounding words are not true.
The good man does not prove by argument; The he who proves by argument is not good.
There was a standup bit I saw recently guy says '"how to win an argument, you just say "I'm gonna stop you right there"' and then don't say anything
Good, useful reflections. Thanks for putting these together and out
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help.
And then you encounter the askhole.
Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes
I realized long ago that this is a complete waste of time and now I'll usually only argue with people for (blood) sport and love of the game but only if I feel like it.
You get to see the other side's perspective and how their views shape their inner world.
You don't know what events they had experienced that caused them to shape those views.
Just smile, nod and agree :)
This is still about being right or wrong. About people and not ideas, otherwise there would be no issue in the first place, there would just be the duty and the acceptance.
people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .
Arguably attributed to Keanu Reeves (I choose to believe it is):
“I’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.”
Thinking human is rational is a highly irrational belief.
A good puzzle for political philosophers: how do you build a decent system of government in a world where people to not listen to reasoned arguments?
Just stop arguing with your family or friends about politics and religion, not worth it.
Lately I think I only argue when I know I will get something about it...
This is one of the core principles of How To Win Friends And Influence People (Dale Carnegie). Since Ive read I tried to apply this rule. It works.
That's true, and avoiding (direct) argument may well be the #1 takeaway in How to Win Friends And Influence People.
I read it in my early 20s and at that time my main takeaway, as I recall, was to (paraphrasing), "carefully plant the evidence, thus making the conclusion something the audience comes to on their own (they 'think of it' themselves)".
In entrepreneurship, this was slightly dangerous to me, since I immediately started implementing this successfully. Before long, I (apparently) took "credit" for "my idea" (that I successfully got the audience to see, oh so carefully), whereas audience thought that we "came up with it together"!
Oy vey! So, a word to the wise. I now subscribe to more of a "plain honesty but with tact" approach.
> I wanted to keep getting better. And the only door to that is the one ego keeps slamming shut.
Koan to the author: What was never lost can never be found.
The irony is hopefully not lost on anyone that an article about how the author stopped arguing is a list of points as to why arguing is wrong.
adjacent take: seek out people who don't mind being wrong & who see it as contribution when you can help them understand something better
bah, bait.
> You Can Only Change Yourself
This is a good reason to argue with people! Forcing yourself to look critically at your own positions via debate is a key self-improvement method. Simply not engaging and never having a back-n-forth is no way to improve. Feedback, critical self-evaluation, and more feedback.
Ofc, that's not encouragement to flame people on the internet or in-person.
Just as I know there is no such thing as bug-free code, I know that I am always wrong, in one way or another.
Good read and good breakdown. I feel like this is where I am in my journey is letting that roll off.
Arguing without a common goal (objective) is always about personal beliefs (subjective).
How many of you noticed that this is also a form of arguing?
I feel like I just read a complete subchapter of the bible. Impressive writing. Keep it up.
i would like to point out the irony that people are arguing about this in the comments.
my life has gotten so much better when i actively don't engage in arguments. especially when i know i'm right.
of course it's easier said than done but growth is a long road.
A long time ago a wise person said to me is it better to be kind or right. I live with that decision matrix every time I engage with a human. At the end of the day the humans carry significant ego and emotions that for me to be right, most of the time, they have to be wrong. Arguing turns into a zero sum game with only losers on both sides. Until I learned this lesson, I won many arguments but lost the human. This article bears this out from another person learning the same lessons.
I had two reactions, possibly more, as I read this.
First - yes, I agree. This is exactly how I think. I agreed with this. Then I thought. Why would somebody write something this... simple? true? obvious? Perhaps because they came to this realization a bit later in life, I thought. Maybe, yes. That must be it.
Then as I read more, I felt a bit incensed. Does this smell of... AI by any chance? The writing looks sincere and simple, but some tell tale signs pointed to AI. The argument structure is awfully well constructed. The inflection is just as the right moment.
Consider this: "Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position."
Or this: "You can’t win an argument like this, because it was never an argument"
Or this: "They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks."
The contrastive negation is tell-tale AI. It could possibly be human, but I've read far too many AI-written articles now to think otherwise.
---
Does it matter, though?
