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Except in real life people sometimes make malicious "mistakes" deliberately and when caught and called out on them either completely dismiss them or even gloat.

by 77pt77 10y ago

Except in real life people sometimes make malicious "mistakes" deliberately and when caught and called out on them either completely dismiss them or even gloat. This reads almost like a fairy tale.

bjelkeman-again 10y ago
In my experience very few serious mistakes are deliberate and there is a huge gain to find a way to not make the same mistake again. Which include avoiding blame, but rather go looking for the root cause. People who can handle serious mistakes in others are some of the best partners you can have in your efforts. IMHO they aren't fairy tales.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- new_hackers 10y ago
  Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- heymijo 10y ago
  There's a story that I love about Pixar, a Black Swan event, and Toy Story 2 [0]. The gist was, the movie's files were accidentally deleted while still in production, and the backup was corrupted. Instead of blasting people for mistakes they set about fixing the immediate problem, and then instead of demanding "accountability" from those responsible, they set about fixing the root cause. A few excerpts from the linked article: "Aside from the fact that there was immediate chatter about who might have made such a dumb move, the discussion quickly moved right on to how to fix the problem." "Instead of dwelling on pinning the blame or lamenting the loss of time and effort, the team made sure to alter the backup strategy so that something like that didn’t happen again, and it went about making up for lost time." [0] http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...
openasocket 10y ago
Are you suggesting that man purposely tried to kill Bob Hoover?
- 77pt77 10y ago
  No.
masklinn 10y ago
> Except in real life people sometimes A minority of people are toxic, you start by cutting them slack as you'd do anyone else, then you cut them off. It's not really a problem.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  Except those people are disproportionately represented in positions of authority and you really can't cut them off without effectively becoming a pariah.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    That seems to be a scenario more or less completely unrelated to TFA or the discussion.
    - 77pt77 10y ago
      I believe the SJW lingo you are looking for is "derailing".
      - simplemath 10y ago
        Pssst you're the problem
        77pt77 10y ago
        How can I ever refute such a cogent argument? You should try Reddit.
  - organsnyder 10y ago
    In my experience, most of the time those people in positions of authority aren't actually malicious. They're either misinformed (the higher you get, the less you're able to have both depth and breadth of knowledge), or they have competing priorities.
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
In which case angrily confronting that person would further justify their ill will towards you and strengthen their resolve to sabotage you. How is that productive or tactful?
- 77pt77 10y ago
  And becoming passive implies the message that you're a pushover to whom anything can be done because there will never be nefarious consequences. To those people the mindset is: If I do X I might gain something (or feels good) and no mater what I'll never suffer any retaliation for it. Why shouldn't I do it?
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    You're talking about sociopaths. Who are estimated to make up 4% of the population. So you should be prepared to deal with them and cut them off as needed, but you shouldn't base your average strategy on assuming everyone you deal with is one.
    - 77pt77 10y ago
      No. I'm taking about usual human behavior. Those figures of 4% are fairytales, not unlike what most psychologists said before knowing the outcomes of the Milgram experiment. Almost no one believed that the vast majority of subjects would take the experiment to its end.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I think perhaps your mindset, and possibly your situation, might be improved if you assumed less about other people's thought process and motivation, or at least if you didn't assume you were correct. It's very easy to come up with ideas about what someone is thinking and why, it's much, much harder to be correct about that. By assuming you know why people are doing things, you've already biased yourself against future information that may contradict that. Maybe sometimes they aren't doing it to be a dick to you, and maybe sometimes what you view as gloating isn't directed at you, or isn't actually gloating.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12707881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12707881 and marked it off-topic.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  I understand that this thread might seem off-topic, but if that is the case it's due to the fact that the parent thread (regarding a Bob Hoover anecdote) was already off-topic. You are obviously free to decide to detach the threads that you see fit, but not detaching at the parent level strikes me as incomprehensible and discretionary.

