4 ms·

Good point. In my experience, when communicating ideas, it helps to separate the nuances of “I hear/understand you” and “I agree with you”. For novel ideas, it

Good point. In my experience, when communicating ideas, it helps to separate the nuances of “I hear/understand you” and “I agree with you”. For novel ideas, it takes a significant amount of time after you understand it, to decide on it. In the mean time it is important to suspend judgement while exploring the idea and its consequences. Most people genuinely interested in ideas want to make sure their thoughts have been understood, and will happily receive a critique if it comes to be. Seeing acknowledgment that they’ve been understood allows them to relax and start listening. OTOH, being repeatedly dismissed without being understood leads them to feel persecuted for novelty. Listening is an art.

behringer 8y ago
It doesn't matter how good of a listener one is. If you can't refute a claim with evidence to the contrary, your refutation will feel like persecution. If a person can't be convinced with real evidence, that is the road to crack-pottery.
fossuser 8y ago
I find it helps a lot when you're telling someone they're wrong first tell them how they're right. Typically there's some agreement with a difference of either an underlying core axiom or some other tradeoff that the two people are weighing differently. Pointing out the pieces you agree on helps the other person relax a little and open up when thinking about their position.
Kalium 8y ago
You're absolutely right! People genuinely interested solely ideas will be satisfied to be understood and accept any reasonable critique that comes in response. One of the human failure modes that I witness on a regular basis is that people fail to separate "I hear/understand you" and "I agree with you" within their own heads. People have a tendency to assume that what they find convincing will be similarly convincing to another. As a result, if it's not convincing to another, this other person must not understand it properly and must just need to be educated on the subject. Or, more cynically, they aren't paying attention because they don't understand the importance of the work. My current operating hypothesis is that vanishingly few people are genuinely interested solely in ideas. Almost everyone has some ego at stake. Being told that your baby is ugly, no matter how kindly, compassionately, or empathetically it is done, is rarely a positive experience. This is where people like Dale Carnegie come in. Beyond the emotional aspects of it, there are other issues. It can be incredibly labor-intensive to delve deeply into a paper and determine how right or wrong it is. If it's wrong, it's even more work to understand precisely where and how it is wrong, and then give the kind of feedback a hypothetical egoless author genuinely interested solely in ideas would like. This can be a great deal to ask, unpaid, of people who have other things they would like to be doing. This is doubly true when most papers are patently wrong in some obvious way and the painstakingly handcrafted feedback unlikely to be taken up in the manner an idealist could hope for. I'm sure you have a way to handle this with the art of listening, and I'm just not seeing it. Can you help me understand? Again, you're completely right. It can definitely help to separate the ideas of understanding and agreement, and reasonable people interested in ideas will handle this gracefully! There just might be some room for nuance and perhaps a careful consideration of costs and burdens might be in order.
- ssivark 8y ago
  > if it's not convincing to another, this other person must not understand it properly and must just need to be educated on the subject. Or, more cynically, they aren't paying attention because they don't understand the importance of the work. Here's a thumb rule I try to follow: Before having a strong opinion towards one side, one must be able to be articulate both (opposing) points of view. So, my goal in any discussion is to reach that stage -- mutually, if possible. After that point, I'm willing to trust reasonable people to exercise independent judgement. At least we can get a shared understanding of which differing assumptions lead us to different conclusions, and see whether there are any tests which will help us validate those assumptions. > Almost everyone has some ego at stake. Aye, we're all humans! All we can do is strive to be a little better each day :-) The same with regards to listening to someone -- I try to listen carefully and respond sincerely with what puzzles me. It's up to them what they wish to do with that. > It can be incredibly labor-intensive to delve deeply into a paper and determine how right or wrong it is. If it's wrong, it's even more work to understand precisely where and how it is wrong, and then give the kind of feedback a hypothetical egoless author genuinely interested solely in ideas would like. This can be a great deal to ask, unpaid, of people who have other things they would like to be doing. Absolutely! I don't mean to imply that one should take every crackpot paper seriously. I guess each researcher has a circle of respected colleagues whom one can trust for a little bit of indulgence. Also, this is partly what professors are paid for -- so I would hope they're willing to spend some time with their maturing students, and their colleagues, who have proven track records as researchers. An interesting related tidbit: Some of my physics professors were very sincere in asking eager grad students to have some humility and avoid spending much time on the murky swamp of quantum foundations (which has claimed many decades of smart researchers' lives)--and definitely not by ourselves, at least till we had a few manifestly productive years working on other things, and developed enough of a research sense to understand when to back away from unproductive lines of inquiry.

