4 ms·

"Check facts" as in investigating tangential issues, or as in fact-checking assumptions? If the latter, then that'd seem very healthy. People can come to all

by _Nat_ 7y ago

"Check facts" as in investigating tangential issues, or as in fact-checking assumptions? If the latter, then that'd seem very healthy. People can come to all sorts of strange conclusions about topics like politics if they're allowed seemingly reasonable assumptions that they sincerely believe to be probably true. If they're not fact-checked, then discussions on topics like politics can quickly devolve into meaningless hot air. Wikipedia shows that the [principle of explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion) can quickly lead to absurd results in a few short examples, but the short examples are for brevity. In common practice, it's long discussions involving a lot of seemingly innocent approximations/assumptions that get off the tracks so subtly that many folks don't seem to realize it. ([Obligatory xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2217/ https://xkcd.com/2217/).)

WhompingWindows 7y ago
It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. Do we need to know completely irrelevant information about famous people, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. This sounds more like a difference in interests than a difference in conversational etiquette. I do understand the disillusion with how pocket-sized screens have affected human communication, but I also love being able to google citations in the middle of a conversation. I imagine I'd get more annoyed by the behavior if it was related to a topic I had no interest in. Maybe try to find friends with vaguely similar interests? I don't demand that my friends are interested in everything I'm interested in (and I wouldn't have any friends if I did), but if there isn't some decent amount of overlap in interests I'm probably not going to enjoy conversing with somebody for an extended period of time. Edit: quote formatting.
  - shantly 7y ago
    There's a real itch to little trivial questions now that there didn't used to be. The pre-Web days are getting hazy but my recollection is that I didn't think up 1/10 as many trivial questions as I do now, and each one now has about 10x the apparent urgency they used to. The ability to get an answer in 10s flat to any low-value question has changed my thinking, to say nothing of the "rabbit hole" effect once you go looking for an answer. I have to consciously push that stuff back to keep it from being (to me) weird. Observing others leads me to believe my experience is probably more normal than not (plus there's social media and all that, which, HN aside, I've managed to avoid falling into by just never starting to use it). It may not just be a difference in interests. Even trying to keep it to a minimum and being aware of the phenomenon, I still spend a fair amount of time in a week looking up stuff I don't actually care about, will soon forget, and which certainly doesn't serve any need.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Learning skills often involves toy examples initially. If you're a programmer, was "Hello, world" your first program? Is there anything immediately useful in being able to generate that particular result? Researching is a skill. Researching quickly, accurately, and effectively takes both knowing that this is possible and knowing how / where to go for information. And no, I'm not saying that it's necessary to break up every last conversation on some point, or that all facts must be verified. But it's a useful practice and skill, there's a great deal of this that doesn't happen, and where a discussion does hinge on the ability to produce and verify facts, this can be quite useful. I find discussions in which a point is both germane and verifiable but people actively avoid checking it to be ... rather disappointing. More frequently in professional, scientific, or political contexts, but all the same.

by _Nat_ 7y ago

WhompingWindows 7y ago

It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. Do we need to know completely irrelevant information about famous people, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens.

blotter_paper 7y ago
> It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. This sounds more like a difference in interests than a difference in conversational etiquette. I do understand the disillusion with how pocket-sized screens have affected human communication, but I also love being able to google citations in the middle of a conversation. I imagine I'd get more annoyed by the behavior if it was related to a topic I had no interest in. Maybe try to find friends with vaguely similar interests? I don't demand that my friends are interested in everything I'm interested in (and I wouldn't have any friends if I did), but if there isn't some decent amount of overlap in interests I'm probably not going to enjoy conversing with somebody for an extended period of time. Edit: quote formatting.
- shantly 7y ago
  There's a real itch to little trivial questions now that there didn't used to be. The pre-Web days are getting hazy but my recollection is that I didn't think up 1/10 as many trivial questions as I do now, and each one now has about 10x the apparent urgency they used to. The ability to get an answer in 10s flat to any low-value question has changed my thinking, to say nothing of the "rabbit hole" effect once you go looking for an answer. I have to consciously push that stuff back to keep it from being (to me) weird. Observing others leads me to believe my experience is probably more normal than not (plus there's social media and all that, which, HN aside, I've managed to avoid falling into by just never starting to use it). It may not just be a difference in interests. Even trying to keep it to a minimum and being aware of the phenomenon, I still spend a fair amount of time in a week looking up stuff I don't actually care about, will soon forget, and which certainly doesn't serve any need.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Learning skills often involves toy examples initially. If you're a programmer, was "Hello, world" your first program? Is there anything immediately useful in being able to generate that particular result? Researching is a skill. Researching quickly, accurately, and effectively takes both knowing that this is possible and knowing how / where to go for information. And no, I'm not saying that it's necessary to break up every last conversation on some point, or that all facts must be verified. But it's a useful practice and skill, there's a great deal of this that doesn't happen, and where a discussion does hinge on the ability to produce and verify facts, this can be quite useful. I find discussions in which a point is both germane and verifiable but people actively avoid checking it to be ... rather disappointing. More frequently in professional, scientific, or political contexts, but all the same.