6 ms·

Moreso than an altruistic desire to educate their audience, I think geeks rather desire to preserve the validity of discourse -- i.e. prevent the spread of "fal

Moreso than an altruistic desire to educate their audience, I think geeks rather desire to preserve the validity of discourse -- i.e. prevent the spread of "false" memes or concepts. It's not a patronizing focus on a peer's education, but rather a way to preserve the truth and correctness of human understanding of the world.

3pt14159 17y ago
I agree, although I do find it funny that this comment is self reinforcing.
amichail 17y ago
Perhaps it's an anxiety disorder? They would feel anxiety when less than perfect information is communicated?
- jsharpe 17y ago
  I'd say less a "disorder" and more a point of view. The spread of false information hurts everybody.
  - amichail 17y ago
    I mean real physical discomfort that would only go away when they correct less than perfect information.
    - sp332 17y ago
      I had never thought of it in those terms. It took me a few years, but I consciously desensitized myself to that feeling. I still get it, but it's easier to ignore.
billybob 17y ago
YES. Like XKCD said: "someone is wrong on the internet." (http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/) Geeks are obsessed with correctness. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not. Witness Slashdot discussions.
- amichail 17y ago
  Where does this obsession with correctness come from? Is it innate? Does it come from programming? Something else?
  - corysama 17y ago
    It's probably true in most scientific and engineering fields, but I can tell you from many experiences in programming that minor inaccuracies in a partner's understanding can lead to major disasters if left uncorrected. It only takes a few disasters in your life before you develop an allergic reaction to both inaccuracy and imprecision (vagueness).
    - araneae 17y ago
      Like if you were separating uranium 235 from 238 and were planning to carry around the 235 suspended in water like you did with the primarily 238 mixture...
      - eru 17y ago
        You need some more bad luck to make it really dangerous. E.g. a pressurised container. Otherwise the water will just escape, when it gets too hot.
        araneae 17y ago
        Oh, irony. I guess no one got the obscure Feynman reference.
        sp332 17y ago
        (I'm pretty sure eru got your joke.)
        ighost 17y ago
        Case in point: we need a sarcasm tag.
rleisti 17y ago
Furthermore, I do it myself to prevent complications down the road. I've found that it's all to easy for one piece of misinformation slipped into a conversation to snowball into something much bigger, and based on a false premise.
atamyrat 17y ago
Last week friend of mine said something stupid and I proved him wrong. I wish someone stopped me before we started arguing and reminded me the Carnegie's advice I've read few years back but was ignoring all the time.
- billybob 17y ago
  Yeah - I have to resist this urge with my wife sometimes. Internally I'm saying "YES YOU CAN TOO MAKE A BATTERY OUT OF A POTATO! I'M GOING TO LOOK IT UP AND SHOW YOU!!" But really, it's way more important to get along and be happy than to prove I'm right about something that doesn't matter. (I still say it, but refrain from proving it.)
  - khafra 17y ago
    ...and a week later, present her with a gift-wrapped clock/led nightlight/etc. powered by a potato.
    - jamesbritt 17y ago
      Valentine's Day is just around the corner.
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    Did this last night. Wife was having trouble with a financials spreadsheet from work, and asked me to help out. I took a look, and although I didn't know the actual content, it was clear to me what the kind of error must be, and how to correctly design a spreadsheet so that such errors are easily identifiable. She said she didn't know that the incoming data might be problematic; I replied that one must always treat all inputs as untrusted. She said that XYZ gave it to her; I said be defensive against bad data even if I give it to you. Anyway... the whole thing turned into a conflict, when I could have just said "I'm glad I could help you this time".
    - ajtaylor 17y ago
      Ummm, you just described half my married life! :-) Perhaps I should take a hint...
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
Let's say I'm in a meeting and the VP of Marketing says, "We all know this feature easily can be launched next week." At least in the US, my silence could be used later to claim implicit agreement. There seems to be some cultural rule to the effect of, "If someone hears another person say something incorrect and doesn't immediately state disagreement, he is implicitly agreeing or did not care enough about Thing X to bother commenting." If someone believes that others follow this rule, then he could claim that a commitment had been made. At a minimum, it would be easy to raise doubt in others of my competence should I later provide an estimate of a month. So, given these risks, how can anyone not speak up? I understand letting some non-essential facts slide if there's little threat that they can be used against you later, but US culture (at least Midwestern business culture) dictates near immediate rebuttal -- no matter how gauche.
- idlewords 17y ago
  If you're in a formal business meeting, then you're in a social situation that has nothing to do with the focus of this article, which is informal two-way conversation.
  - ShabbyDoo 17y ago
    I agree that group interaction was not the focus of the article, but the parent comment seemed more general. Also, to a lesser degree, I think this unfortunate social rule applies in person-to-person interaction. "Why did you not bother to object yesterday when I told you of our group's plans?" In more informal social situations, I don't think this odd social rule is an issue though. After all, if I start talking to somebody at Starbucks about his laptop, it's hard for him to later claim I had an obligation to help him choose the right wireless dongle -- even if he mis-stated his needs for G vs. N connectivity.
- dkarl 17y ago
  A good comeback for this is, "You can't expect me to correct all the bullshit Gary spouts. I don't have the time or a strong enough speaking voice. I'd be hoarse within a week."
lmkg 17y ago