In the large scheme of things, probably not. One reads an article, one moves on. But in the much grander scheme of things, when tons of articles are AI-written, I believe we will stop paying attention. To a greater or smaller degree.
YMMV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I stopped arguing with people, so I started arguing with the whole internet instead :)
This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.
The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.
> The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
Setting aside a few levels of irony in arguing with arguers on arguing, I think there are multiple framings for arguments. Things go off the rails all the time when neither party is aligned on what kind of argument the current one is.
Programmers and engineers tend to carry around this worldview that every conversation is about correct information or future decision-making, but everyone is operating on different planes. God help you if you go into an argument with the spouse implicitly about acknowledging how your actions made them feel armed with facts and logic about how this is irrelevant because the problem is solved or there is no new action to take.
Fair point, but I see that as kind of a simplification? It's a perspective, rather than a refutation, but I see any argument about how you made someone feel as either a mistake or an argument about something else.
No perfectly logical actor would ever argue with how someone is feeling. It's impossible for a second party to know or rationalize, and the person with the direct evidence is giving you their best representation of the feelings. To argue that someone doesn't feel what they say they feel is tantamount to ignoring direct evidence which negates any practical value of the argument. It's this not worth having.
On the other hand, if what you are actually trying to argue is whether they are being truthful, or reasonable about their feelings, those are arguments that do have a practical result of deciding something or understanding something better. The more you dig in to why people are feeling the way they are feeling, the more you can reckon with what that means for whatever the disagreement is. Of course, it cuts both ways; if someone telling you that they feel a certain way makes you feel a certain way, it's only reasonable to interrogate why you are feeling that way about it. But then, that gets further toward the most salient part: most of the time when it comes to feelings, an argument is the wrong tool for resolving disagreement. In my experience, open ended discussion that focuses on each individuals' feelings without consideration for correctness is more productive than any sort of confrontational method like an argument.
Right/Wrong is almost useless in 2026+
People will know they are wrong, but if they are supporting a friend's case or boss's they will choose them over you (naturally) even if you can definitively prove them wrong. There's upside and often no downside to being wrong or even outright lying in some cases, so people do it.
People will know 1 of the 4 in the group is right, but they don't want to be outnumbered or cast in an unfavorable light, so they will all choose the "wrong" stance on purpose, to be more socially accepted.
100% of people in a conversation can know that 1 person is right, but because nobody likes that person, nobody will agree with them.
You might be right a lot but that isn't going to help you win any arguments. It nearly means nothing. You get from a group what you negotiate with the group, and short of showering everyone in $100 bills daily nobody is going to worship you for anything, especially not "being right a lot". You're better off being conventionally attractive rather than conventionally intelligent (when it comes to easy social acceptance).
Furthermore, there are so many battlefields, so many arguments to lose, you'll eventually (hopefully) find a better use of your time!
Honestly, one of my colleagues said it best.
"Do you want friends? Or do you want to be right?"
Sometimes there really is no glory on those hills you die on.
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
Identifying the market is also important. There's the free market of capitalism. Then there are the other powers even in that market that can still say you're wrong, such as regulators, governments, politics, violence, etc.
If you're looking for an outcome, you still need to assess the circumstances that can generate that outcome, even if the author has identified one particular strategy that people often get wrong and one possible alternative.
They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.
Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."
Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."
(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)
I think the main point of the article is sound, the idea that arguing with people puts you in an adversarial position with the person, even if you think you are debating the merits of the ideas.
This is frustrating to those of us who are focused on the project or the task - to try and find the best way to do something and come at the conversation from a place that feels like logic, and be met with ego and emotion.
But I think the overall conclusion lacks subtlety. I don’t think the best response is to disengage completely, then say “I told you so” and/or swoop in to profit off of the mistake.
So yes, recognizing that you also have an ego and can benefit from feedback but just take it a little further. Ask clarifying questions about why their solution is better, come from a place of collaboration rather than competition. Have them explain why their solution is better and once it’s clear you are collaborating, voice your concerns and weight the pros and cons together.
I know this is a simplistic version of how these conversations actually happen, but it’s an example of the fact that you can make more progress by recognizing some subtlety.
It's really simple: do argue, but not to win, to understand.
Most arguments are ego in disguise, not ideas.
> Sometimes I won on points and lost the person.
