16 ms·

Beware of Being “Right”

206 points by joubert 6y ago

arnon 6y ago
In a relationship - sure. But in businesses compassion only goes so far before the other side exploits it. Being right all the time is dangerous, but where's the balance? How do you balance? Does anyone have good resources for this?
- bananaface 6y ago
  Trying to figure out whether you're too domineering and arrogant by reading internet articles is crazy. Ask the people close to you.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    There’s benefits in a healthy amount of both, doing it well requires balance like a lot of things do-plus the self-awareness and humility to reflect both on what you’re reading and being told by those around you.
    - bananaface 6y ago
      I think this is the kind of area where almost all the advice will be so bad that you'll probably end up worse than when you started.
      - dvtrn 6y ago
        That’s quite a large brush to paint with.
        bananaface 6y ago
        Let me explain my position a bit more. Articles by definition can't analyse you. The entire medium is ill-suited to the task. They won't be able to take a look at you and give their interpretation, which is what you really need if you're trying to figure out this problem. Anything else risks being mental masturbation, but the less obvious implication is that articles have an incentive to be mental masturbation. They're much, much more likely to feed your ego than deconstruct it. Commercial resources from major publications are obvious garbage, but look at non-commercial ventures. Look at the kind of people who read LessWrong - do they become easier to talk to? Less arrogant and obtuse, more receptive to nuance? My experience is they're extremely dense & hard to talk to. Why is that? The content of the blog is fairly direct in telling them the risks & flaws in assuming they know better, right? IMO it's because the blog primarily acts as an identity reinforcement device. The content is irrelevant, from a psychological perspective it ends up being used to reinforce & defend the identity of "more rational than others".
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    Not that easy -- some of them will just want to be friends / want you to feel happy, and tell you what they think you want to hear.
    - bananaface 6y ago
      So will internet articles, but they're designed by professionals. You think that's easier to see through? But look, at least with friends there's a genuine understanding of you that you can try and dig out. An article by its nature has no insight into your presentation. It can't react to you.
- mcguire 6y ago
  "There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - petra 6y ago
    What's the point of accomplishing stuff without any rewards ?
    - bsder 6y ago
      Because you want something done and out of your way so you can do something more important? I once wrote a piece of software specifically in the hopes that companies with shitty implementations would steal it just so I would never have to deal with the problem ever again.
    - asveikau 6y ago
      People have all sorts of reasons to do things. Why are you reading this right now? Is it because someone will reward you for doing it? If you are going to define purposes and motivations in life so narrowly, then I may as well take it to its extreme, get existential or nihilist and say nothing has any intrinsic value at all, so why do it? Of course we still do these things.
      - petra 6y ago
        Sure, I agree, there are many useful rewards in life. And it's nice to pursue them. But contributing, in the context of work, without getting some real reward, over time ? Just seems really unfair, and I don't like that feeling.
  - watwut 6y ago
    In the long term, people who care about credit and can get it accomplish more. Because having credit makes it easier to get trust and resources later. It allows you to take more risk without being affected when it fails. It gives you opportunities.
carapace 6y ago
I almost flagged this just for being from psychologytoday. This is to psychology as astrology is to astronomy. It's tabloid-level pop-psych drivel.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dwaltrip 6y ago
  Can you critique the content? The article seemed reasonable to me, so I’d love to know if there is any robust science behind it or not. I found the idea of certainty being an emotional state especially interesting.
  - pirocks 6y ago
    Not the op but sure. No sources for any of the many claims in the article. No references to studies. No number based claims such as "9 out of 10 times x happens"...
    - cbolton 6y ago
      The same can be said of most non-scientific articles, blog posts, and many other texts that are nonetheless valuable. Even for scientific papers, this is not a sufficient reason for dismissal. Here is Einstein's original paper on Special Relativity: http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1905_17_891-921.pdf http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein... And the initial papers on General Relativity: http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1912_38_355-369.pdf http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein... http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1912_38_443-458.pdf http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein... Number of references in these papers: 0.
      - carapace 6y ago
        There are equations unambiguously relating well-defined values with established physical interpretations or meaning.
jb775 6y ago
> Seeming to be right justifies disrespect, contempt, and other forms of emotional pollution, which spread like wildfire in our electronic age. This explains Twitter behavior in a nutshell.
- ncr100 6y ago
  > Covariant with the substitution of power for value is the persistent need to be right while making others wrong. Seeming to be right justifies disrespect, contempt, and other forms of emotional pollution, which spread like wildfire in our electronic age. In addition, they suffer an illusion of certainty. High adrenaline emotions, particularly anger, create the profoundest illusions of certainty, due to their amphetamine effects. The amphetamine effect creates a temporary sense of confidence and certainty, while narrowing mental focus and eliminating most variables from consideration. That's why you feel more confident after a cup of coffee (a mild amphetamine effect) than before it, and it’s why you’re convinced that you’re right and everyone else is wrong when you're angry. Feels good to be right. However being sad or afraid and correct could be healthier. Managing one's life without awareness one is really transitively managing one's feelings can lead to disappointment and frustration when the world works differently than how one's feelings need the world to work.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    > being sad or afraid and correct could be healthier At the same time, can be problematic at the workplace, when people listen to your sad/anxious voice, and disregard the actual words you speak, instead, based on your voice feel convinced you're wrong
psim1 6y ago
I'll acknowledge the psych aspect with a nod but otherwise want to move on and say this: The value of truth is more important today than ever before, and modern society's interest in it seems to be lower than ever before. That scares me, and I'm not willing to let truth be devalued. I will step on toes and be "right" if I am pushing truth, especially when pushing it on "deniers" and other politically- or otherwise-motivated falsehood peddlers.
- fwsgonzo 6y ago
  You might not be able to change death cult members, but at least bystanders will know. It's important because humans is capable of believing anything if it's repeated enough times. At a certain point it just clicks that "everyone knows that," and not give it much thought.