If I'm scathingly self-critical, sometimes I'll admit that there's also an element of showing off my knowledge.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  Went to a gathering of Web developers the other night. Someone (poor fool!) actually admitted to using, and liking, Dreamweaver for certain code and HTML editing. Boom! The jackals were on him in an instant, tearing away at any and all weak spots. It was pretty funny. So, yeah, I've been guilty of this myself, but lately I've been trying to pay more attention to what people are saying and why. The Dreamweaver dude had plausible reason for his preference. But every time he mentioned something he liked about it, two or three people jumped in to explain how he could do that with TextMate or Vim or whatever. While I think people were mostly trying to be helpful, a good part of this had to be the opportunity to show off specialized knowledge of this or that tool. It's why trolling is one of the best ways to get help. Don't ever ask how to do something; assert that something can't be done. You'll get a flood of people wanting to show off and prove you wrong. (Someone one has written about this behavior, and has an Internet law or rule named after him regarding this, but I can't recall who. I'm counting on everyone here to jump in and show off their knowledge by providing the name. :) )
  - imd 17y ago
    I think Dijkstra said, but I can't find it, that computing science is the most fashion-obsessed science. Oh, and I assert that the quote can't be found.
    - GavinB 17y ago
      http://www.bash.org/?152037 http://www.bash.org/?152037 It's not a named law, but this quote pops up on reddit from time to time.
pvg 17y ago
Of course it's deeply patronizing. It carries the presumption that you and nobody else is the Educator of Audiences and the Guardian of Validity of Discourse. Even if it might have an element of truth in a particular conversation, flaunting it (or just believing it) is a sign of profound social ineptitude.
- sketerpot 17y ago
  What the hell? It carries the presumption that you have something educational to say, but it certainly doesn't presume that the other person doesn't. Education can flow both ways. Indeed, it's more interesting that way. Just look at any thread on this forum: people contribute information and correct each other and it's interesting, not patronizing.
  - pvg 17y ago
    The article is about actual conversations, not HN threads. Real life interactions have to do with whether the other party perceives you're being a patronizing git, not whether you believe you have something educational to say. Little Edit: if you think describing 'I don't agree with you' as an 'altruistic desire to educate' and single-handedly preserving the 'validity of discourse' and the 'truth and correctness of human understanding of the world' is anything short of absurdly presumptuous, you might want to re-read the linked article very carefully.
  - thaumaturgy 17y ago
    I seriously doubt that in most social situations, HN-like discourse would be considered "interesting". Geeks find the constant back-and-forth of corrections in dialogue to be interesting and educational. Non-geeks do not; they lose interest by about the second iteration, and will become annoyed shortly after.
    - flog 17y ago
      Maybe the non-geeks are wrong?
pavelludiq 17y ago
True, i have a real problem with sloppy thinking the same way a musician has a problem with noise. I don't mind being corrected, i have no emotional attachment to my positions or believes, if they are wrong, but for some reason proving someone wrong is seen as a personal attack, which confuses me. Why would anyone have such an emotional attachment to a bad idea? And they call me strange... :D What i fear most is not that i might upset someone with my correction, but that someone might not correct me out of politeness if im talking bullshit(i tend to do that often). Thankfully i tend to avoid people pleasers and most of my friends would not hesitate to state my mistakes, even at the risk of insulting me.
- sp332 17y ago
  It's an issue of authority. If someone says that something is true, and you prove them wrong, you've made them look like a weak thinker or out of touch with reality. This can actually damage their relationships with the people around them. If the issue is actually important, you should go to them privately and give them the information in a manner that makes it clear that you are looking to help them instead of just calling them out. If the issue is not important, often (in context) their posturing of "I know better" is more important than actually being correct, so just let it slide.
  - loup-vaillant 17y ago
    Sometimes, it can also be a issue of identity (left/right politician, Java/Lisp programmer…)[1]. If you attack an idea that someone attached to his identity, it will be like you attack his very being. Common reactions can be dismay, denial, or even violence. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- roundsquare 17y ago
  I was like that for a while until I lived with 4 other people who would often accuse me of caring too much about semantics (although semantics often had nothing to do with it... had to let that slide too). I started doing the following: 1) Hear something incorrect. 2) Can I immediately tell that this incorrect fact will change the conclusion. If so, correct the fact. 3) Else, let the conversation continue but remember the incorrect fact. Keep looking out to see if it changes any conclusions. I started doing this consciously and eventually its become fairly automatic.
jackchristopher 17y ago
Yes correcting someone (especially publicly) is status lowering: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status+improv+wiki+status&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightw... Geeks can't see when they're lowering the status of the other person. In fact, they're inept at knowing when to play higher or play lower. I do improv acting. I find improv acting provides an incredibly useful lens to view social interactions. (Cached link because the Improv Wiki is down.)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- loup-vaillant 17y ago
  Cache without highlights: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightwiki.com/improv/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightw...
sethg 17y ago
Every conversation has a limited bandwidth, and the participants usually have a shared understanding—an agenda—of what topics constitute an appropriate use of that bandwidth. When you say something that goes beyond that agenda, even if what you say is true, you risk annoying the other participants, not just because you’re injecting noise into the communications channel, but because you’re asserting a right to change the agenda of the conversation. If you do this often enough, they are more likely to come away with the impression that you’re arrogant and rude than remember your corrections to their false understandings of the world.

