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Tech lifestyle options and programming languages are topics where plenty of objective truths can be established. Why else would anyone want to waste air and key

by asdflkj 16y ago

Tech lifestyle options and programming languages are topics where plenty of objective truths can be established. Why else would anyone want to waste air and keystrokes? Do a thought experiment: come up with a topic that is purely non-objective. Now observe that your topic is 100% bullshit. Subjectivity is what people hide behind when for whatever reason, they are tired of being intellectually honest. Subjectivity/ideology is to our age as religion/morality was to the Middle Ages. Edit: When I say "objective", I don't mean "certain". That might be one reason people like subjectivity so much. It allows them to feel certain where looking at things objectively would make them feel uncertain. Evolutionary psychology tells us that certainty is often adaptive in and of itself, so this is just yet another case of our evolutionary legacy subverting our search for truth.

rick_2047 16y ago
Do a thought experiment: come up with a topic that is purely non-objective. Now observe that your topic is 100% bullshit. I would like a shot at it. I have been discussing this with a lot of people. The question is: "What exactly is reality?" Now this may seem bullshit at first. "Come on reality is what we can see and prove", "reality is what is 'true'", "I know it is real when I see it". These are some of the very diverse answers that I get to such a question. My personal take is, that we define something as real when a mass majority starts to believe in it. Everyone has his/her different take on if something is real or not. But for ages every body "knows" that something is real when an authority gauges what the masses believe and declares it "real". For example 1500 years back every body "knew" earth is the centre of the universe, why? Because the church said so. They also knew that earth was flat. why? Because the earth said so. We also "knew" that the electron is a particle, why? because some scientists said so or some of the experiments (which were then proven wrong) said so. So tell me, why is it that something is real once and not after some time. So isn't reality a subjective thing? Now this may sound BullShit to you but makes sense to me.
- argv_empty 16y ago
  My personal take is, that we define something as real when a mass majority starts to believe in it. So is it impossible for the majority to be wrong? So isn't reality a subjective thing? Only because you have defined it as what most people believe. Many would disagree with that definition and say, for example, that our planet was round even before we noticed it.
  - rick_2047 16y ago
    exactly my point. But what was defined as "real" at that time was that earth is flat.
    - argv_empty 16y ago
      That's what they _believed_ was real. I have yet to see anyone claim that belief is reality and give justification beyond simply repeating/rephrasing the claim, and you certainly aren't the first.
btilly 16y ago
Tech lifestyle options and programming languages are topics where plenty of objective truths can be established. Why else would anyone want to waste air and keystrokes? They are also topics where there are plenty of subjective truths. Worse yet, many are subjective truths where the answer, although entirely subjective, is incredibly important to people. The canonical example in programming is the question of the best indentation style. Research has found little difference between virtually any brace placement, and any indent in the range of 2-4 characters. Yet consistency is incredibly important, and programmers will experience some level of disorientation when forced to work with an unfamiliar indentation style. This effect is strong enough that people don't like to switch, even from an objectively worse style, for instance an 8 character indent (known to hurt reading comprehension), The infamous result are endless arguments that can't be settled. (Diversion, I carefully said "little difference". In fact differences have been found. One is that programmers whose eyesight is getting worse - which happens with age - a 4 space indent is better than a 2 space indent. (A study that found this is referenced in _Perl Best Practices_.) The other is that there is some data suggesting that certain code inspection techniques work better if you've aligned your braces. See http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/ce9a377eef52aec9 http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/ce9a377eef52a... for the information I have.) Moving on from that, there are plenty of decisions which likely have some objective content, but much, much more of the subjective content where people face large switching costs. Examples of this include your choice of editor/IDE, programming language, OS, and key libraries. There may be objective differences, but the key fact in the vast majority of arguments you see about this is that the people arguing would personally be worse off were they forced to switch.
- _delirium 16y ago
  It might also be worth noting that the attempts to establish objective pros/cons of programming languages themselves usually start with a subjective decision about what ought to be maximized. For example: how do you weight things like prototyping speed, bug minimization, support for team programming, programmer satisfaction, etc.? Most studies pick one. That's useful objective information going into the decision, of course, but I still think the programming-languages decision is mostly a subjective one, depending on how people assign weights to lots of noncomparable factors. That doesn't mean it's totally arbitrary, because you can come up with cogent arguments for and against various things which help in understanding the pros and cons, but I don't think those are "objective" arguments that can establish "truth".
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
kristiandupont 16y ago
I would argue the opposite: the only interesting discussions are the ones where an objective truth is impossible to establish. Just about every choice in life presents a trade-off and determining what works best for you means analyzing this trade-off and trying to see it from as many angles as possible.
neilk 16y ago
Tech lifestyle options and programming languages are topics where plenty of objective truths can be established. I think you forgot "choice of programming editor". I'm pretty sure we can establish some objective truths there. Just give it some time. Your model of discourse is too primitive. You assume that people who are interested in ambiguity are just fleeing from certainty. It may be that they are more interested in learning about how other people think and act than convincing them. You're thinking of discourse as a war where the most objective and evidence-based person wins. I agree it should work like that for critical decisions. But this is not the point of most conversation. For the most part, it's about mutual discovery. What your life is like and what your preferences and experiences are. If you fail to respect and engage with another person's experiences, you look like a bore, charging ahead with your own agenda and oblivious to others.
- asdflkj 16y ago
  Are you one of those people who are more interested in learning about how other people think? If so, it's odd that you're telling me how I think. If you scroll up a bit, you'll see that it's precisely to avoid "war" that I want to emphasize objectivity. If everyone comes into a conversation with the purpose of discovering truth, the focus is on truth, and not who wins. Finally, yeah, there is some objectively best way to edit code, and we'll get there eventually--or close enough to it that it would cease to be an issue. Why does this idea bother you?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - _delirium 16y ago
    On the last point, the claim only bothers me because it's a false claim--- there is no objectively "best" way to edit code. There isn't, in general, an objectively "best" anything, since best is a subjective notion. There might be, say, a way to edit code that objectively maximizes some criterion, but the choice of that criterion as the one you want to maximize is a subjective decision.