behringer 8y ago

It doesn't matter how good of a listener one is. If you can't refute a claim with evidence to the contrary, your refutation will feel like persecution. If a person can't be convinced with real evidence, that is the road to crack-pottery.

fossuser 8y ago

I find it helps a lot when you're telling someone they're wrong first tell them how they're right. Typically there's some agreement with a difference of either an underlying core axiom or some other tradeoff that the two people are weighing differently. Pointing out the pieces you agree on helps the other person relax a little and open up when thinking about their position.

Kalium 8y ago

You're absolutely right! People genuinely interested solely ideas will be satisfied to be understood and accept any reasonable critique that comes in response. One of the human failure modes that I witness on a regular basis is that people fail to separate "I hear/understand you" and "I agree with you" within their own heads. People have a tendency to assume that what they find convincing will be similarly convincing to another. As a result, if it's not convincing to another, this other person must not understand it properly and must just need to be educated on the subject. Or, more cynically, they aren't paying attention because they don't understand the importance of the work. My current operating hypothesis is that vanishingly few people are genuinely interested solely in ideas. Almost everyone has some ego at stake. Being told that your baby is ugly, no matter how kindly, compassionately, or empathetically it is done, is rarely a positive experience. This is where people like Dale Carnegie come in. Beyond the emotional aspects of it, there are other issues. It can be incredibly labor-intensive to delve deeply into a paper and determine how right or wrong it is. If it's wrong, it's even more work to understand precisely where and how it is wrong, and then give the kind of feedback a hypothetical egoless author genuinely interested solely in ideas would like. This can be a great deal to ask, unpaid, of people who have other things they would like to be doing. This is doubly true when most papers are patently wrong in some obvious way and the painstakingly handcrafted feedback unlikely to be taken up in the manner an idealist could hope for. I'm sure you have a way to handle this with the art of listening, and I'm just not seeing it. Can you help me understand? Again, you're completely right. It can definitely help to separate the ideas of understanding and agreement, and reasonable people interested in ideas will handle this gracefully! There just might be some room for nuance and perhaps a careful consideration of costs and burdens might be in order.

ssivark 8y ago
> if it's not convincing to another, this other person must not understand it properly and must just need to be educated on the subject. Or, more cynically, they aren't paying attention because they don't understand the importance of the work. Here's a thumb rule I try to follow: Before having a strong opinion towards one side, one must be able to be articulate both (opposing) points of view. So, my goal in any discussion is to reach that stage -- mutually, if possible. After that point, I'm willing to trust reasonable people to exercise independent judgement. At least we can get a shared understanding of which differing assumptions lead us to different conclusions, and see whether there are any tests which will help us validate those assumptions. > Almost everyone has some ego at stake. Aye, we're all humans! All we can do is strive to be a little better each day :-) The same with regards to listening to someone -- I try to listen carefully and respond sincerely with what puzzles me. It's up to them what they wish to do with that. > It can be incredibly labor-intensive to delve deeply into a paper and determine how right or wrong it is. If it's wrong, it's even more work to understand precisely where and how it is wrong, and then give the kind of feedback a hypothetical egoless author genuinely interested solely in ideas would like. This can be a great deal to ask, unpaid, of people who have other things they would like to be doing. Absolutely! I don't mean to imply that one should take every crackpot paper seriously. I guess each researcher has a circle of respected colleagues whom one can trust for a little bit of indulgence. Also, this is partly what professors are paid for -- so I would hope they're willing to spend some time with their maturing students, and their colleagues, who have proven track records as researchers. An interesting related tidbit: Some of my physics professors were very sincere in asking eager grad students to have some humility and avoid spending much time on the murky swamp of quantum foundations (which has claimed many decades of smart researchers' lives)--and definitely not by ourselves, at least till we had a few manifestly productive years working on other things, and developed enough of a research sense to understand when to back away from unproductive lines of inquiry.