3pt14159 17y ago

I agree, although I do find it funny that this comment is self reinforcing.

amichail 17y ago

Perhaps it's an anxiety disorder? They would feel anxiety when less than perfect information is communicated?

jsharpe 17y ago
I'd say less a "disorder" and more a point of view. The spread of false information hurts everybody.
- amichail 17y ago
  I mean real physical discomfort that would only go away when they correct less than perfect information.
  - sp332 17y ago
    I had never thought of it in those terms. It took me a few years, but I consciously desensitized myself to that feeling. I still get it, but it's easier to ignore.

billybob 17y ago

YES. Like XKCD said: "someone is wrong on the internet." (http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/) Geeks are obsessed with correctness. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not. Witness Slashdot discussions.

amichail 17y ago
Where does this obsession with correctness come from? Is it innate? Does it come from programming? Something else?
- corysama 17y ago
  It's probably true in most scientific and engineering fields, but I can tell you from many experiences in programming that minor inaccuracies in a partner's understanding can lead to major disasters if left uncorrected. It only takes a few disasters in your life before you develop an allergic reaction to both inaccuracy and imprecision (vagueness).
  - araneae 17y ago
    Like if you were separating uranium 235 from 238 and were planning to carry around the 235 suspended in water like you did with the primarily 238 mixture...
    - eru 17y ago
      You need some more bad luck to make it really dangerous. E.g. a pressurised container. Otherwise the water will just escape, when it gets too hot.
      - araneae 17y ago
        Oh, irony. I guess no one got the obscure Feynman reference.
        sp332 17y ago
        (I'm pretty sure eru got your joke.)
        ighost 17y ago
        Case in point: we need a sarcasm tag.

rleisti 17y ago

Furthermore, I do it myself to prevent complications down the road. I've found that it's all to easy for one piece of misinformation slipped into a conversation to snowball into something much bigger, and based on a false premise.