by asdflkj 16y ago

rick_2047 16y ago

Do a thought experiment: come up with a topic that is purely non-objective. Now observe that your topic is 100% bullshit. I would like a shot at it. I have been discussing this with a lot of people. The question is: "What exactly is reality?" Now this may seem bullshit at first. "Come on reality is what we can see and prove", "reality is what is 'true'", "I know it is real when I see it". These are some of the very diverse answers that I get to such a question. My personal take is, that we define something as real when a mass majority starts to believe in it. Everyone has his/her different take on if something is real or not. But for ages every body "knows" that something is real when an authority gauges what the masses believe and declares it "real". For example 1500 years back every body "knew" earth is the centre of the universe, why? Because the church said so. They also knew that earth was flat. why? Because the earth said so. We also "knew" that the electron is a particle, why? because some scientists said so or some of the experiments (which were then proven wrong) said so. So tell me, why is it that something is real once and not after some time. So isn't reality a subjective thing? Now this may sound BullShit to you but makes sense to me.

argv_empty 16y ago
My personal take is, that we define something as real when a mass majority starts to believe in it. So is it impossible for the majority to be wrong? So isn't reality a subjective thing? Only because you have defined it as what most people believe. Many would disagree with that definition and say, for example, that our planet was round even before we noticed it.
- rick_2047 16y ago
  exactly my point. But what was defined as "real" at that time was that earth is flat.
  - argv_empty 16y ago
    That's what they _believed_ was real. I have yet to see anyone claim that belief is reality and give justification beyond simply repeating/rephrasing the claim, and you certainly aren't the first.

btilly 16y ago

Tech lifestyle options and programming languages are topics where plenty of objective truths can be established. Why else would anyone want to waste air and keystrokes? They are also topics where there are plenty of subjective truths. Worse yet, many are subjective truths where the answer, although entirely subjective, is incredibly important to people. The canonical example in programming is the question of the best indentation style. Research has found little difference between virtually any brace placement, and any indent in the range of 2-4 characters. Yet consistency is incredibly important, and programmers will experience some level of disorientation when forced to work with an unfamiliar indentation style. This effect is strong enough that people don't like to switch, even from an objectively worse style, for instance an 8 character indent (known to hurt reading comprehension), The infamous result are endless arguments that can't be settled. (Diversion, I carefully said "little difference". In fact differences have been found. One is that programmers whose eyesight is getting worse - which happens with age - a 4 space indent is better than a 2 space indent. (A study that found this is referenced in _Perl Best Practices_.) The other is that there is some data suggesting that certain code inspection techniques work better if you've aligned your braces. See http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/ce9a377eef52aec9 http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/msg/ce9a377eef52a... for the information I have.) Moving on from that, there are plenty of decisions which likely have some objective content, but much, much more of the subjective content where people face large switching costs. Examples of this include your choice of editor/IDE, programming language, OS, and key libraries. There may be objective differences, but the key fact in the vast majority of arguments you see about this is that the people arguing would personally be worse off were they forced to switch.

_delirium 16y ago
It might also be worth noting that the attempts to establish objective pros/cons of programming languages themselves usually start with a subjective decision about what ought to be maximized. For example: how do you weight things like prototyping speed, bug minimization, support for team programming, programmer satisfaction, etc.? Most studies pick one. That's useful objective information going into the decision, of course, but I still think the programming-languages decision is mostly a subjective one, depending on how people assign weights to lots of noncomparable factors. That doesn't mean it's totally arbitrary, because you can come up with cogent arguments for and against various things which help in understanding the pros and cons, but I don't think those are "objective" arguments that can establish "truth".

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

kristiandupont 16y ago

I would argue the opposite: the only interesting discussions are the ones where an objective truth is impossible to establish. Just about every choice in life presents a trade-off and determining what works best for you means analyzing this trade-off and trying to see it from as many angles as possible.

neilk 16y ago

Tech lifestyle options and programming languages are topics where plenty of objective truths can be established. I think you forgot "choice of programming editor". I'm pretty sure we can establish some objective truths there. Just give it some time. Your model of discourse is too primitive. You assume that people who are interested in ambiguity are just fleeing from certainty. It may be that they are more interested in learning about how other people think and act than convincing them. You're thinking of discourse as a war where the most objective and evidence-based person wins. I agree it should work like that for critical decisions. But this is not the point of most conversation. For the most part, it's about mutual discovery. What your life is like and what your preferences and experiences are. If you fail to respect and engage with another person's experiences, you look like a bore, charging ahead with your own agenda and oblivious to others.

asdflkj 16y ago
Are you one of those people who are more interested in learning about how other people think? If so, it's odd that you're telling me how I think. If you scroll up a bit, you'll see that it's precisely to avoid "war" that I want to emphasize objectivity. If everyone comes into a conversation with the purpose of discovering truth, the focus is on truth, and not who wins. Finally, yeah, there is some objectively best way to edit code, and we'll get there eventually--or close enough to it that it would cease to be an issue. Why does this idea bother you?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- _delirium 16y ago
  On the last point, the claim only bothers me because it's a false claim--- there is no objectively "best" way to edit code. There isn't, in general, an objectively "best" anything, since best is a subjective notion. There might be, say, a way to edit code that objectively maximizes some criterion, but the choice of that criterion as the one you want to maximize is a subjective decision.