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For years now I have been consciously limiting my enthusiasm when presenting things I've learned to others after being bitten by this problem. Some personal exa

For years now I have been consciously limiting my enthusiasm when presenting things I've learned to others after being bitten by this problem. Some personal examples: * linux - the freedom it gave me to build my own computing astounded me. I praised it in every direction only to find people that want all the benefits with no effort. I had to configure their systems to prove linux was any good. When I started telling them the benefits require personal tinkering I was attacked for "being an elitist" and linux was said to be actually full of things that don't work. Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public. * motorcycles - I now have the following presentation when people ask me about my experience riding: "It's not like on TV, when it's hot you sweat, when it's cold you freeze, when it rains you're wet and it's quite dangerous on top of it." That's after my enthusiasm convinced some people to buy motorcycles and crash because they didn't take riding seriously enough. They thought they where cool toys.

yoz-y 7y ago
Presenting things as they are and stating limitations first seems like a good way of avoiding the issues mentioned in the article. Rather than hooking people with benefits and then disappointing them with the cost, only those who remain interested after they are familiar with the downsides will stay and listen. It also serves as a good time saver for both parties.
- afarrell 7y ago
  It also lets people set themselves up to engage with the thing in a way that works well for them. If they go into it thinking "oh, this is like installing windows" and then their expectations violated, they will be frustrated. If they go into it thinking "oh, this is a way to get more out of a computer, if I'm willing to do some debugging." then they can think "well, I'm the type of person that does things best when I've got a solid theoretical grounding. Let me go get a book first." or "well, this could be a puzzle, let me get a sandwich before I attempt this." Working with Linux is indeed frustrating at times, but it can be well-worth mustering the frustration-tolerance. But to do that, you've got to know yourself and know what you're getting yourself into.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  I don't know, sometimes presenting the costs second is still okay. I literally had the following conversation with my son this morning, who is a very picky eater: Me: Today's school lunch is serving a giant chicken nugget. Will you eat that? Son: Yay, okay, I love chicken nuggets! Me: There's a bun involved, you can ignore it. Son: ::shrugs:: okay He hates sandwiches. If I had lead with the cost, that he'd be getting the breaded chicken patty in the form of a sandwich, he would have refused. Now, he'll happily set the bun aside. Kids are weird. But, I guess adults are too.
  - apocalypstyx 7y ago
    Reminds me of the old joke: The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?” Sartre replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”. Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream — how about with no milk?”
jcora 7y ago
> Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public. As you should. Linux shit DOESN'T work, for a defintion of work 99% of us use. It ate away so much of my time, with the various distros, until I realized how much simpler it is on Windows.
- dusted 7y ago
  Can't tell if trolling or baiting, oh well, I can't bit this one since I have two boxes under my desktop at home, a Linux computer for everything but playing video games, and a Windows 10 computer for nothing but playing video games. At work I have a laptop with Windows 10 for "serious biz stuff" which means Outlook, and a desktop with Linux for doing actual work. I'm very happy with both operating systems, I wouldn't want to run outlook in the web browser and I'd hate to try to get triple A titles to work in Linux.
  - deadbunny 7y ago
    Check out Proton, while you're SOL for multiplayer games with anticheat it'll run most[1] AAA games in it's stride. With the obvious caveat that not everything is click and play, you may have to tweak a config or variable here and there. https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/
- realusername 7y ago
  Depends of your usage, on my case that's Windows that used to eat much of my time until I got rid of it and things became simpler. That's especially true with the Windows 10 bloat & lack of QA now.
- nnq 7y ago
  > for a defintion of work 99% of us use For this definition MacOS, Windows and Linux all work just fine. I prefer to use a combo of MacOS + Linux because for ME Windows doesn't work, always gets in the way, not just the OS but all the software seems biased towards nagging and spamming and attention grabbing and doing stuff I never explicitly requested it to do instead of just sitting there and doing only what I want them to do. For others even Chrome OS is good enough. So mind your use case. A lot of professionals do real work without touching ANY of what you'd call "office" software whatsoever! I'm not even sure what that "Outlook" thing some refer to even is to be honest. ...I DO use Microsoft Excell, but that's it, the rest of that software universe does not exist to me.
scandox 7y ago
That's what I do now when people ask me if they should have kids. I always say the same thing: All the benefits are intangible and all the drawbacks are tangible.
- hvidgaard 7y ago
  All the unconditional love you experience and the pure joy and pride of experiencing the little person grow up is simply not something I can explain. I can explain that you will spend a lot of money and time on them, worry a lot and you will lose sleep over all the worry you have. Is it worth it? I'm obviously biased, so my answer is to be taken with a grain of salt.
  - username90 7y ago
    There is no such thing as unconditional love, even from your own children. For example if you have high trait neuroticism (vulnerable to negative emotions) then likely your kids will as well, so your family could very easily end up with everyone being miserable since nobody has the tools to properly deescalate setbacks, instead they'd just make it worse.