  - mattm 6y ago
    I agree. At first I would just ignore obviously wrong information posted by others in my Facebook feed but now I will comment and provide articles showing the other point of view. The goal isn't to change the mind of the person who posted it but for the potentially dozens or hundreds of others who might come across it and some of those people might be on the fence about believing it.
- gramakri 6y ago
  The article is not talking about truth though. It's talking about being right. Truth to me is something independently verifiable. Being right, as the term is used in this article, is about something which is subjective. For example, is it ok to binge watch or drink 3 cups of coffee etc. So, it's more of a feeling
  - sgillen 6y ago
    Yes although I think most people equate the subjective being right with their beliefs being inline with the (supposedly) objective truth.
- 6y ago
afpx 6y ago
“The curse of our times is that so many people have developed the habit of seeking to feel temporarily more powerful when they feel devalued.” This isn’t a curse of our times; it’s just how the brain works. It’s well documented that Humans get a chemical rush when they are in a position of power over someone else. I think the curse of our times is that so many modern Humans don’t try to be better than mammals.
- cbolton 6y ago
  Humans will never be better than mammals.
  - sgillen 6y ago
    Not sure I agree, though maybe if we change ourselves enough we can no longer call ourselves mammals.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- ncr100 6y ago
  A journey, hypothetical: Power over others. "Big I. Little you." Power over other's suffering. Power over what we get out our relationship with another person who may be being made to suffer. Accepting one's own suffering relating to the limited and poisonous benefit of needing to relate to another person through making them suffer, and realizing healthy practices to mitigate that dysfunctional need. Learning how to help others with their suffering, and seeing the roundabout positive impact on oneself. Power over one's own suffering.
  - crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
    I am living this art. I'm printing it out to sit on the pump organ living in the living room. I think it'll help me ground in conflict. Looking forward to experimenting with it. Thank you for this useful reminder of my journey.
fmitchell0 6y ago
The single question that has helped me to remember the pitfalls highlighted in this article that I constantly ask myself in every situation: "Am I focused on being right or being successful?" It inevitably walks me through the critical thinking process of what defines success, what questions should I be asking, and am I standing in the way of that.
redbar0n 6y ago
"Do I want to be right, or do I want to have a relationship?"
- kofejnik 6y ago
  if you're often afraid to speak your mind, you don't have a great relationship
  - travmatt 6y ago
    There’s a world of difference between speaking your mind and needing to be right.
    - bch 6y ago
      I think the point is (and maybe these are just other words for your same-point), it cuts both ways - it takes two to disagree. But of course ideally both parties have only a loose grip on their egos...
- mpweiher 6y ago
  Which happens to flip side of a pure power play: "Unless you let me be right, you're not going to have a relationship" At which point I would say it's not a much of a relationship. I prefer: "Let's figure out together what the right answer is"
jackcosgrove 6y ago
Being right in a relationship doesn't count for much. Even if you are objectively correct, relationships are about helping the other person live their life. All partners in a relationship compensate for the other's shortcomings. That is one of the benefits of a relationship. That doesn't mean you let your partner make bad choices, if in fact the right/wrong dimension involves a meaningful choice (it usually does not). It just means you gently guide them towards a not bad choice without hurting their feelings. Insisting on being right sets up the relationship as adversarial rather than cooperative. An adversarial relationship is all about ME whereas a cooperative relationship is all about YOU. Mutually cooperative relationships where each partner helps the other are the best kind of relationship.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Never Split the Difference is one of my favorite books. There's a section in there about being right that basically sums it up as "always be worried when someone says 'you're right' as can mean they just want you to stop talking". You probably want it to be something along the lines of "that's right" since it implies they also think that's the right outcome regardless of whether it's your or their idea.
- ironic_ali 6y ago
  Great book, I'm on my third audiobook listen and use a number of the lessons from it most days. In regards to the article, it's great content, but the thing that has bugged me for years about important information that will improve personal, work, leadership/subordinate relationships is, the people that really need to read them, never do...
cvhashim 6y ago
Some people have issues of not wanting to be wrong rather than being right.
alexandercrohde 6y ago
When I read this type of thing, I try my best to look for some basis to decide if it's fortune-cookie-nonsense or great advice. It's obvious to me that a person can care too much about being/seeming right. But can a person also care too little about it? What is the exact right amount, and how do you know?
- kcolford 6y ago
  Sometimes it is important that you're seen as right. If there is a disaster coming then it's absolutely important that the other person sees you as right. Even at the cost of the relationship. It's really about weighing whether or not being right is worth the consequences of achieving that. Is being right worth driving a wedge between you and your partner? If the only thing you get out of it is the self-satisfaction of being recognized as right and you push the people you love away from you then that is a calculus you have to make. Some people will weigh being right as above everything else and so the rest of us will drift away from those people. Some people will decide that the relationship is more important and so give up on being right to make the other one happy. When you try to have both, being right and having those people around you. You hurt them, so you have to do something to make them come close to you again. That cycle of abuse goes back and forth wearing away at your "victim" like car engine getting worn down. That's why victims abuse feel so worn out and exhausted without realizing what's hurting them. Sure their abuser makes up for it. There's so many wonderful things about them that make up for all the bad things. The more extreme these swings are, the faster the victim is worn down. Not to mention all the manipulation and other awful stuff that can happen in an abusive relationship. This is just one slice that can be looked at. So ultimately, the right amount is whatever amount keeps you in balance with the people you're right with.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    It seems you're thinking of being right as someone convincing or forcing the other person to say s/he agrees with him/her
