11 ms·

This reminds me of a quote: "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." -Howard H. Aiken

flyinglizard 6y ago
A very effective person I know would gaslight people in meetings to think his ideas were actually theirs.
- corty 6y ago
  That is a common technique taught in rhetoric and management courses. People are quite fond of their own ideas and implicitly devalue the ideas of others. Therefore, if you don't care about owning an idea but care about getting it done, just talk the leader or the whole group into thinking it was theirs. It is actually quite easy, because most people are sufficiently vain to accept this without resistance.
- davidgerard 6y ago
  It's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry about taking the credit.
  - bsenftner 6y ago
    And then the selfless employee is not promoted.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  That is not what gaslighting means.
  - flyinglizard 6y ago
    You must have missed the update
  - delecti 6y ago
    That's not the form that gaslighting usually takes, but it does seem pretty similar to what's usually involved. And based on the definition on wikipedia: > Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment Other than the goal being "seeds of doubt", manipulating someone into thinking something untrue is really not far from gaslighting.
    - alpaca128 6y ago
      From the same article: > The goal of gaslighting is to gradually undermine the victim's confidence in their own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from delusion, thereby rendering the individual or group pathologically dependent on the gaslighter for their thinking and feelings. Is the described behaviour manipulative? Sure. But compared to everything I know of gaslighting and the intents behind it I don't see much similarity, not with more context than a single sentence at least. Did the manager do it to help people's careers? Did he try to lure them into a satanic cult? There's a wide range of unknowns.
      - delecti 6y ago
        That's what I said though. The goal may be different, but the process is the same. And while it's not what it originally meant, using gaslighting to mean "manipulating someone into thinking something untrue" is probably pretty common.
        darkerside 6y ago
        Intention does matter to be fair. It's murder versus manslaughter.
        corty 6y ago
        I would also add that in gaslighting, the victim is unwilling and unknowing. In the described manipulation, the victim is willing to be manipulated and often even knows that it is being manipulated. So while gaslighting needs quite some effort to convince the victim of something, this injection of an idea is helped by the victims' will to own the idea and deceive others and themselves to that end.
FriedrichN 6y ago
I've been ridiculed for stating verifiable facts, even by teachers. There's something about people when you challenge something they believe to be true or untrue, they'll immediately resort to ridiculing the person stating it. I always try to avoid doing this myself and ask how they came to their conclusion. If the answer is "do your own research" however, as is very popular with the 'skeptic' community, I discard it immediately.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  This happens all the time. Many axioms people take for granted have been arrived at by simple osmosis coupled with a desire to conform. Truly independent thought can lead you to conclusions that are simply unacceptable in polite company. This can make you rich but it can also cancel you.
  - optimiz3 6y ago
    Like getting downvoted on HN for proposing TSLA or Bitcoin as good investments over the past 10 years.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- deedree 6y ago
  I think it's called Cognitive Dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
- tnel77 6y ago
  I have a theory that is related, but a little bigger in a sense. Essentially, I think people desperately cling to what they know. You can lose your job, your spouse, and your hair, but you know what you know. You (hopefully) will always have that. So when someone tries to take away something that was supposed to be yours forever, people get extremely defensive. I have witnessed this in politics a lot in the past decade.
jokoon 6y ago
I don't understand this quote, could you explain it?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  People worry a lot about having their ideas stolen. In reality, most new ideas get enormous push back. Not only are they not stolen, but people will call you a loon for voicing them. See Semmelweis, Galileo, et al.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    As an aside, that Aiken quote is brought up by people trying to get you to tell you your ideas. Or that ideas themselves don't have much value because if they were "new" ones, you would have to shove them down their throats. I am not Galileo when I argue that our linear pricing model is an active blocker to product adoption and that we need to move to sublinear one asap in a bullshit corp meeting. I wish I was. Lots of good ideas get lifted all the time, in the context of the Aiken quote, new is outside of the overton window, it flips problems on their heads. Some of the new ideas actually do have to get shoved, because also in this definition of new, it isn't really about quality. It is about newness. We should solve the metaproblem of people not accepting the Scientific Method. It ultimately comes down to proof, verifiability, falsifiability and the techniques we choose to get there. Ridicule and rejection of concepts because they are new, I think are wholly human social traits. How do we get answers to questions we can't even think of asking? And how do we expand the ways in which we ask questions?
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I've had some of my ideas "stolen." I was doing volunteer work and happy to share my ideas but on the expectation that it would help me make business connections, network, establish a reputation as someone who is smart and knows things. The individual "stealing" them did their best to make sure no one knew where he was getting his ideas, which robbed me of the benefits of sharing those ideas as volunteer. He also badly botched them all. This is in line with the meme that "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." Me saying "You should do X!" utterly failed to result in X actually happening by someone not who was not me. That pithy one-liner failed to convey sufficient information to result in the production of the X I was envisioning when I said it. The example I typically give is the word "chair." If I say "chair," what kind of chair do I mean? Am I thinking of a wooden kitchen chair while you are thinking of an overstuffed living room wing chair? I had a similar thing happen at my corporate job where a new manager met very privately with me, implemented my proposal without giving me credit and bastardized it so badly that I wouldn't have wanted my name associated with her terrible, terrible program that completely missed the point of what I had proposed. Years ago, I started a project to try to develop language for talking about ideas themselves and to make the kinds of distinctions you are talking about. We use the same word -- "idea" -- to talk about radical new theories and to talk about more prosaic details of how to get things done, business-wise: "It was my idea to paint it blue, not green." I think we really need better ways to make such distinctions. As an aside....etc etc As an aside, I generally bring up Semmelweis and the like because I'm one of those unfortunate souls the world has decided is a loon. I don't have any answers for you because my methods for discovery and proof of concept fall outside of accepted scientific methods. Silly me: I wasn't trying to make a scientific discovery backed up by evidence. I was just trying to not die and to be less tortured by my defective body. People can basically take my word for that or not. Most people choose "not." I don't have a ready solution for that.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Sometimes. Not all major breakthroughs involve rocking the boat. Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem springs to mind. As far as I know, it was celebrated by everyone in the field.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  I agree what you are trying to say but Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not an idea but it finished product. It took Wiles years to finish the proof. If he told someone about the idea behind the proof in the initial phase without anything concrete and was not able to finish the proof, do you think the idea would be perceived?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not an idea but it finished product I don't think that distinction is the relevant one. The point is that it extended existing thought, rather than overturning it. > If he told someone about the idea behind the proof in the initial phase without anything concrete and was not able to finish the proof, do you think the idea would be perceived? I'm not sure what you're asking here. There's a reason mathematics journals are only interested in finished theorems rather than idle speculation, but I don't see how that's relevant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- auggierose 6y ago
  If you don't think Wiles was rocking the boat, then I am not sure what qualifies in your opinion.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I already answered this. Wiles' proof didn't overturn anything, it only extended what was known. Again, as far as I know, it was celebrated by everyone in the field. No career was ended by the discovery. Examples of a developments that rocked the boat would be the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, and irrational numbers. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#Ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#Ancient_Gree...
gameswithgo 6y ago
It is a common and appealing idea that good ideas always start with ridicule and resistance. It is an appealing fantasy especially for the great many people who like to imagine they are very clever but are not. However, it is important to keep in mind that for every crazy idea that ends up working, there were 999 crazy ideas that were just that, crazy. Some amount of resistance to crazy ideas is appropriate. If the idea works the resistance will be overcome eventually. If we accepted every crazy idea enthusiastically a lot of effort would be wasted.
- ranit 6y ago
  > the resistance will be overcome eventually Like 50-60 years in this case :-(
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