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      > There is no such thing as unconditional love. It never ceases to amaze me that you have to be so pedantic when saying something like this. I don't want to write a lengthy disclaimer explaining priors and terms - the entire point would drown in unnecessary prose. It obviously applies to normal families with normal parents with normal children. The love and affection from normal children to their normal parents are for all intents and purposes unconditional.
      - username90 7y ago
        > It obviously applies to normal families with normal parents with normal children. You are missing a thing: People who don't want kids are usually not normal people.
rubber_duck 7y ago
> They thought they where cool toys. Well they are - in the sense that the practical value is very limited and there are better alternatives in every regard (even in the ideal scenario where you live in a place with excellent riding conditions and limited parking which benefits a bike - a scooter is going to give you easier riding since it's automatic, less maintenance, more storage capacity and will be plenty fast for commuting if you get 300/600cc ones). My bike is a toy - it's just a dangerous one.
- Rainymood 7y ago
  What is a tool and what is a toy? Or do they overlap? I would classify a motorcycle (I have one too) as a tool for both transport (get me from A to B) and fun (riding it is fun). That being said, holy mother of god it is stressful when there are other cars on the road, people are freaking scary in cars.
  - Excel_Wizard 7y ago
    They overlap. My bandsaw is a tool and a toy. Cars are often toys, but almost always tools.
    - Rainymood 7y ago
      Perhaps they are two completely different dimensions, imagine the x-axis being the "toolness" of something and the y-axis being the "toyness" of something. A nuclear reactor is something that would have a very low "toyness" score, i.e. you wouldn't "play" with it. A plastic toy car would have a very high "toyness" score, as it is literally designed to play with (by kids). I kind of fear my analogy of two different dimensions breaks down here because I'm left wondering what things would have a low "toolness" score ...
      - avn2109 7y ago
        > I kind of fear my analogy of two different dimensions breaks down here because I'm left wondering what things would have a low "toolness" score ... Haute couture fashion?
analog31 7y ago
Your post struck a chord, because I've given up explaining to people why I like jazz and classical music: "My band plays music that most people hate."
afarrell 7y ago
> limiting my enthusiasm I think its better to present enthusiasm alongside frustration in sortof a story arc: - Inciting incident: see an opportunity to do something cool. - A Conflict Arises: run into a roadblock -- be honest about the frustration. - Satisfying climax: solve the problem and are able to do the thing. Genuine excitement. I think that lets you get across your emotion of excitement, while also being honest about the facts on the ground-- Linux does genuinely involve a fair amount of config struggles. The hard part is that debugging can be quite a long and winding road, so it is hard to compress it into a concise enough narrative to hold people's attention through it.
- suls 7y ago
  This is really great advice. I have always read about story telling being important for presentations etc. but somehow never thought about it in such a setting.
- eitland 7y ago
  I guess I mostly agree, but this part has me wondering: > Linux does genuinely involve a fair amount of config struggles. Am I - insanely lucky? - forgetful? - or do I just have very limited scope of what I want my Linux machine to do (non competitive fps gaming, development, mail, simple spreadsheets and word processing) ? - or have I just been very unlucky with my Windows installations for 15 years? - or am I just born to be a Linux user? Since Ubuntu 06.06 I've found one or another Linux easier to install and use than Windows. I remember having to install an official package (915 something?) to get my resolution correct back in '06. I remember a bit of struggle to get it working in dual boot once secure boot came (but only because I wanted dual boot). The last year I remember learning that balena etcher is now the way to make bootable usbs. Meanwhile on Windows it is a constant struggle each time I get a new machine. It keeps getting better but with two or three exceptions there's always something that makes it laggy, even on high end laptops. Solving it might hours of work and weeks of calendar time, and sometimes there's notjing I can do and I just have to wait for an updated driver. In my eyes the advantage of using Wimdows is that the IT department will support it. On the other hand I also only need support when I work on Windows. (Have used and supported Windows since 3.1, so I know it better than many others even if I don't line it : -)
suls 7y ago
Not sure if it is a coincidence you mentioning both technology and motorcycles in the same post. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is basically a book about exactly this (and much more of course). You might find something in there as well ..
- mikelyons 7y ago
  This book came with great reviews and still managed to exceed my expectations.
  - rabidrat 7y ago
    On the downside though, one of the main characters is murdered in the epilogue for no reason. A most unsatisfying denouement.
    - mikelyons 7y ago
      I must have missed this part!
      - kragen 7y ago
        Chris hadn't been murdered yet when the first edition of the book came out.
    - dwcnnnghm 7y ago
      I'm not sure if you mean that the murder was mentioned without reason or if Chris was the victim of a murder without reason. I think it's a bit unclear in the writing style (at least it was to me) that the book is a real story, about a real experience: and so it was terribly sad but (IMO) necessary to mention. Pirsig wrote about an important journey he took with his son and closed it with a mention of the end of Chris' life [0]. To anyone reading this thread, I also recommend Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals [1] by the same author. It's set some time after Zen, as the author struggles with the exact topic of the OP (the fame of the book and the challenges against his "Metaphysics of Quality" [2] that he introduces in Zen). He expands on the idea a bit more and goes into some unclear details from Zen. I thought it was an excellent book, maybe even better than the first. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Personal_life [1] https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-Pirsig/dp/0553299611 https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-Pirsig/dp/05532... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Qual...

