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A brief observation: this style of "advocacy discussion" or "advocacy interpretation/listening" is sadly not limited to programming languages. It's something th
by bartread 5y ago
A brief observation: this style of "advocacy discussion" or "advocacy interpretation/listening" is sadly not limited to programming languages. It's something that I've seen is prevalent in many aspects of technical discussion for the whole of my professional career which, coincidentally, began in 2000, as well as before that when I was at school and university.
Given this is the case I suspect, and here I admit that I'm extrapolating from a very limited dataset, that the root goes back to our early lives and education. There is some flaw in our education or thinking that fails to teach us to hear what somebody is actually saying versus what we want (or assume) they are saying. And that refusal to hear can, whether by accident or by design, come across as both stubborn and wilful, which only further serves to shut down fruitful conversation.
Sadly the issue now infects discussion on all manner of topics (both important and less so) and leads to heated debates and arguments that go nowhere. People literally become angry with eachother and fall out over... well, because they're not meaninfully communicating, they effectively fall out over nothing.
It's both ridiculous and profoundly depressing, but what I think it may indicate is a failure to mature in thinking. How widespread that failure is, is hard to say, but amongst people who use social media (for example) it appears to be at the very least a substantial minority (again, I haven't formally measured this so take the observation with a pinch of salt).
- totetsu 5y agoI'm not sure if this trait is gained through education, or mostly innate. Maturation as a critical thinker(and listener) takes a great deal of education.
- christophilus 5y agoI think it goes back much further than that. Humans generally don’t like to hear that they’re wrong. It triggers the fight or flight response. This psychological phenomenon gets triggered easily, with many false alarms. To someone who likes Walmart, the statement “I prefer Target to Walmart” triggers that part of human psychology, even though it shouldn’t. You see it everywhere, in every subject, in any time period you choose to observe. Edit: Charlie Munger understands this well and counteracts it by actively seeking to destroy his own opinions.
- miltondts 5y ago"Humans generally don’t like to hear that they’re wrong." Maybe that binary view is one of the root causes, as being "wrong" is not really a thing in many areas. In fact this has roots in Aristotle's logic. Some years ago, general semantics ("the map is not the territory") tried to offer some push back on that binary view. Humans do appear to prefer simplifications, with the binary point of view as a possible reflection of that, but we have had some success in evolving our tendencies through education.
- christophilus 5y agoI agree, which is why I wrote “generally”. It’s definitely not absolute. Munger is a clear outlier. But it’s a fair generalization in my experience.