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > It's obvious to me that a person can care too much about being/seeming right. But can a person also care too little about it? What is the exact right amount, and how do you know? I think it's best to ignore the original article which is mostly vacuous slogans and just think about the problem in general. Here are some examples in ascending order of serious consequences: 0. Your partner put dishes away in a different drawer than they are normally stored. 1. Your partner did mental math to calculate a tip incorrectly; however, the result was still an adequate tip. 2. Your partner remembered the time to meet at a restaurant incorrectly causing them to be late. 3. Your partner wants to book a trip. You're worried that you may need to cancel, but your partner assures you that the trip can be canceled at no cost. When it comes time to cancel, it turns out, the trip is not refundable at all, and both of you are out a lot of money. 4. You and your partner agreed early on in the relationship that you would not live with or support either of your parents in their old age. Now your partner wants to move their parents into your shared house. The more you are on the trivial side of the gradient, I think the better it is to be kind. IMO, it's still a bit worrisome if someone is consistently wrong in trivial things, as that could be a sign that they are wrong in more meaningful things as well. However, the further you are on the serious side of the gradient, the less reasonable it is to be kind over being right. This is where people become doormats - when they value being nice over being right to their own serious detriment.
pixl97 6y ago
I've had a saying for a long time that goes "You can't convince a right person" Once someone believes they are right it is rare to change their mind.
friendlybus 6y ago
This article feels manipulative. Invalidating feelings by associating them with drugs and subordinating them to mental focus is missing the mark. Psychologists are not supposed to invalidate feelings. Stating in broad sweeping terms that Certainty derived from mental focus is going to lead you to out of context results is at best a challenge to healthy mental functioning and in reality a pretty solid idea to undermine yourself.
- foobar_ 6y ago
  I found the argument to be profound as opposed to being manipulative. The amphetamine effect is something you can observe after a few drinks of coffee. Alcohol obviously and even sugar (diabetes) shows these changes in human cognition and common expressions like frenzy / pumped seem to line up. Love has been known to show psychotic qualities. It is important to revisit things with a sober mind as opposed to frenzy of a fight.
  - friendlybus 6y ago
    Certainty is defined as an intellectual thing. It is an epistemic property of beliefs closely related to knowledge. The author is wrong, not that he minds. The author is trying to move knowledge off facts of things and intellectual processes and into the realm of emotion and kind compassion. A kind compassion is simply a mask which hides a different form of power seeking. Which is on-point for the current cultural shifts we are going through, he mirrors the nature of humans at this very moment. The author seeks to replace existing knowledge in the reader, destroying all the knowledge of facts and feelings in an attempt to keep relationships on track. It is a mistake. You can disagree and be right in a calm manner and also in an angry manner without changing the content or aim of your speech. The article aims too low at a reader who is willing to accept what is written without thinking critically or taking a higher perspective gleaned from education. Like most psychologists he risks undermining those that are experiencing these mental processes as a function of striving to achieve a goal. The undermining of useful definitions is supposedly necessary for maintaining a relationship without looking at other solutions first.
    - 6y ago
Chiba-City 6y ago
This is nonsense. Fools "debating" and babbling "what the TV said" are liabilities. What's more, what 7.7B fools "like" and "don't like" never matters. Simpler facticities, such as design and organic anatomies, are all documented. Probabilistic functional consequential facticities are also mostly Globally Credible Consensus Narratives (GCCN). Now, we can finger jerks selling something at expense of others. They must be silenced. Same for "bar drunks" and "team seekers" and attention seeking "2-sides debaters." All wastes of time. All noise, no signal. In any case, written narratives with some pretenses to formal completeness dominate babblers and texters. Focus on sets of propositions worth writing down. Ignore restaurant reviews. Focus laserlike on recipes.
- crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
  Any examples of such propositions to share?
  - Chiba-City 6y ago
    HN itself is full of wonderful "counter-intuitive" narratives. College is the road to riches? We've heard Peter Thiel and others explain otherwise. "Health food bars" aren't just candybars? Whey protein doesn't just ruin kidneys? Daiquiri mix isn't just (overpriced) kool aid? DNC/GOP (partisans) correlates to "conservative/liberal" and also "right/left." Journalists stringing together "southern, conservative, Christians" seem to forget MLK and his kindred churches (I worked for Unitarians at Harvard). Might we consult George Lemaitre (Big Bang) and Gregor Mendel (Genetics) (both Christians monks) about the "Science vs. Religion" conflict? We can go on and on about "what everyone knows" that was never and shall never be the case. And Darwin himself wrote that Herbert Spencer's fictitious "Social Darwinism" was pure idiocy. I wish I could red pen correct all of TV and old wives tale "common sense" here, but I can't :/
  - Chiba-City 6y ago
    BTW, notice how our very phrase "counter-intuitive" largely indicates credible consensus contradicting TV narratives, commercial advertising, news "headlines" and fragment's of yesterday's propaganda. Credible consensus is not even "counter-intuitive."
vinceguidry 6y ago
There's a difference between being right and being relevant. If you insist on being right at the cost of being relevant, then people will simply stop listening to you, because whatever you're saying isn't going to be interesting to them. It sometimes appears to be a fundamental desire of ours for what we feel is relevant, our ability to be right about something, is the same as what other people want to be relevant. It's what I've observed to be the crux of privilege. Those with privilege think that just because they think something is relevant, it is. They're just right, not necessarily relevant. In the context of a relationship, constant demands for someone's rightness to be their relevance breeds contempt, which undermines the whole foundation of the relationship. Over time, love is replaced with contempt.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  This is too abstract for me, what about an example?
alextheparrot 6y ago
Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, or Truth of Feeling” explores this concept directly as well. The narrative is split between two stories, one in the past where a missionary was helping transition a tribe from an oral to a written language and another in the near-future where a device records every moment in a searchable, reviewable way. This is a super cool parallel because many of the problems are the same, but the reader (us! modern day people) is in each part familiar with only one side of the transition. The story defends all sides, so you might leave being convinced that the way we do things today is better, but in the end it is just the familiarity. The reason I thought of this story was due to each “upgrade” making it harder to be unprovably wrong. In an oral tradition, the words are only as good as our memories — written language takes that away. But we can still be wrong about things we do or say — the constant recording of memories (I guess we’re partially there already with video cameras) takes that away as well. There is aesthetic value to be found in being able to not know the truth, to not have to be right to not be wrong.
- raybb 6y ago