flyinglizard 6y ago

A very effective person I know would gaslight people in meetings to think his ideas were actually theirs.

corty 6y ago
That is a common technique taught in rhetoric and management courses. People are quite fond of their own ideas and implicitly devalue the ideas of others. Therefore, if you don't care about owning an idea but care about getting it done, just talk the leader or the whole group into thinking it was theirs. It is actually quite easy, because most people are sufficiently vain to accept this without resistance.
davidgerard 6y ago
It's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry about taking the credit.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  And then the selfless employee is not promoted.
alpaca128 6y ago
That is not what gaslighting means.
- flyinglizard 6y ago
  You must have missed the update
- delecti 6y ago
  That's not the form that gaslighting usually takes, but it does seem pretty similar to what's usually involved. And based on the definition on wikipedia: > Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment Other than the goal being "seeds of doubt", manipulating someone into thinking something untrue is really not far from gaslighting.
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    From the same article: > The goal of gaslighting is to gradually undermine the victim's confidence in their own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from delusion, thereby rendering the individual or group pathologically dependent on the gaslighter for their thinking and feelings. Is the described behaviour manipulative? Sure. But compared to everything I know of gaslighting and the intents behind it I don't see much similarity, not with more context than a single sentence at least. Did the manager do it to help people's careers? Did he try to lure them into a satanic cult? There's a wide range of unknowns.
    - delecti 6y ago
      That's what I said though. The goal may be different, but the process is the same. And while it's not what it originally meant, using gaslighting to mean "manipulating someone into thinking something untrue" is probably pretty common.
      - darkerside 6y ago
        Intention does matter to be fair. It's murder versus manslaughter.
        corty 6y ago
        I would also add that in gaslighting, the victim is unwilling and unknowing. In the described manipulation, the victim is willing to be manipulated and often even knows that it is being manipulated. So while gaslighting needs quite some effort to convince the victim of something, this injection of an idea is helped by the victims' will to own the idea and deceive others and themselves to that end.