yoz-y 7y ago

Presenting things as they are and stating limitations first seems like a good way of avoiding the issues mentioned in the article. Rather than hooking people with benefits and then disappointing them with the cost, only those who remain interested after they are familiar with the downsides will stay and listen. It also serves as a good time saver for both parties.

afarrell 7y ago
It also lets people set themselves up to engage with the thing in a way that works well for them. If they go into it thinking "oh, this is like installing windows" and then their expectations violated, they will be frustrated. If they go into it thinking "oh, this is a way to get more out of a computer, if I'm willing to do some debugging." then they can think "well, I'm the type of person that does things best when I've got a solid theoretical grounding. Let me go get a book first." or "well, this could be a puzzle, let me get a sandwich before I attempt this." Working with Linux is indeed frustrating at times, but it can be well-worth mustering the frustration-tolerance. But to do that, you've got to know yourself and know what you're getting yourself into.
ineedasername 7y ago
I don't know, sometimes presenting the costs second is still okay. I literally had the following conversation with my son this morning, who is a very picky eater: Me: Today's school lunch is serving a giant chicken nugget. Will you eat that? Son: Yay, okay, I love chicken nuggets! Me: There's a bun involved, you can ignore it. Son: ::shrugs:: okay He hates sandwiches. If I had lead with the cost, that he'd be getting the breaded chicken patty in the form of a sandwich, he would have refused. Now, he'll happily set the bun aside. Kids are weird. But, I guess adults are too.
- apocalypstyx 7y ago
  Reminds me of the old joke: The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?” Sartre replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”. Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream — how about with no milk?”