  I think this is the link for anyone interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20130901215055/https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang https://web.archive.org/web/20130901215055/https://subterran... Wow it's long
dontknowwhatdo 6y ago
I can attest to this. Being right means nothing in a relationship unless it is combined with compassion. I've been married for 20 years, and life now sucks as I am belittled or criticised on a regular basis. My children and I constantly walk on egg shells around my wife. And of course she is always right. Having a partner who is always right is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone. Each day feels like a challenge to live without setting off the ticking time bomb that my wife is. Trouble is, I can't seem to find a way to communicate with my wife. She doesn't want to see a therapist. I am an immigrant in a foreign country and have no family or close friends I can turn to. I'm just waiting for my kid to leave for college and then hopefully I can find a way out. I've reached a point where I detest people who are convinced they are right. The best thing anyone ever said to me when I told them that as I age I am less certain about everything and they said: "It means you are growing up". I wish someone would tell my wife that. She is dead certain about everything in life.
- lovemenot 6y ago
  Your life situation is very similar to my own. Except for the one key difference. Your comment made me appreciate my Japanese wife's daily tolerance even more. Thanks to you I have just told her so.
- seattle_spring 6y ago
  I'm really sorry you're dealing with this. My father was similar to my mother, me, and my siblings, and it's still fucking me up decades after moving out.
  - throwaway136466 6y ago
    Same here, except I'm not moved out yet. Here's hoping we're all able to get past it.
- ximeng 6y ago
  You don't need to wait for kid to leave for college to stand up for yourself. Make plans to be ready to leave is first step to communicating. You can't influence her behaviour without changing your own.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
One test when in these situations is, "Can we agree to disagree?" If that's a tactic that is successful when there is contention, it shows a pretty high level of trust in a relationship. It says that you both believe you are right, and you're ok just leaving it without agreeing, you still get along in general and still love each other. In places where this doesn't work, I find that it's a matter of confidence. If they cannot agree to disagree, and won't let go until you agree with them, it may point to their lack of confidence in your general thought processes. I.e., if you can't see it their way in this situation, there are likely many situations that you wouldn't see it their way and in aggregate, you'll behave in ways they cannot accept. Depending on the specific topic, maybe that's understandable. Perhaps, for example, you repeatedly make bad investments and they want you to start getting their assent first. But if the matter is not of such significance, there is likely something else going on. It may be that they cannot bear the uncertainty of when and where you'll make choices they'd disagree with and they have a need to get alignment.
- unchocked 6y ago
  Pedantically, that phrase chafes. No agreement is required to disagree. You can just let a thing go.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    An agreement to disagree consists of each party agreeing to let it go. You can just let it go unilaterally, but that means the other party continues to harass you over whatever it is.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    I guess a way to phrase is to be pedantically correct would be "Can we agree to disagree without further argument?". Or "Can we agree to simply disagree?". Or "Can we agree to just disagree?".
sdegutis 6y ago
The first half of this article explains some physiological reasons behind something I've noticed often: the more someone feels defensive and defenseless, the more arrogant they become, and the more hardened they become in their thoughts and opinions, no matter how wrong. So that if someone is worked up enough and feeling cornered emotionally, they will die on the hill that grass is not green if need be. This is why it's especially important for parents and spouses to be kind, calm, rational, patient, and loving at all times. The second half has valuable advice for more than just spouses, although it's mostly talking about divorce. But also employee/employer relationships, friendships, and any other type: if you are not actually trying to make sure you fully understand the other person's position, you are working against unity with them. But I have to disagree with the article's final word of advice: > Spend less effort trying to control your partner's thinking and more trying to understand and appreciate differences in your perspectives. Not that this is wrong, but that there's another step after it which must carefully be practiced: when you know for sure that you're right, and that the other person is objectively wrong in this situation, it's important to stand firm on what you must do, and not waver. All without losing kindness, compassion, patience, an attentive ear and everything else the article mentions. St. Edith Stein once said something like without truth, there is no charity, and without charity, there is no truth. I see time and time again people make this very simple mistake: forfeit truth in order to preserve charity. But the two are not incompatible and never can be. A person will say, "well in order to be accepting to this person, I must be willing to accept that maybe they are correct and I am incorrect," and they will stray from their objective certainty. That's why I'm not a fan of the quote in this article, "Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one." It either states or strongly implies that there is no objective truth, depending on the author's meaning. But there is objective truth, truth that is true no matter if nobody is alive to perceive it or not. And when we stray from that truth, we abandon our only hope of helping people out of their own self-deceit and delusions. I have seen many people join in the delusions of others in order to comfort them or calm them down or give them hope in a false reality. This is not truly charitable behavior. True charity, true selfless and sacrificial love for another, always wants to help them out of their self-destruction, which always comes from self-deceit. And this requires that we remain in the truth. A tree cannot help birds of the air if it uproots itself and tries to follow them, it needs to stand firmly planted.
ggm 6y ago
Pet peeve: people who respond to true statements with "correct" - you are not my teacher and you are not the arbiter of right or wrong
- bluepnume 6y ago
  I actually don't mind this too much -- because "Yeah", "Right", "OK" and so on are often just used as passive acknowledgements that I've said something, rather than an assertion that what I've said makes sense, is agreeable, and is fundamentally correct.
- andrewjf 6y ago
  I'm with you on this one. It takes a certain kind of hubris to reply "Correct." or "Bingo." as if I have just discovered enlightenment with which you were pre-ordained and now us proles are seeing "the light".
r0b05 6y ago
This explains part of the reason for massive egos in large organisations. I am referring to toxic environments where management has little positive influence and people don't feel valued, e.g Banks. In response for not feeling valued or by hiding in the organisation due to their lack of skills, these people resort to building up a massive ego to compensate. Often, many of these individuals are not valued at home either - they tend to be divorced/living alone or with little personal value from another person. Pair that with no appreciation or value from work and you have a recipe for disaster.