atamyrat 17y ago

Last week friend of mine said something stupid and I proved him wrong. I wish someone stopped me before we started arguing and reminded me the Carnegie's advice I've read few years back but was ignoring all the time.

billybob 17y ago
Yeah - I have to resist this urge with my wife sometimes. Internally I'm saying "YES YOU CAN TOO MAKE A BATTERY OUT OF A POTATO! I'M GOING TO LOOK IT UP AND SHOW YOU!!" But really, it's way more important to get along and be happy than to prove I'm right about something that doesn't matter. (I still say it, but refrain from proving it.)
- khafra 17y ago
  ...and a week later, present her with a gift-wrapped clock/led nightlight/etc. powered by a potato.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    Valentine's Day is just around the corner.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  Did this last night. Wife was having trouble with a financials spreadsheet from work, and asked me to help out. I took a look, and although I didn't know the actual content, it was clear to me what the kind of error must be, and how to correctly design a spreadsheet so that such errors are easily identifiable. She said she didn't know that the incoming data might be problematic; I replied that one must always treat all inputs as untrusted. She said that XYZ gave it to her; I said be defensive against bad data even if I give it to you. Anyway... the whole thing turned into a conflict, when I could have just said "I'm glad I could help you this time".
  - ajtaylor 17y ago
    Ummm, you just described half my married life! :-) Perhaps I should take a hint...

ShabbyDoo 17y ago

Let's say I'm in a meeting and the VP of Marketing says, "We all know this feature easily can be launched next week." At least in the US, my silence could be used later to claim implicit agreement. There seems to be some cultural rule to the effect of, "If someone hears another person say something incorrect and doesn't immediately state disagreement, he is implicitly agreeing or did not care enough about Thing X to bother commenting." If someone believes that others follow this rule, then he could claim that a commitment had been made. At a minimum, it would be easy to raise doubt in others of my competence should I later provide an estimate of a month. So, given these risks, how can anyone not speak up? I understand letting some non-essential facts slide if there's little threat that they can be used against you later, but US culture (at least Midwestern business culture) dictates near immediate rebuttal -- no matter how gauche.

idlewords 17y ago
If you're in a formal business meeting, then you're in a social situation that has nothing to do with the focus of this article, which is informal two-way conversation.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  I agree that group interaction was not the focus of the article, but the parent comment seemed more general. Also, to a lesser degree, I think this unfortunate social rule applies in person-to-person interaction. "Why did you not bother to object yesterday when I told you of our group's plans?" In more informal social situations, I don't think this odd social rule is an issue though. After all, if I start talking to somebody at Starbucks about his laptop, it's hard for him to later claim I had an obligation to help him choose the right wireless dongle -- even if he mis-stated his needs for G vs. N connectivity.
dkarl 17y ago
A good comeback for this is, "You can't expect me to correct all the bullshit Gary spouts. I don't have the time or a strong enough speaking voice. I'd be hoarse within a week."

lmkg 17y ago

If I'm scathingly self-critical, sometimes I'll admit that there's also an element of showing off my knowledge.

jamesbritt 17y ago
Went to a gathering of Web developers the other night. Someone (poor fool!) actually admitted to using, and liking, Dreamweaver for certain code and HTML editing. Boom! The jackals were on him in an instant, tearing away at any and all weak spots. It was pretty funny. So, yeah, I've been guilty of this myself, but lately I've been trying to pay more attention to what people are saying and why. The Dreamweaver dude had plausible reason for his preference. But every time he mentioned something he liked about it, two or three people jumped in to explain how he could do that with TextMate or Vim or whatever. While I think people were mostly trying to be helpful, a good part of this had to be the opportunity to show off specialized knowledge of this or that tool. It's why trolling is one of the best ways to get help. Don't ever ask how to do something; assert that something can't be done. You'll get a flood of people wanting to show off and prove you wrong. (Someone one has written about this behavior, and has an Internet law or rule named after him regarding this, but I can't recall who. I'm counting on everyone here to jump in and show off their knowledge by providing the name. :) )
- imd 17y ago
  I think Dijkstra said, but I can't find it, that computing science is the most fashion-obsessed science. Oh, and I assert that the quote can't be found.
  - GavinB 17y ago
    http://www.bash.org/?152037 http://www.bash.org/?152037 It's not a named law, but this quote pops up on reddit from time to time.