jcora 7y ago

> Now I present it as a geek thing that is of no relevance to the general public. As you should. Linux shit DOESN'T work, for a defintion of work 99% of us use. It ate away so much of my time, with the various distros, until I realized how much simpler it is on Windows.

dusted 7y ago
Can't tell if trolling or baiting, oh well, I can't bit this one since I have two boxes under my desktop at home, a Linux computer for everything but playing video games, and a Windows 10 computer for nothing but playing video games. At work I have a laptop with Windows 10 for "serious biz stuff" which means Outlook, and a desktop with Linux for doing actual work. I'm very happy with both operating systems, I wouldn't want to run outlook in the web browser and I'd hate to try to get triple A titles to work in Linux.
- deadbunny 7y ago
  Check out Proton, while you're SOL for multiplayer games with anticheat it'll run most[1] AAA games in it's stride. With the obvious caveat that not everything is click and play, you may have to tweak a config or variable here and there. https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/
realusername 7y ago
Depends of your usage, on my case that's Windows that used to eat much of my time until I got rid of it and things became simpler. That's especially true with the Windows 10 bloat & lack of QA now.
nnq 7y ago
> for a defintion of work 99% of us use For this definition MacOS, Windows and Linux all work just fine. I prefer to use a combo of MacOS + Linux because for ME Windows doesn't work, always gets in the way, not just the OS but all the software seems biased towards nagging and spamming and attention grabbing and doing stuff I never explicitly requested it to do instead of just sitting there and doing only what I want them to do. For others even Chrome OS is good enough. So mind your use case. A lot of professionals do real work without touching ANY of what you'd call "office" software whatsoever! I'm not even sure what that "Outlook" thing some refer to even is to be honest. ...I DO use Microsoft Excell, but that's it, the rest of that software universe does not exist to me.

scandox 7y ago

That's what I do now when people ask me if they should have kids. I always say the same thing: All the benefits are intangible and all the drawbacks are tangible.

hvidgaard 7y ago
All the unconditional love you experience and the pure joy and pride of experiencing the little person grow up is simply not something I can explain. I can explain that you will spend a lot of money and time on them, worry a lot and you will lose sleep over all the worry you have. Is it worth it? I'm obviously biased, so my answer is to be taken with a grain of salt.
- username90 7y ago
  There is no such thing as unconditional love, even from your own children. For example if you have high trait neuroticism (vulnerable to negative emotions) then likely your kids will as well, so your family could very easily end up with everyone being miserable since nobody has the tools to properly deescalate setbacks, instead they'd just make it worse.
  - hvidgaard 7y ago
    > There is no such thing as unconditional love. It never ceases to amaze me that you have to be so pedantic when saying something like this. I don't want to write a lengthy disclaimer explaining priors and terms - the entire point would drown in unnecessary prose. It obviously applies to normal families with normal parents with normal children. The love and affection from normal children to their normal parents are for all intents and purposes unconditional.
    - username90 7y ago
      > It obviously applies to normal families with normal parents with normal children. You are missing a thing: People who don't want kids are usually not normal people.

rubber_duck 7y ago

> They thought they where cool toys. Well they are - in the sense that the practical value is very limited and there are better alternatives in every regard (even in the ideal scenario where you live in a place with excellent riding conditions and limited parking which benefits a bike - a scooter is going to give you easier riding since it's automatic, less maintenance, more storage capacity and will be plenty fast for commuting if you get 300/600cc ones). My bike is a toy - it's just a dangerous one.