So, so true. Not worth it.
Another to put it, is how Dan Saks from C++ fame puts it.
> "If you remember one thing, it's this: if you are arguing, you are losing."
A few months ago I came to this same conclusion. I watched this YouTube video[1] that argued needing to be right and thinking we can save people is our own ego at work. It helped me realize why I felt anger towards people I cared about deeply, not seeing what's obviously to me the RightThing™ to do; I think I can save everyone.
Also see this video[2], which extrapolates on the types of people you shouldn't try to save. Gives pointers on how to deal with narcissists (both videos use AI-generated imagery and narration, which I typically despise but I had both playing in a background tab so I didn't have to see it at least).
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TspV1odsXo
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTMj28NS7to
LLM-generated slop. Please don't post wastes of our time like this
I'm not sure if it's all LLM-generated or not, but I sat up and pointed like the DiCaprio meme when I read:
"If letting go of the argument sounds like pure loss, here’s the reframe that turns it into a gain."
Either HN has become much more accepting of LLM-generated content or it can't tell the difference. Still, it was a decent skim. These models are fairly smart; I wouldn't say they are complete wastes of time. I find LLM articles are best read impressionistically. Don't take every sentence or even paragraph too seriously as no one, not even the machine put that much effort into it.
You can be correct, but on different axis.
You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.
You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.
I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.
This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.
This ASCII character '|' is a bar.
This is some high level hard earned wisdom.
Well look how far ego has taken us
I like this post as it landed at a really good time for me. But, I had a remaining question based on one of the lines:
>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ the kinds of folks the author is describing here? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.
"There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic."
AI Slop
My same thought, precisely. Funny how certain expressions are now toxic telltale sign.
I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational ego-driven people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.
It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!
I'll apply my vast intellect to solving this riddle.
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
This seems more true for the author than everyone else.
They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.
While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.
probably only peoples who has the gift of doubt can argue in the common search of knowledge. Everything else, right or wrong, are, as stated, more about ego, quite useless about real problem solving..
Sure no one like to be wrong, so to argue with is necessary to spark interest in the search of alternative point of view.
Remembering Hagakure: "To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. One must become close with him and make sure that he continually trusts one's word." ..... "Have him receive this in the way that a man would drink water when his throat is dry, and it will be an opinion that will correct faults."
Words from a more civilized ages.
While I like the article there are way too many telltale signs of AI writing. I'm sure the author expresses his direction but I'm just so tired of reading articles where AI has done most of the work. I want to hear from humans, grammar and spelling and punctuation mistakes and all.
>Everything exists only in relation to its opposite
The fuck? Words mean things. The moon does not exist because the Sun exists. And what about Earth? It doesn't have an opposite, therefore it has no way to exist? If this is the logic you're going to use in an argument, you did the right thing by stopping.
Ego kills growth
A lot of the theoretic today and the 'logic' behind it bears strong resemblance of as it were from a cult follower. Reasoning doesn't really work as a argument.
There have been many books written on cults written by reputable people and some are even on youtube talking about this.
I don't argue hard because I could be wrong.
So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.
You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.
Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics
That sounds like an endlessly toxic workplace. Or maybe you're the toxic one if that's your experience everywhere you go.
Not much about being correct or incorrect, but I recalled myself in a meeting looking at the issue on the screen suggesting "at least leave a typo so it doesn't look auto generated right off the bat". I got laid off that year.
Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics
Three things you never discuss at work: Religion, politics, and The Great Pumpkin.
Do we care that 100% of this writing was generated with AI?
Your comment is also potentially being downvoted with AI. Crazy times we live in.
everything being ai is the only reason i stopped arguing hard. because as somebody else today put it, there are notable signs of widespread coordinated activity intended to skew the noise to signal ratio. i see it everywhere on the net nowadays, bots hammering hard on the most minor percievable conflict. this behaviour is technically a simulacrum of real human activity - it closely mimics the training set of reddit comments. but what im seeing is insane amounts of toxicity more than ive ever seen on the net. not worth giving an inch anymore.
Agree with all. Very well written. Author learned these truths much faster than me. Esp "profit fron difference".
One minor "yes and"...
Quote
> You’re challenging their sense of self.