206 points by joubert 6y ago

In a relationship - sure. But in businesses compassion only goes so far before the other side exploits it. Being right all the time is dangerous, but where's the balance? How do you balance? Does anyone have good resources for this?

bananaface 6y ago
Trying to figure out whether you're too domineering and arrogant by reading internet articles is crazy. Ask the people close to you.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  There’s benefits in a healthy amount of both, doing it well requires balance like a lot of things do-plus the self-awareness and humility to reflect both on what you’re reading and being told by those around you.
  - bananaface 6y ago
    I think this is the kind of area where almost all the advice will be so bad that you'll probably end up worse than when you started.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      That’s quite a large brush to paint with.
      - bananaface 6y ago
        Let me explain my position a bit more. Articles by definition can't analyse you. The entire medium is ill-suited to the task. They won't be able to take a look at you and give their interpretation, which is what you really need if you're trying to figure out this problem. Anything else risks being mental masturbation, but the less obvious implication is that articles have an incentive to be mental masturbation. They're much, much more likely to feed your ego than deconstruct it. Commercial resources from major publications are obvious garbage, but look at non-commercial ventures. Look at the kind of people who read LessWrong - do they become easier to talk to? Less arrogant and obtuse, more receptive to nuance? My experience is they're extremely dense & hard to talk to. Why is that? The content of the blog is fairly direct in telling them the risks & flaws in assuming they know better, right? IMO it's because the blog primarily acts as an identity reinforcement device. The content is irrelevant, from a psychological perspective it ends up being used to reinforce & defend the identity of "more rational than others".
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Not that easy -- some of them will just want to be friends / want you to feel happy, and tell you what they think you want to hear.
  - bananaface 6y ago
    So will internet articles, but they're designed by professionals. You think that's easier to see through? But look, at least with friends there's a genuine understanding of you that you can try and dig out. An article by its nature has no insight into your presentation. It can't react to you.
mcguire 6y ago
"There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- petra 6y ago
  What's the point of accomplishing stuff without any rewards ?
  - bsder 6y ago
    Because you want something done and out of your way so you can do something more important? I once wrote a piece of software specifically in the hopes that companies with shitty implementations would steal it just so I would never have to deal with the problem ever again.
  - asveikau 6y ago
    People have all sorts of reasons to do things. Why are you reading this right now? Is it because someone will reward you for doing it? If you are going to define purposes and motivations in life so narrowly, then I may as well take it to its extreme, get existential or nihilist and say nothing has any intrinsic value at all, so why do it? Of course we still do these things.
    - petra 6y ago
      Sure, I agree, there are many useful rewards in life. And it's nice to pursue them. But contributing, in the context of work, without getting some real reward, over time ? Just seems really unfair, and I don't like that feeling.
- watwut 6y ago
  In the long term, people who care about credit and can get it accomplish more. Because having credit makes it easier to get trust and resources later. It allows you to take more risk without being affected when it fails. It gives you opportunities.

carapace 6y ago

I almost flagged this just for being from psychologytoday. This is to psychology as astrology is to astronomy. It's tabloid-level pop-psych drivel.

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dwaltrip 6y ago
Can you critique the content? The article seemed reasonable to me, so I’d love to know if there is any robust science behind it or not. I found the idea of certainty being an emotional state especially interesting.
- pirocks 6y ago
  Not the op but sure. No sources for any of the many claims in the article. No references to studies. No number based claims such as "9 out of 10 times x happens"...
  - cbolton 6y ago
    The same can be said of most non-scientific articles, blog posts, and many other texts that are nonetheless valuable. Even for scientific papers, this is not a sufficient reason for dismissal. Here is Einstein's original paper on Special Relativity: http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1905_17_891-921.pdf http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein... And the initial papers on General Relativity: http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1912_38_355-369.pdf http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein... http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1912_38_443-458.pdf http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein... Number of references in these papers: 0.
    - carapace 6y ago
      There are equations unambiguously relating well-defined values with established physical interpretations or meaning.

jb775 6y ago

> Seeming to be right justifies disrespect, contempt, and other forms of emotional pollution, which spread like wildfire in our electronic age. This explains Twitter behavior in a nutshell.

ncr100 6y ago
> Covariant with the substitution of power for value is the persistent need to be right while making others wrong. Seeming to be right justifies disrespect, contempt, and other forms of emotional pollution, which spread like wildfire in our electronic age. In addition, they suffer an illusion of certainty. High adrenaline emotions, particularly anger, create the profoundest illusions of certainty, due to their amphetamine effects. The amphetamine effect creates a temporary sense of confidence and certainty, while narrowing mental focus and eliminating most variables from consideration. That's why you feel more confident after a cup of coffee (a mild amphetamine effect) than before it, and it’s why you’re convinced that you’re right and everyone else is wrong when you're angry. Feels good to be right. However being sad or afraid and correct could be healthier. Managing one's life without awareness one is really transitively managing one's feelings can lead to disappointment and frustration when the world works differently than how one's feelings need the world to work.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > being sad or afraid and correct could be healthier At the same time, can be problematic at the workplace, when people listen to your sad/anxious voice, and disregard the actual words you speak, instead, based on your voice feel convinced you're wrong

psim1 6y ago

I'll acknowledge the psych aspect with a nod but otherwise want to move on and say this: The value of truth is more important today than ever before, and modern society's interest in it seems to be lower than ever before. That scares me, and I'm not willing to let truth be devalued. I will step on toes and be "right" if I am pushing truth, especially when pushing it on "deniers" and other politically- or otherwise-motivated falsehood peddlers.