pvg 17y ago

Of course it's deeply patronizing. It carries the presumption that you and nobody else is the Educator of Audiences and the Guardian of Validity of Discourse. Even if it might have an element of truth in a particular conversation, flaunting it (or just believing it) is a sign of profound social ineptitude.

sketerpot 17y ago
What the hell? It carries the presumption that you have something educational to say, but it certainly doesn't presume that the other person doesn't. Education can flow both ways. Indeed, it's more interesting that way. Just look at any thread on this forum: people contribute information and correct each other and it's interesting, not patronizing.
- pvg 17y ago
  The article is about actual conversations, not HN threads. Real life interactions have to do with whether the other party perceives you're being a patronizing git, not whether you believe you have something educational to say. Little Edit: if you think describing 'I don't agree with you' as an 'altruistic desire to educate' and single-handedly preserving the 'validity of discourse' and the 'truth and correctness of human understanding of the world' is anything short of absurdly presumptuous, you might want to re-read the linked article very carefully.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  I seriously doubt that in most social situations, HN-like discourse would be considered "interesting". Geeks find the constant back-and-forth of corrections in dialogue to be interesting and educational. Non-geeks do not; they lose interest by about the second iteration, and will become annoyed shortly after.
  - flog 17y ago
    Maybe the non-geeks are wrong?

pavelludiq 17y ago

True, i have a real problem with sloppy thinking the same way a musician has a problem with noise. I don't mind being corrected, i have no emotional attachment to my positions or believes, if they are wrong, but for some reason proving someone wrong is seen as a personal attack, which confuses me. Why would anyone have such an emotional attachment to a bad idea? And they call me strange... :D What i fear most is not that i might upset someone with my correction, but that someone might not correct me out of politeness if im talking bullshit(i tend to do that often). Thankfully i tend to avoid people pleasers and most of my friends would not hesitate to state my mistakes, even at the risk of insulting me.

sp332 17y ago
It's an issue of authority. If someone says that something is true, and you prove them wrong, you've made them look like a weak thinker or out of touch with reality. This can actually damage their relationships with the people around them. If the issue is actually important, you should go to them privately and give them the information in a manner that makes it clear that you are looking to help them instead of just calling them out. If the issue is not important, often (in context) their posturing of "I know better" is more important than actually being correct, so just let it slide.
- loup-vaillant 17y ago
  Sometimes, it can also be a issue of identity (left/right politician, Java/Lisp programmer…)[1]. If you attack an idea that someone attached to his identity, it will be like you attack his very being. Common reactions can be dismay, denial, or even violence. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
roundsquare 17y ago
I was like that for a while until I lived with 4 other people who would often accuse me of caring too much about semantics (although semantics often had nothing to do with it... had to let that slide too). I started doing the following: 1) Hear something incorrect. 2) Can I immediately tell that this incorrect fact will change the conclusion. If so, correct the fact. 3) Else, let the conversation continue but remember the incorrect fact. Keep looking out to see if it changes any conclusions. I started doing this consciously and eventually its become fairly automatic.

jackchristopher 17y ago

Yes correcting someone (especially publicly) is status lowering: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightwiki.com/improv/Status+improv+wiki+status&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightw... Geeks can't see when they're lowering the status of the other person. In fact, they're inept at knowing when to play higher or play lower. I do improv acting. I find improv acting provides an incredibly useful lens to view social interactions. (Cached link because the Improv Wiki is down.)

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
loup-vaillant 17y ago
Cache without highlights: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightwiki.com/improv/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightw...

sethg 17y ago

Every conversation has a limited bandwidth, and the participants usually have a shared understanding—an agenda—of what topics constitute an appropriate use of that bandwidth. When you say something that goes beyond that agenda, even if what you say is true, you risk annoying the other participants, not just because you’re injecting noise into the communications channel, but because you’re asserting a right to change the agenda of the conversation. If you do this often enough, they are more likely to come away with the impression that you’re arrogant and rude than remember your corrections to their false understandings of the world.