8 ms·
I tend to think that almost every time someone is doing something you don't understand or don't like, you're better off understanding the reason for the behavio
by beaconstudios 8y ago
I tend to think that almost every time someone is doing something you don't understand or don't like, you're better off understanding the reason for the behaviour than trying to quash it. Even if you desperately want it to stop, they're clearly doing the thing as a means to address something so if you want to stop them using the current solution you should have a better solution to hand or the problem will once again be unaddressed and the behaviour will resume. You can't offer an alternative unless you know the cause in the first place. This approach makes sense for children (presumably above a certain age) and adults alike.
- skandl 8y agoChoose curiosity and patience over judgement and commands. Such a simple message, and yet in practice it's so easy to fall for the (illusion of?) control, thinking "there's no time for curiosity or patience here."
- philwelch 8y agoThe same is true even for dogs, to some extent. And, to some extent, some people are just born very slightly sadistic or mean and there's no noble underlying reason in the first place.
- beaconstudios 8y agowhy would their reason have to be noble? Human motivations can be complex.
- philwelch 8y agoThey can also be very primally simple, but confused by layers and layers of rationalization and self-justification. And that's more obvious in children, who haven't learned how to rationalize their behavior very convincingly yet. If a child throws a rock at someone's head, they're not going to come up with the same elaborate justifications for that kind of behavior that, say, a political rioter would, even though the underlying motivations are probably the same.
- exolymph 8y agoSeems like a manifestation of Chesterton's Fence! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- aperrien 8y agoAKA "Most regulations are written in blood."
- fzeroracer 8y agoThis is also, as it turns out, one of the most pertinent things a developer should be considering at all times. Sometimes we may get a bit too refactor-happy, not seeing the use behind a certain fix, a line of code or a strange function. Our first instinct isn't to understand it, but to tear it down, gleefully assuming that it's useless.
- xondono 8y agoThis reminds me of the infamous comment block: // // Dear maintainer: // // Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine, // and have realized what a terrible mistake that was, // please increment the following counter as a warning // to the next guy // total_hours_wasted_here = 42 Edit: to improve legibility
- LeifCarrotson 8y agoIndent 4 spaces to format as a code block instead of flowing together or separating with blank lines as paragraphs: // // Dear maintainer: // // Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine, // and have realized what a terrible mistake that was, // please increment the following counter as a warning // to the next guy // total_hours_wasted_here = 42 Note that on narrow windows or mobile screens this doesn't wrap and needs to scroll sideways for long lines (though these are wrapped to 60 characters), which is annoying
- ergothus 8y ago
- adwn 8y agoEasier said than done in practice, particularly when dealing with smaller children, who either can't articulate the problem, or don't grasp the causal connections. Even more so when the unwanted behavior isn't just "weird", but also self-harming (and very abnormal behavior is often socially self-harming).
- jvvw 8y agoOr harming a sibling!
- kingofhdds 8y agoThis should be applied to politics as well.
- hrktb 8y agoThe biggest hurdle seemed to be to regain enough trust to get a chance to discover the reason of the behaviour. There was a window in the beginning when she still had the kid's trust and could have dug deeper, but if/once you are not a trusted party, understanding the reason because exponentially difficult. To your point, it applies to everyone. I remember social courses at the uni about how some classes of workers would obfuscate key parts of their jobs to protect themselves from having client/managers get their nose into it. In that sense getting to understand the core reason might often be the biggest chalenge. A bit like how finding why a bug occurs is more than half of the solution already.