fwsgonzo 6y ago
You might not be able to change death cult members, but at least bystanders will know. It's important because humans is capable of believing anything if it's repeated enough times. At a certain point it just clicks that "everyone knows that," and not give it much thought.
- mattm 6y ago
  I agree. At first I would just ignore obviously wrong information posted by others in my Facebook feed but now I will comment and provide articles showing the other point of view. The goal isn't to change the mind of the person who posted it but for the potentially dozens or hundreds of others who might come across it and some of those people might be on the fence about believing it.
gramakri 6y ago
The article is not talking about truth though. It's talking about being right. Truth to me is something independently verifiable. Being right, as the term is used in this article, is about something which is subjective. For example, is it ok to binge watch or drink 3 cups of coffee etc. So, it's more of a feeling
- sgillen 6y ago
  Yes although I think most people equate the subjective being right with their beliefs being inline with the (supposedly) objective truth.
6y ago

afpx 6y ago

“The curse of our times is that so many people have developed the habit of seeking to feel temporarily more powerful when they feel devalued.” This isn’t a curse of our times; it’s just how the brain works. It’s well documented that Humans get a chemical rush when they are in a position of power over someone else. I think the curse of our times is that so many modern Humans don’t try to be better than mammals.

cbolton 6y ago
Humans will never be better than mammals.
- sgillen 6y ago
  Not sure I agree, though maybe if we change ourselves enough we can no longer call ourselves mammals.
  - deleted 6y ago
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ncr100 6y ago
A journey, hypothetical: Power over others. "Big I. Little you." Power over other's suffering. Power over what we get out our relationship with another person who may be being made to suffer. Accepting one's own suffering relating to the limited and poisonous benefit of needing to relate to another person through making them suffer, and realizing healthy practices to mitigate that dysfunctional need. Learning how to help others with their suffering, and seeing the roundabout positive impact on oneself. Power over one's own suffering.
- crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
  I am living this art. I'm printing it out to sit on the pump organ living in the living room. I think it'll help me ground in conflict. Looking forward to experimenting with it. Thank you for this useful reminder of my journey.

fmitchell0 6y ago

The single question that has helped me to remember the pitfalls highlighted in this article that I constantly ask myself in every situation: "Am I focused on being right or being successful?" It inevitably walks me through the critical thinking process of what defines success, what questions should I be asking, and am I standing in the way of that.

redbar0n 6y ago

"Do I want to be right, or do I want to have a relationship?"

kofejnik 6y ago
if you're often afraid to speak your mind, you don't have a great relationship
- travmatt 6y ago
  There’s a world of difference between speaking your mind and needing to be right.
  - bch 6y ago
    I think the point is (and maybe these are just other words for your same-point), it cuts both ways - it takes two to disagree. But of course ideally both parties have only a loose grip on their egos...
mpweiher 6y ago
Which happens to flip side of a pure power play: "Unless you let me be right, you're not going to have a relationship" At which point I would say it's not a much of a relationship. I prefer: "Let's figure out together what the right answer is"

jackcosgrove 6y ago

Being right in a relationship doesn't count for much. Even if you are objectively correct, relationships are about helping the other person live their life. All partners in a relationship compensate for the other's shortcomings. That is one of the benefits of a relationship. That doesn't mean you let your partner make bad choices, if in fact the right/wrong dimension involves a meaningful choice (it usually does not). It just means you gently guide them towards a not bad choice without hurting their feelings. Insisting on being right sets up the relationship as adversarial rather than cooperative. An adversarial relationship is all about ME whereas a cooperative relationship is all about YOU. Mutually cooperative relationships where each partner helps the other are the best kind of relationship.

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WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

Never Split the Difference is one of my favorite books. There's a section in there about being right that basically sums it up as "always be worried when someone says 'you're right' as can mean they just want you to stop talking". You probably want it to be something along the lines of "that's right" since it implies they also think that's the right outcome regardless of whether it's your or their idea.

ironic_ali 6y ago
Great book, I'm on my third audiobook listen and use a number of the lessons from it most days. In regards to the article, it's great content, but the thing that has bugged me for years about important information that will improve personal, work, leadership/subordinate relationships is, the people that really need to read them, never do...

cvhashim 6y ago

Some people have issues of not wanting to be wrong rather than being right.

alexandercrohde 6y ago

When I read this type of thing, I try my best to look for some basis to decide if it's fortune-cookie-nonsense or great advice. It's obvious to me that a person can care too much about being/seeming right. But can a person also care too little about it? What is the exact right amount, and how do you know?

kcolford 6y ago
Sometimes it is important that you're seen as right. If there is a disaster coming then it's absolutely important that the other person sees you as right. Even at the cost of the relationship. It's really about weighing whether or not being right is worth the consequences of achieving that. Is being right worth driving a wedge between you and your partner? If the only thing you get out of it is the self-satisfaction of being recognized as right and you push the people you love away from you then that is a calculus you have to make. Some people will weigh being right as above everything else and so the rest of us will drift away from those people. Some people will decide that the relationship is more important and so give up on being right to make the other one happy. When you try to have both, being right and having those people around you. You hurt them, so you have to do something to make them come close to you again. That cycle of abuse goes back and forth wearing away at your "victim" like car engine getting worn down. That's why victims abuse feel so worn out and exhausted without realizing what's hurting them. Sure their abuser makes up for it. There's so many wonderful things about them that make up for all the bad things. The more extreme these swings are, the faster the victim is worn down. Not to mention all the manipulation and other awful stuff that can happen in an abusive relationship. This is just one slice that can be looked at. So ultimately, the right amount is whatever amount keeps you in balance with the people you're right with.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  It seems you're thinking of being right as someone convincing or forcing the other person to say s/he agrees with him/her
nordsieck 6y ago
> It's obvious to me that a person can care too much about being/seeming right. But can a person also care too little about it? What is the exact right amount, and how do you know? I think it's best to ignore the original article which is mostly vacuous slogans and just think about the problem in general. Here are some examples in ascending order of serious consequences: 0. Your partner put dishes away in a different drawer than they are normally stored. 1. Your partner did mental math to calculate a tip incorrectly; however, the result was still an adequate tip. 2. Your partner remembered the time to meet at a restaurant incorrectly causing them to be late. 3. Your partner wants to book a trip. You're worried that you may need to cancel, but your partner assures you that the trip can be canceled at no cost. When it comes time to cancel, it turns out, the trip is not refundable at all, and both of you are out a lot of money. 4. You and your partner agreed early on in the relationship that you would not live with or support either of your parents in their old age. Now your partner wants to move their parents into your shared house. The more you are on the trivial side of the gradient, I think the better it is to be kind. IMO, it's still a bit worrisome if someone is consistently wrong in trivial things, as that could be a sign that they are wrong in more meaningful things as well. However, the further you are on the serious side of the gradient, the less reasonable it is to be kind over being right. This is where people become doormats - when they value being nice over being right to their own serious detriment.

