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Sorry to be a curmudgeon, it's a poetic little story - but isn't the takeaway a little banal? "Different people have different perspectives." Well sure. "Cons

Sorry to be a curmudgeon, it's a poetic little story - but isn't the takeaway a little banal? "Different people have different perspectives." Well sure. "Consider things from others' viewpoints." Of course. I don't know, it rings a little of management-ese, or something overpaid consultants might present in the boardroom that gets everybody nodding their head and feeling like they've received great wisdom, but is a little hollow or obvious when you really break it down. It's a good takeaway, even if commonsensical I guess.

bartvk 5y ago
Maybe she meant that there was a lot more research needed before she understood him.
whoisburbansky 5y ago
I mean, it’s obvious in retrospect. If you’re the type of person who read the first half of this story and immediately went “Ah, I know what the problem is, the kid’s looking at the other signal!” then kudos to you for not needing this advice ever again, but I suspect the vast majority of folks could do with being reminded of common sense things from time to time.
- iforgotpassword 5y ago
  > If you’re the type of person who read the first half of this story and immediately went “Ah, I know what the problem is, the kid’s looking at the other signal!” I'm that person! :) But admittedly only because a friend experienced a similar thing when she worked as a kindergarten teacher for three months in Bolivia; a few days in she had a conversation with a little girl who seemed very bright to her in general, but then they talked about how you properly cross the street, and when she asked the girl about traffic lights, she insisted you walk when it's red. Turned out the town they were in didn't have signals for pedestrians, and since the signals for traffic are positioned like in Europe (ie not the other side of the junction) you had to check the signal for the cars and start walking when it turns red.
atulatul 5y ago
> "Consider things from others' viewpoints." Of course. Difficult to do, isn't it?
bruce511 5y ago
You're not wrong, but this ability is not common. Our viewpoint is the core to many fundamental issues, which makes us "both right" which leads to endless arguments because we're both optimising for different things. A really good example is how one "hears" the news. Some people hear "how this affects me", others hear "how this affects everyone else". There's talk of a minimum wage increase, do you think "yay, more money for them", or do you think "my taxes are going to go up to pay for this." You see this disconnect every time a customer is upset with a business. They imagine that a business optimises for the customer, whereas a business optimises for the business. Like when a business is acquired and disappears. Users see this as bad, but owners see it as "I got paid".
ivve 5y ago
I mean it is a quote from a guest on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Not exactly a font of anything other than received wisdom and LinkedIn platitudes.
augustl 5y ago
For me, the takeaway is pretty deep: Other peoples world views are valid. It's so easy and so human to criticize other people's views, filtered through my own world view. But then I'm really only criticizing own interpretation of their view. For me, this is a lesson that almost can't be repeated enough, because I tend to slip into forgetting about it. But good for you if you find it obvious and banal :)
hwers 5y ago
Yeah, posts like this getting a lot of upvotes makes me feel like I don't understand how humans operate these days anymore.
rtpg 5y ago
My takeaway (and something I've been thinking about regarding precision in communication) is that people often believe to be talking about the same thing, yet will be talking about different things. This is super frequent, especially in more heated discussions, and it leads me to want to look at writing things precisely, even the banal stuff, so that we can actually figure out what is going on. This is especially helpful in the "I can't believe you actually think that" cases
cloverich 5y ago
I think its pretty common, especially when building software for other people, to make all manner of invalid assumptions. This is a nice, succint story to demonstrate how easily things can get over our heads. To ground it a bit -- if people aren't buying your product, or aren't using your feature the way you expected, you try to understand them. But if they or the world don't make sense, you might need to more literally get into their shoes to figure out why. How often on HN do we see people complaining that what someone does makes no sense. Whether another political party, upper management, non technical people, etc. Its actually the main thing that drives me away from HN at times, because those comments never go anywhere substantive.
coryfklein 5y ago
Yes, but that's not how we _learn_. You can read all the succinct bullet points of advice you want, but seeing a lesson explained through the eyes of an engaging story is a strictly better way of _ingesting_ said lesson and makes you more capable of actually pattern matching situations where it is appropriate. "Consider things from others' viewpoints" is a summary of the lesson, but you could have told that to the mother in the story all day long and she wouldn't have grokked how to apply it to her situation, or even that she would benefit by doing so!
ozim 5y ago
It is banal but people often forget about banal things. Especially in technical discussion where they are focused on "important things that everyone should already understand". Then it turns out that simply asking to clarify assumptions helps a ton.
washadjeffmad 5y ago
Something the IQ measurement is actually kind of helpful for is being able to tell if a person is likely to be able to mentally model, understand the abstract and hypotheticals, or empathize intellectually with others. If you can model what someone else may think, what someone else thinks someone else may think, or understand "what ifs", your IQ will almost certainly measure higher than 80. An example of the opposite is asking, "had you done this instead, what would have happened?" and receiving a response like "that's not what I did". I have encountered people in functional corporate roles whose ability to grasp beyond what is directly in front of them was exactly why they held their positions. They were highly competitive of and motivated by metrics, no longer or unable to see how things done differently might produce different results ("that's not how we do it"), and generally didn't have a grasp of how their or their department's work fit into the company - they just knew it did. However, they often had a few great interpersonal qualities, like projecting confidence or leadership, patience and self-control in arguments, not easily being flustered or becoming nervous, or having a consistently positive demeanor. When I think about privilege and justice, I include the existence of people different from me, which means I have to be aware of and understand who they are and what they are like. There's more than one right way to be or live, and it often comes as a shock to some that their communities, classes, and societies are so effective at insulating them from what people different from them are like, only highlighting simple, shallow, or visual differences instead. My takeaway is that if the number of people this was helpful to was a surprise, your standard of common is too narrow.