Rainymood 7y ago
What is a tool and what is a toy? Or do they overlap? I would classify a motorcycle (I have one too) as a tool for both transport (get me from A to B) and fun (riding it is fun). That being said, holy mother of god it is stressful when there are other cars on the road, people are freaking scary in cars.
- Excel_Wizard 7y ago
  They overlap. My bandsaw is a tool and a toy. Cars are often toys, but almost always tools.
  - Rainymood 7y ago
    Perhaps they are two completely different dimensions, imagine the x-axis being the "toolness" of something and the y-axis being the "toyness" of something. A nuclear reactor is something that would have a very low "toyness" score, i.e. you wouldn't "play" with it. A plastic toy car would have a very high "toyness" score, as it is literally designed to play with (by kids). I kind of fear my analogy of two different dimensions breaks down here because I'm left wondering what things would have a low "toolness" score ...
    - avn2109 7y ago
      > I kind of fear my analogy of two different dimensions breaks down here because I'm left wondering what things would have a low "toolness" score ... Haute couture fashion?

analog31 7y ago

Your post struck a chord, because I've given up explaining to people why I like jazz and classical music: "My band plays music that most people hate."

afarrell 7y ago

> limiting my enthusiasm I think its better to present enthusiasm alongside frustration in sortof a story arc: - Inciting incident: see an opportunity to do something cool. - A Conflict Arises: run into a roadblock -- be honest about the frustration. - Satisfying climax: solve the problem and are able to do the thing. Genuine excitement. I think that lets you get across your emotion of excitement, while also being honest about the facts on the ground-- Linux does genuinely involve a fair amount of config struggles. The hard part is that debugging can be quite a long and winding road, so it is hard to compress it into a concise enough narrative to hold people's attention through it.

suls 7y ago
This is really great advice. I have always read about story telling being important for presentations etc. but somehow never thought about it in such a setting.
eitland 7y ago
I guess I mostly agree, but this part has me wondering: > Linux does genuinely involve a fair amount of config struggles. Am I - insanely lucky? - forgetful? - or do I just have very limited scope of what I want my Linux machine to do (non competitive fps gaming, development, mail, simple spreadsheets and word processing) ? - or have I just been very unlucky with my Windows installations for 15 years? - or am I just born to be a Linux user? Since Ubuntu 06.06 I've found one or another Linux easier to install and use than Windows. I remember having to install an official package (915 something?) to get my resolution correct back in '06. I remember a bit of struggle to get it working in dual boot once secure boot came (but only because I wanted dual boot). The last year I remember learning that balena etcher is now the way to make bootable usbs. Meanwhile on Windows it is a constant struggle each time I get a new machine. It keeps getting better but with two or three exceptions there's always something that makes it laggy, even on high end laptops. Solving it might hours of work and weeks of calendar time, and sometimes there's notjing I can do and I just have to wait for an updated driver. In my eyes the advantage of using Wimdows is that the IT department will support it. On the other hand I also only need support when I work on Windows. (Have used and supported Windows since 3.1, so I know it better than many others even if I don't line it : -)

suls 7y ago

Not sure if it is a coincidence you mentioning both technology and motorcycles in the same post. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is basically a book about exactly this (and much more of course). You might find something in there as well ..

mikelyons 7y ago
This book came with great reviews and still managed to exceed my expectations.
- rabidrat 7y ago
  On the downside though, one of the main characters is murdered in the epilogue for no reason. A most unsatisfying denouement.
  - mikelyons 7y ago
    I must have missed this part!
    - kragen 7y ago
      Chris hadn't been murdered yet when the first edition of the book came out.
  - dwcnnnghm 7y ago
    I'm not sure if you mean that the murder was mentioned without reason or if Chris was the victim of a murder without reason. I think it's a bit unclear in the writing style (at least it was to me) that the book is a real story, about a real experience: and so it was terribly sad but (IMO) necessary to mention. Pirsig wrote about an important journey he took with his son and closed it with a mention of the end of Chris' life [0]. To anyone reading this thread, I also recommend Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals [1] by the same author. It's set some time after Zen, as the author struggles with the exact topic of the OP (the fame of the book and the challenges against his "Metaphysics of Quality" [2] that he introduces in Zen). He expands on the idea a bit more and goes into some unclear details from Zen. I thought it was an excellent book, maybe even better than the first. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Personal_life [1] https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-Pirsig/dp/0553299611 https://www.amazon.com/Lila-Inquiry-Robert-M-Pirsig/dp/05532... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Quality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Qual...