pixl97 6y ago

I've had a saying for a long time that goes "You can't convince a right person" Once someone believes they are right it is rare to change their mind.

friendlybus 6y ago

This article feels manipulative. Invalidating feelings by associating them with drugs and subordinating them to mental focus is missing the mark. Psychologists are not supposed to invalidate feelings. Stating in broad sweeping terms that Certainty derived from mental focus is going to lead you to out of context results is at best a challenge to healthy mental functioning and in reality a pretty solid idea to undermine yourself.

foobar_ 6y ago
I found the argument to be profound as opposed to being manipulative. The amphetamine effect is something you can observe after a few drinks of coffee. Alcohol obviously and even sugar (diabetes) shows these changes in human cognition and common expressions like frenzy / pumped seem to line up. Love has been known to show psychotic qualities. It is important to revisit things with a sober mind as opposed to frenzy of a fight.
- friendlybus 6y ago
  Certainty is defined as an intellectual thing. It is an epistemic property of beliefs closely related to knowledge. The author is wrong, not that he minds. The author is trying to move knowledge off facts of things and intellectual processes and into the realm of emotion and kind compassion. A kind compassion is simply a mask which hides a different form of power seeking. Which is on-point for the current cultural shifts we are going through, he mirrors the nature of humans at this very moment. The author seeks to replace existing knowledge in the reader, destroying all the knowledge of facts and feelings in an attempt to keep relationships on track. It is a mistake. You can disagree and be right in a calm manner and also in an angry manner without changing the content or aim of your speech. The article aims too low at a reader who is willing to accept what is written without thinking critically or taking a higher perspective gleaned from education. Like most psychologists he risks undermining those that are experiencing these mental processes as a function of striving to achieve a goal. The undermining of useful definitions is supposedly necessary for maintaining a relationship without looking at other solutions first.
  - 6y ago

Chiba-City 6y ago

This is nonsense. Fools "debating" and babbling "what the TV said" are liabilities. What's more, what 7.7B fools "like" and "don't like" never matters. Simpler facticities, such as design and organic anatomies, are all documented. Probabilistic functional consequential facticities are also mostly Globally Credible Consensus Narratives (GCCN). Now, we can finger jerks selling something at expense of others. They must be silenced. Same for "bar drunks" and "team seekers" and attention seeking "2-sides debaters." All wastes of time. All noise, no signal. In any case, written narratives with some pretenses to formal completeness dominate babblers and texters. Focus on sets of propositions worth writing down. Ignore restaurant reviews. Focus laserlike on recipes.

crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
Any examples of such propositions to share?
- Chiba-City 6y ago
  HN itself is full of wonderful "counter-intuitive" narratives. College is the road to riches? We've heard Peter Thiel and others explain otherwise. "Health food bars" aren't just candybars? Whey protein doesn't just ruin kidneys? Daiquiri mix isn't just (overpriced) kool aid? DNC/GOP (partisans) correlates to "conservative/liberal" and also "right/left." Journalists stringing together "southern, conservative, Christians" seem to forget MLK and his kindred churches (I worked for Unitarians at Harvard). Might we consult George Lemaitre (Big Bang) and Gregor Mendel (Genetics) (both Christians monks) about the "Science vs. Religion" conflict? We can go on and on about "what everyone knows" that was never and shall never be the case. And Darwin himself wrote that Herbert Spencer's fictitious "Social Darwinism" was pure idiocy. I wish I could red pen correct all of TV and old wives tale "common sense" here, but I can't :/
- Chiba-City 6y ago
  BTW, notice how our very phrase "counter-intuitive" largely indicates credible consensus contradicting TV narratives, commercial advertising, news "headlines" and fragment's of yesterday's propaganda. Credible consensus is not even "counter-intuitive."

vinceguidry 6y ago

There's a difference between being right and being relevant. If you insist on being right at the cost of being relevant, then people will simply stop listening to you, because whatever you're saying isn't going to be interesting to them. It sometimes appears to be a fundamental desire of ours for what we feel is relevant, our ability to be right about something, is the same as what other people want to be relevant. It's what I've observed to be the crux of privilege. Those with privilege think that just because they think something is relevant, it is. They're just right, not necessarily relevant. In the context of a relationship, constant demands for someone's rightness to be their relevance breeds contempt, which undermines the whole foundation of the relationship. Over time, love is replaced with contempt.

cutemonster 6y ago
This is too abstract for me, what about an example?

alextheparrot 6y ago

Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, or Truth of Feeling” explores this concept directly as well. The narrative is split between two stories, one in the past where a missionary was helping transition a tribe from an oral to a written language and another in the near-future where a device records every moment in a searchable, reviewable way. This is a super cool parallel because many of the problems are the same, but the reader (us! modern day people) is in each part familiar with only one side of the transition. The story defends all sides, so you might leave being convinced that the way we do things today is better, but in the end it is just the familiarity. The reason I thought of this story was due to each “upgrade” making it harder to be unprovably wrong. In an oral tradition, the words are only as good as our memories — written language takes that away. But we can still be wrong about things we do or say — the constant recording of memories (I guess we’re partially there already with video cameras) takes that away as well. There is aesthetic value to be found in being able to not know the truth, to not have to be right to not be wrong.

