Why I Stopped Arguing with People(wangcong.org) |
Why I Stopped Arguing with People(wangcong.org) |
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The 4 hour work week isn’t life
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.
> 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.
“You’re absolutely right! And you know what - Haha this is how girls want me to talk to them - you know what, thats brave!”
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’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.”
You don't know what events they had experienced that caused them to shape those views.
Just smile, nod and agree :)
And then you encounter the askhole.
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
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.
>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.
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 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.
AI Slop
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)
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.
> "If you remember one thing, it's this: if you are arguing, you are losing."
"If letting go of the argument sounds like pure loss, here’s the reframe that turns it into a gain."
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.
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?
Three things you never discuss at work: Religion, politics, and The Great Pumpkin.
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.
* 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.
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.
Thanks for sharing
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh your math is wrong? Well i guess i cant discuss this...
Well said.
Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness
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.
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.
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.
So, so true. Not worth it.
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).
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.
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!
"Do you want friends? Or do you want to be right?"
Sometimes there really is no glory on those hills you die on.
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.
[1] “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
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.
Worth knowing which hills to die on and having a strategically chosen intention that is not rooted in ego. Ego is the enemy.
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.
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.
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.
Once they know the answer, it gets more difficult to convince them that the answer they know is incorrect.
- 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
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 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.
Jean-Luc Godard, 28th May, 1982
If someone can't answer that, it's probably not worth arguing about.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
> 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.
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.
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…
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. :)
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?
:)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
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?"
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.
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.
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.
If just the former, I strongly disagree that the two of you are arguing.
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.
"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..."
As thrw045 has pointed out, they do precisely this toward the end of the post.
Is climate change man-made?
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Koan to the author: What was never lost can never be found.
The latter types are the only ones who you can have honest intellectual debates with.
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
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.
>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.
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.
Lately I think I only argue when I know I will get something about it...
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.
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.
> 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.
Also, attributed to him - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"
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.
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 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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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."
So, you could say he rationally decided to keep his irrational beliefs.
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.
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.
"Sorry this letter is so long as I did not have time to make it shorter."
I would guess I post about 40% of the comments I write.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Untrue. On the internet there are no people, only computers.
As the great Marshall McLuhan once said: the medium is the message.
> 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.
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.
I only somewhat disagree with the post in the second part, with reasons enough to start the conversation.
I think I managed to upset people on several occasions as I was just genuinely trying to understand their opinion on some topics.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
And you never will. This is pretty much my point!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)?
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?
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.
I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.
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.
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
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.
Climate change being man-made or not definitely does not fall into “this is a fact”
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".
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.
That is exactly the reality I am asserting, whether or not they actually describe an "external" reality
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 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.
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 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.)
Counterpoint, literally doing that right now in this thread as I’m considering the merits of online discourse in the context of stoicism.
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.
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
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'm tired, Boss...
I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.
Most of the stoic writings are letters and aren't super long. They're very approachable!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.