FriedrichN 6y ago

I've been ridiculed for stating verifiable facts, even by teachers. There's something about people when you challenge something they believe to be true or untrue, they'll immediately resort to ridiculing the person stating it. I always try to avoid doing this myself and ask how they came to their conclusion. If the answer is "do your own research" however, as is very popular with the 'skeptic' community, I discard it immediately.

zarkov99 6y ago
This happens all the time. Many axioms people take for granted have been arrived at by simple osmosis coupled with a desire to conform. Truly independent thought can lead you to conclusions that are simply unacceptable in polite company. This can make you rich but it can also cancel you.
- optimiz3 6y ago
  Like getting downvoted on HN for proposing TSLA or Bitcoin as good investments over the past 10 years.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
deedree 6y ago
I think it's called Cognitive Dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
tnel77 6y ago
I have a theory that is related, but a little bigger in a sense. Essentially, I think people desperately cling to what they know. You can lose your job, your spouse, and your hair, but you know what you know. You (hopefully) will always have that. So when someone tries to take away something that was supposed to be yours forever, people get extremely defensive. I have witnessed this in politics a lot in the past decade.

jokoon 6y ago

I don't understand this quote, could you explain it?

DoreenMichele 6y ago
People worry a lot about having their ideas stolen. In reality, most new ideas get enormous push back. Not only are they not stolen, but people will call you a loon for voicing them. See Semmelweis, Galileo, et al.
- sitkack 6y ago
  As an aside, that Aiken quote is brought up by people trying to get you to tell you your ideas. Or that ideas themselves don't have much value because if they were "new" ones, you would have to shove them down their throats. I am not Galileo when I argue that our linear pricing model is an active blocker to product adoption and that we need to move to sublinear one asap in a bullshit corp meeting. I wish I was. Lots of good ideas get lifted all the time, in the context of the Aiken quote, new is outside of the overton window, it flips problems on their heads. Some of the new ideas actually do have to get shoved, because also in this definition of new, it isn't really about quality. It is about newness. We should solve the metaproblem of people not accepting the Scientific Method. It ultimately comes down to proof, verifiability, falsifiability and the techniques we choose to get there. Ridicule and rejection of concepts because they are new, I think are wholly human social traits. How do we get answers to questions we can't even think of asking? And how do we expand the ways in which we ask questions?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I've had some of my ideas "stolen." I was doing volunteer work and happy to share my ideas but on the expectation that it would help me make business connections, network, establish a reputation as someone who is smart and knows things. The individual "stealing" them did their best to make sure no one knew where he was getting his ideas, which robbed me of the benefits of sharing those ideas as volunteer. He also badly botched them all. This is in line with the meme that "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." Me saying "You should do X!" utterly failed to result in X actually happening by someone not who was not me. That pithy one-liner failed to convey sufficient information to result in the production of the X I was envisioning when I said it. The example I typically give is the word "chair." If I say "chair," what kind of chair do I mean? Am I thinking of a wooden kitchen chair while you are thinking of an overstuffed living room wing chair? I had a similar thing happen at my corporate job where a new manager met very privately with me, implemented my proposal without giving me credit and bastardized it so badly that I wouldn't have wanted my name associated with her terrible, terrible program that completely missed the point of what I had proposed. Years ago, I started a project to try to develop language for talking about ideas themselves and to make the kinds of distinctions you are talking about. We use the same word -- "idea" -- to talk about radical new theories and to talk about more prosaic details of how to get things done, business-wise: "It was my idea to paint it blue, not green." I think we really need better ways to make such distinctions. As an aside....etc etc As an aside, I generally bring up Semmelweis and the like because I'm one of those unfortunate souls the world has decided is a loon. I don't have any answers for you because my methods for discovery and proof of concept fall outside of accepted scientific methods. Silly me: I wasn't trying to make a scientific discovery backed up by evidence. I was just trying to not die and to be less tortured by my defective body. People can basically take my word for that or not. Most people choose "not." I don't have a ready solution for that.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Sometimes. Not all major breakthroughs involve rocking the boat. Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem springs to mind. As far as I know, it was celebrated by everyone in the field.

YetAnotherNick 6y ago
I agree what you are trying to say but Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not an idea but it finished product. It took Wiles years to finish the proof. If he told someone about the idea behind the proof in the initial phase without anything concrete and was not able to finish the proof, do you think the idea would be perceived?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not an idea but it finished product I don't think that distinction is the relevant one. The point is that it extended existing thought, rather than overturning it. > If he told someone about the idea behind the proof in the initial phase without anything concrete and was not able to finish the proof, do you think the idea would be perceived? I'm not sure what you're asking here. There's a reason mathematics journals are only interested in finished theorems rather than idle speculation, but I don't see how that's relevant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
auggierose 6y ago
If you don't think Wiles was rocking the boat, then I am not sure what qualifies in your opinion.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I already answered this. Wiles' proof didn't overturn anything, it only extended what was known. Again, as far as I know, it was celebrated by everyone in the field. No career was ended by the discovery. Examples of a developments that rocked the boat would be the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, and irrational numbers. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#Ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#Ancient_Gree...

gameswithgo 6y ago

It is a common and appealing idea that good ideas always start with ridicule and resistance. It is an appealing fantasy especially for the great many people who like to imagine they are very clever but are not. However, it is important to keep in mind that for every crazy idea that ends up working, there were 999 crazy ideas that were just that, crazy. Some amount of resistance to crazy ideas is appropriate. If the idea works the resistance will be overcome eventually. If we accepted every crazy idea enthusiastically a lot of effort would be wasted.

ranit 6y ago
> the resistance will be overcome eventually Like 50-60 years in this case :-(

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]