More specifically, you're challenging their identity.
Further, people have identities, not beliefs.
Which is why persuassion (marketing, propganda, fads, fashion) works where agrument does not.
TBH I've struggled to accept all this squishy stuff. But it has made some things a lot easier to handle, so there is an upside.
I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.
Arguing with other people helps me understand my own positions better.
I argue about ideas, that is why I enjoy it so much.
This is really great, thanks for writing and sharing!
“Every conversation not using logic is using emotions instead” - duhh
I never really understood the “Being right is overrated” mindset. It’s easy enough to understand the good of harmony, but that’s not really how I see it used. They’re not really oppositional, a person has to see it that way. And to the extent that cohesion is valuable, that's just built in to a better calculation of right. But saying it this way, I suspect means that the person doing the calculating needs to overstate this cohesion beyond its value. This is a convenient sorta trusim to make a case.
The premise is that there are factors beyond accuracy which are for the greater good. That seems reasonable, but what are they? There are things like peace and happiness, which sound great, but aren’t at odds with accuracy, or more precisely the pursuit of it. This isn’t really a tradeoff. When people frame accuracy as overrated, it seems they’re often obscuring and gliding over that they don’t have a counter argument. There isn’t necessarily one discoverable truth, but there are better hypotheses and more sincere attempts. To the degree, that optimizing for peace and happiness can be a better goal, the measure of those things is typically self-centered. They would be happier. It can be group self-centered too, as in our team would be happier. It’s not a neutral truism, it’s a personal weighing, of the value of the better outcome resulting from right/better/good decision and the desire for (at least surface-level) harmony.
But more important than that, even if the group would be happier, there is the false tradeoff thing. Embedded in “being right isn’t what’s most important” is agreement about what’s right. Why are we unhappy with something more right? Accuracy/truth seems conspired against at a dispositional level in this situation. Disagreement and disharmony are not the same thing. So it’s not even disagreement leading to disharmony. It seems more of a personal desire against either a particular outcome or against disagreement generally. Both questionable. Relatedly, diplomacy is not a bad trait exactly, but I don’t see it as essentially positive. It betrays a lot. It is a kind of tax, which can be worth it up to a point (there is value in the internal functioning of the group), but probably not as often as the truism has it play out. Something should be questioned when a person/team diverges so much from better/accurate/right.
The idea of picking your battles makes a form of self-centered sense, while also making a (I think large) form of nonsense outside it. There are many forms of dissent that occur before cussing or violence, it is much different to (1) disagree, (2) disagree, but go along, (3) disagree, but say you agree, (4) disagree, but convince yourself to agree for harmony (and perhaps eventually forget that you disagree). A phrase I’ve come to dislike is “I wouldn’t die on that hill”. People should defend, if not die on, more hills. It also might recruit others. We have all these hills that have been ceded because we weren’t willing to say we liked them.
Good point but reads like AI slop :(
"Argumentation" is one of the necessary rhetorical modes. You cannot escape it altogether in human interactions since it is central to conflict resolution and negotiation. The key is to understand psychology/sociology of both oneself/others along with rational approaches and know when to emphasize one over the other.
For some background see;
1) List of Cognitive Biases - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
2) List of Fallacies - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
3) Modes of Discourse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_discourse
4) Argumentation Scheme - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_scheme
5) Conflict resolution - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution
6) Negotiation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation
As others have discussed, people argue for many reasons, ego being one of them.
I didn't really understand this. I grew up before the internet, and I have ADHD, which essentially means I have limited working memory.
One of my compensatory strategies for this is to have a fairly comprehensive world model at the ready in long-term memory.
If you told me something that contradicts my mental model, I might argue, in order to figure out whether I need to update my model or not.
The argument between someone ego-driven operating on a motte-and-bailey basis, and someone who just truly wants to understand, but won't let it go because they feel they need to understand, gets ugly quickly.
Fortunately, I'm older, my model doesn't need to change as often, I'm better at discriminating about things I care about or that are irrelevant, and, of course, I can always disengage with "that's interesting; I'll have to research it" and go down a rabbit hole on the internet if what they are saying doesn't seem to make a lick of sense.
I will say that the need to be right -- not the need to lord it over others, or the need to prove I'm right -- has probably helped my programming career immensely.