by 77pt77 10y ago

Except in real life people sometimes make malicious "mistakes" deliberately and when caught and called out on them either completely dismiss them or even gloat. This reads almost like a fairy tale.

bjelkeman-again 10y ago

In my experience very few serious mistakes are deliberate and there is a huge gain to find a way to not make the same mistake again. Which include avoiding blame, but rather go looking for the root cause. People who can handle serious mistakes in others are some of the best partners you can have in your efforts. IMHO they aren't fairy tales.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
new_hackers 10y ago
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
heymijo 10y ago
There's a story that I love about Pixar, a Black Swan event, and Toy Story 2 [0]. The gist was, the movie's files were accidentally deleted while still in production, and the backup was corrupted. Instead of blasting people for mistakes they set about fixing the immediate problem, and then instead of demanding "accountability" from those responsible, they set about fixing the root cause. A few excerpts from the linked article: "Aside from the fact that there was immediate chatter about who might have made such a dumb move, the discussion quickly moved right on to how to fix the problem." "Instead of dwelling on pinning the blame or lamenting the loss of time and effort, the team made sure to alter the backup strategy so that something like that didn’t happen again, and it went about making up for lost time." [0] http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-2-was-deleted-twice-once-by-technology-and-again-for-its-own-good/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...

openasocket 10y ago

Are you suggesting that man purposely tried to kill Bob Hoover?

77pt77 10y ago
No.

masklinn 10y ago

> Except in real life people sometimes A minority of people are toxic, you start by cutting them slack as you'd do anyone else, then you cut them off. It's not really a problem.

77pt77 10y ago
Except those people are disproportionately represented in positions of authority and you really can't cut them off without effectively becoming a pariah.
- masklinn 10y ago
  That seems to be a scenario more or less completely unrelated to TFA or the discussion.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    I believe the SJW lingo you are looking for is "derailing".
    - simplemath 10y ago
      Pssst you're the problem
      - 77pt77 10y ago
        How can I ever refute such a cogent argument? You should try Reddit.
- organsnyder 10y ago
  In my experience, most of the time those people in positions of authority aren't actually malicious. They're either misinformed (the higher you get, the less you're able to have both depth and breadth of knowledge), or they have competing priorities.

wu-ikkyu 10y ago

In which case angrily confronting that person would further justify their ill will towards you and strengthen their resolve to sabotage you. How is that productive or tactful?

77pt77 10y ago
And becoming passive implies the message that you're a pushover to whom anything can be done because there will never be nefarious consequences. To those people the mindset is: If I do X I might gain something (or feels good) and no mater what I'll never suffer any retaliation for it. Why shouldn't I do it?
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  You're talking about sociopaths. Who are estimated to make up 4% of the population. So you should be prepared to deal with them and cut them off as needed, but you shouldn't base your average strategy on assuming everyone you deal with is one.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    No. I'm taking about usual human behavior. Those figures of 4% are fairytales, not unlike what most psychologists said before knowing the outcomes of the Milgram experiment. Almost no one believed that the vast majority of subjects would take the experiment to its end.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I think perhaps your mindset, and possibly your situation, might be improved if you assumed less about other people's thought process and motivation, or at least if you didn't assume you were correct. It's very easy to come up with ideas about what someone is thinking and why, it's much, much harder to be correct about that. By assuming you know why people are doing things, you've already biased yourself against future information that may contradict that. Maybe sometimes they aren't doing it to be a dick to you, and maybe sometimes what you view as gloating isn't directed at you, or isn't actually gloating.

sctb 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12707881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12707881 and marked it off-topic.

77pt77 10y ago
I understand that this thread might seem off-topic, but if that is the case it's due to the fact that the parent thread (regarding a Bob Hoover anecdote) was already off-topic. You are obviously free to decide to detach the threads that you see fit, but not detaching at the parent level strikes me as incomprehensible and discretionary.