raybb 6y ago
I think this is the link for anyone interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20130901215055/https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang https://web.archive.org/web/20130901215055/https://subterran... Wow it's long

dontknowwhatdo 6y ago

I can attest to this. Being right means nothing in a relationship unless it is combined with compassion. I've been married for 20 years, and life now sucks as I am belittled or criticised on a regular basis. My children and I constantly walk on egg shells around my wife. And of course she is always right. Having a partner who is always right is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone. Each day feels like a challenge to live without setting off the ticking time bomb that my wife is. Trouble is, I can't seem to find a way to communicate with my wife. She doesn't want to see a therapist. I am an immigrant in a foreign country and have no family or close friends I can turn to. I'm just waiting for my kid to leave for college and then hopefully I can find a way out. I've reached a point where I detest people who are convinced they are right. The best thing anyone ever said to me when I told them that as I age I am less certain about everything and they said: "It means you are growing up". I wish someone would tell my wife that. She is dead certain about everything in life.

lovemenot 6y ago
Your life situation is very similar to my own. Except for the one key difference. Your comment made me appreciate my Japanese wife's daily tolerance even more. Thanks to you I have just told her so.
seattle_spring 6y ago
I'm really sorry you're dealing with this. My father was similar to my mother, me, and my siblings, and it's still fucking me up decades after moving out.
- throwaway136466 6y ago
  Same here, except I'm not moved out yet. Here's hoping we're all able to get past it.
ximeng 6y ago
You don't need to wait for kid to leave for college to stand up for yourself. Make plans to be ready to leave is first step to communicating. You can't influence her behaviour without changing your own.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

One test when in these situations is, "Can we agree to disagree?" If that's a tactic that is successful when there is contention, it shows a pretty high level of trust in a relationship. It says that you both believe you are right, and you're ok just leaving it without agreeing, you still get along in general and still love each other. In places where this doesn't work, I find that it's a matter of confidence. If they cannot agree to disagree, and won't let go until you agree with them, it may point to their lack of confidence in your general thought processes. I.e., if you can't see it their way in this situation, there are likely many situations that you wouldn't see it their way and in aggregate, you'll behave in ways they cannot accept. Depending on the specific topic, maybe that's understandable. Perhaps, for example, you repeatedly make bad investments and they want you to start getting their assent first. But if the matter is not of such significance, there is likely something else going on. It may be that they cannot bear the uncertainty of when and where you'll make choices they'd disagree with and they have a need to get alignment.

unchocked 6y ago
Pedantically, that phrase chafes. No agreement is required to disagree. You can just let a thing go.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  An agreement to disagree consists of each party agreeing to let it go. You can just let it go unilaterally, but that means the other party continues to harass you over whatever it is.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  I guess a way to phrase is to be pedantically correct would be "Can we agree to disagree without further argument?". Or "Can we agree to simply disagree?". Or "Can we agree to just disagree?".

sdegutis 6y ago

The first half of this article explains some physiological reasons behind something I've noticed often: the more someone feels defensive and defenseless, the more arrogant they become, and the more hardened they become in their thoughts and opinions, no matter how wrong. So that if someone is worked up enough and feeling cornered emotionally, they will die on the hill that grass is not green if need be. This is why it's especially important for parents and spouses to be kind, calm, rational, patient, and loving at all times. The second half has valuable advice for more than just spouses, although it's mostly talking about divorce. But also employee/employer relationships, friendships, and any other type: if you are not actually trying to make sure you fully understand the other person's position, you are working against unity with them. But I have to disagree with the article's final word of advice: > Spend less effort trying to control your partner's thinking and more trying to understand and appreciate differences in your perspectives. Not that this is wrong, but that there's another step after it which must carefully be practiced: when you know for sure that you're right, and that the other person is objectively wrong in this situation, it's important to stand firm on what you must do, and not waver. All without losing kindness, compassion, patience, an attentive ear and everything else the article mentions. St. Edith Stein once said something like without truth, there is no charity, and without charity, there is no truth. I see time and time again people make this very simple mistake: forfeit truth in order to preserve charity. But the two are not incompatible and never can be. A person will say, "well in order to be accepting to this person, I must be willing to accept that maybe they are correct and I am incorrect," and they will stray from their objective certainty. That's why I'm not a fan of the quote in this article, "Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one." It either states or strongly implies that there is no objective truth, depending on the author's meaning. But there is objective truth, truth that is true no matter if nobody is alive to perceive it or not. And when we stray from that truth, we abandon our only hope of helping people out of their own self-deceit and delusions. I have seen many people join in the delusions of others in order to comfort them or calm them down or give them hope in a false reality. This is not truly charitable behavior. True charity, true selfless and sacrificial love for another, always wants to help them out of their self-destruction, which always comes from self-deceit. And this requires that we remain in the truth. A tree cannot help birds of the air if it uproots itself and tries to follow them, it needs to stand firmly planted.

ggm 6y ago

Pet peeve: people who respond to true statements with "correct" - you are not my teacher and you are not the arbiter of right or wrong

bluepnume 6y ago
I actually don't mind this too much -- because "Yeah", "Right", "OK" and so on are often just used as passive acknowledgements that I've said something, rather than an assertion that what I've said makes sense, is agreeable, and is fundamentally correct.
andrewjf 6y ago
I'm with you on this one. It takes a certain kind of hubris to reply "Correct." or "Bingo." as if I have just discovered enlightenment with which you were pre-ordained and now us proles are seeing "the light".

r0b05 6y ago

This explains part of the reason for massive egos in large organisations. I am referring to toxic environments where management has little positive influence and people don't feel valued, e.g Banks. In response for not feeling valued or by hiding in the organisation due to their lack of skills, these people resort to building up a massive ego to compensate. Often, many of these individuals are not valued at home either - they tend to be divorced/living alone or with little personal value from another person. Pair that with no appreciation or value from work and you have a recipe for disaster.