The burning desire to be right can be completely orthogonal to giving a shit about whether others think you're right or not, or giving a shit about others when they're wrong and it doesn't adversely affect you.
I don't know, arguing gives me kind of a high, even when my position is weak. I don't go out of my way to argue (especially about politics) but if you bring up a point I oppose, I don't stay quiet.
The next level up is the payoff, the incentives like taleb tripe
I interpret all posts online to be micro-essays intended to sway the multitude of anonymous readers in some way. When I argue with a post, I am not in dialogue with the poster, not really; I am working to counteract the first micro-essay's sway with my own ideas.
Kantian ethics indicate that it would be unethical for me to allow posts I consider harmful in sway to remain unargued. I am fighting for truth or what I think should be truth.
> Sometimes I won on points and lost the person. More often I won nothing at all: I’d watch someone grow more certain of the very thing I had just disproven, while the room quietly drifted to their side. I would walk away technically right and completely alone.
This is why debating is taught in school in the Netherlands (and I'm sure other countries, too). Winning an argument is not the same as convincing someone they were wrong: that's something you need to learn how to do and then something you need to actively practice with others.
Just having good arguments makes you a dick. Having good arguments and being able to empathize with the opposition's and conceding their position on any merit, while showing there's a solution that'd they'd prefer even if they don't know that yet, makes you someone helpful and trustworthy.
I would rather sit alone in truth than with a million friends in fiction.
I don't think we need to disengage in debate with everyone. That said, you have to know if you're talking to someone who's willing to reason, and you have to be open to their reasoning as well. There is absolutely no sense in contradicting the opinion of an irrational person who has made their beliefs part of their core identity. That person will hate you for showing them the truth, no matter how clear.
He did not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQlyUjp3vM
Because we only paid for the 5 minute argument, and our time is up?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQlyUjp3vM
More like why people stopped engaging with someone who could never admit that they might be wrong.
I used to think, when I disagreed with someone, we were on a journey together to find out what the truth is. Maybe my understandng was wrong, maybe theirs, maybe it's something neither of us thought of.
But then I realized that most people don't think that way. It's more important to not be alone than to know the truth, and people tie their individual identity to their group identity - if a fact contradicts their group identity's approved list of observances, they'll take it as a personal attack. So I just say 'ok' now.
How do I pass this to coworkers without coming off as passive aggressive? Because this article pretty much sums up what adds a lot of stress for me currently.
Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .
The 4 hour work week isn’t life
I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /
the main pieces that i had to truly understand in order to recognize and stop most online arguing were:
1) performativeness. if the person responding to you is performing for other readers rather than having a genuine good-faith discussion with you, just move on. i still catch myself being performative sometimes and it grosses me out when i recognize it lol.
2) real world vs online behaviors. if someone is an asshole in the real world, we just wouldnt talk to them. not sure how we've convinced ourselves that online is different. if someone refuses to take the time to respond in a socially normal way, then why would you take the time to respond? if they wont take the time to be social, why would you?
little ass kids learn this shit in like kindergarten. if someone is a dick, no one is friends with them. if my friends and i are in a bar and some random is being an asshole, we dont "debate" them, we move on. again, tiny children learn this shit lol.
3) real people whose opinions you care about. make a list. when i did it, it turned out to be less than 20. the people on your list are the only people you should feel any obligation towards. not randoms on the internet. dont spend your valuable time/energy/mental arguing with random internet assholes. your list of real people are the only ones you should feel any obligation towards because if you value them, they likely value you opinions as well.
4) good faith. you'll know in one or two responses if the person replying is there in good-faith. if they're not, move on.
5) knowledge peers. its ok to recognize that someone is not on the same knowledge level as you in a topic. whether they know more or know less, either way, its ok. if we're lucky we are experts in one or two topics and dipshits in most topics. accept that fact. i know this is tough in our industry, we are overflowing with people who think they're smarter than they are. its ok to recognize that the other person is not your knowledge peer on the topic and adjust accordingly: up, down, or out.
6) conversation vs debate. if someone doesnt recognize there is a vast difference between normal conversation and debate, dont waste your time. honestly, they're typically gross to engage with.
and of course, find real world hobbies. once you have the hobby, it naturally becomes "why would i argue with this dickbag online when i could be doing something way more fun."
The whole article is AI slop.
Been there, done that. Found it quite relatable. It was a great read.
Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.
> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.
=====
re: the content
You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.
This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.
Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.
Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.
----
The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.
the author is 100% correct. this is why i find it pointless to debate politics and social issues with most people. far too often people are not arguing for an idea, they are arguing to defend something that has become their identity and it is fused with their ego.
well said
My new approach is mimicking AI in an obvious way with a fourth wall break to show self awareness about a behavior pattern I avoid
“You’re absolutely right! And you know what - Haha this is how girls want me to talk to them - you know what, thats brave!”
> ̶M̶a̶n̶y̶ People are ego-driven. Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position.
> ̶M̶o̶s̶t̶ People don’t reason their way to conclusions and then feel accordingly. They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling.
ftfy
There are no people that aren’t ego-driven or feel first and then reason backward. There are just situations sometimes where it doesn’t look that way
I like to think that I change my mind based on evidence, but the more I battle test my ideas in a specific thesis, the less reluctant I am to give it up, and prefer to see a synthesis incorporating the new arguments.
Often though, I find the arguments are things I have already heard before and either incorporated or debunked - either way they do not affect my positions.
https://magarshak.com/blog/why-im-confident-in-my-views/
As for strawmen like “well that’s not true of ALL cases” (I never said it was) or “that’s whataboutism”, those are just bad argumentation:
https://magarshak.com/blog/whataboutism-considered-harmful/
I removed myself from Facebook years ago because of all the toxic arguments about politics - almost entirely whataboutism and name calling. I've recently rediscovered Facebook and came up with a little game: sit back, watch all the political arguments, and take a drink every time someone concedes a point (not the whole argument, just a single point), as in, "Shit, you're right. I didn't realize that." I'm probably gonna quit soon because it's been around 2 months and I haven't taken a single drink.
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.
There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.
The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.
Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.
And do others care more now? Who gives a shit?
lol so humble he writes a humble brag blog post.
I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s
Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.
I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.
One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?
This is a bizarrely anti-democratic. "Winning" isn't the important part of discussing a topic with multiple points of view.
Do you believe all points of view are equally valuable?
If they are not (in a small team) you have real problems. Not everyone will be right or be happy, but their pov has value, and equally? More or less.
You aren't answering the question. You are reframing the question so you can give the answer you want, thereby avoiding giving the real answer to the question presented.
Ok my answer is yes (caveat: functional team)
Reference question: "Do you believe all points of view are equally valuable?"
Additional context: parent to question framed scenario as "discussing a topic"
A low-effort comment from a new user account which I remember from this other low-effort comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734579
either you're still fat, or at 45 you should be long past boasting on the internet about your muscle gains. "SOME of the 8 billion people on Earth aren't adequately described by a system with only four outputs"? See comedian physicist Dara O'Briain saying that comedically:
"""Racism is way better than Astrology - Racism is one of the worst social evils they can imagine. “How dare you do that?” they say. "How dare you ascribe to me personality traits? You don’t even know me, but you tell me that you know me, and you know these things about me, and you say I share these personality traits with this huge group of people, and I don’t know them, you don’t know them, and you say not only do we have the same character traits, but we have some sort of common history and some common destiny, and you make all of these horrible presumptions on the back of what? On the back of a fluke of birth. How dare you do that?
What? Ooh, Capricorn.""" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhCWw0E_mVY
Come on, try commenting something more effortful, interesting, or substantial than "do you really believe <strawman they didn't say>?" or at least, something funnier? We've all got to while away the time until death arguing on the internet forever, at least give it some oomph.
Some are more equal than others.
No, but I also didn't say that. I'd say that some arguments are also interesting instead of right or wrong. Some people just have interesting brains. This thread is very meta.
democracy demands that a drooling idiot gets to have equal say as any genius with his vote. since there are far more drooling idiots than geniuses we can easily see why democracy has typically been so dystopian, and only seems to get worse over time.
maybe you should educate us as to why democracy like this belongs in professional settings where efficiency and correctness determine outcome and profit/ job security.
Your argument assumes that all work places and all the debates within them are hierarchical, which they are not.