bartvk 5y ago

Maybe she meant that there was a lot more research needed before she understood him.

whoisburbansky 5y ago

I mean, it’s obvious in retrospect. If you’re the type of person who read the first half of this story and immediately went “Ah, I know what the problem is, the kid’s looking at the other signal!” then kudos to you for not needing this advice ever again, but I suspect the vast majority of folks could do with being reminded of common sense things from time to time.

iforgotpassword 5y ago
> If you’re the type of person who read the first half of this story and immediately went “Ah, I know what the problem is, the kid’s looking at the other signal!” I'm that person! :) But admittedly only because a friend experienced a similar thing when she worked as a kindergarten teacher for three months in Bolivia; a few days in she had a conversation with a little girl who seemed very bright to her in general, but then they talked about how you properly cross the street, and when she asked the girl about traffic lights, she insisted you walk when it's red. Turned out the town they were in didn't have signals for pedestrians, and since the signals for traffic are positioned like in Europe (ie not the other side of the junction) you had to check the signal for the cars and start walking when it turns red.

atulatul 5y ago

> "Consider things from others' viewpoints." Of course. Difficult to do, isn't it?

bruce511 5y ago

You're not wrong, but this ability is not common. Our viewpoint is the core to many fundamental issues, which makes us "both right" which leads to endless arguments because we're both optimising for different things. A really good example is how one "hears" the news. Some people hear "how this affects me", others hear "how this affects everyone else". There's talk of a minimum wage increase, do you think "yay, more money for them", or do you think "my taxes are going to go up to pay for this." You see this disconnect every time a customer is upset with a business. They imagine that a business optimises for the customer, whereas a business optimises for the business. Like when a business is acquired and disappears. Users see this as bad, but owners see it as "I got paid".

ivve 5y ago

I mean it is a quote from a guest on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Not exactly a font of anything other than received wisdom and LinkedIn platitudes.

augustl 5y ago

For me, the takeaway is pretty deep: Other peoples world views are valid. It's so easy and so human to criticize other people's views, filtered through my own world view. But then I'm really only criticizing own interpretation of their view. For me, this is a lesson that almost can't be repeated enough, because I tend to slip into forgetting about it. But good for you if you find it obvious and banal :)

hwers 5y ago

Yeah, posts like this getting a lot of upvotes makes me feel like I don't understand how humans operate these days anymore.

rtpg 5y ago

My takeaway (and something I've been thinking about regarding precision in communication) is that people often believe to be talking about the same thing, yet will be talking about different things. This is super frequent, especially in more heated discussions, and it leads me to want to look at writing things precisely, even the banal stuff, so that we can actually figure out what is going on. This is especially helpful in the "I can't believe you actually think that" cases

cloverich 5y ago

I think its pretty common, especially when building software for other people, to make all manner of invalid assumptions. This is a nice, succint story to demonstrate how easily things can get over our heads. To ground it a bit -- if people aren't buying your product, or aren't using your feature the way you expected, you try to understand them. But if they or the world don't make sense, you might need to more literally get into their shoes to figure out why. How often on HN do we see people complaining that what someone does makes no sense. Whether another political party, upper management, non technical people, etc. Its actually the main thing that drives me away from HN at times, because those comments never go anywhere substantive.

coryfklein 5y ago

Yes, but that's not how we _learn_. You can read all the succinct bullet points of advice you want, but seeing a lesson explained through the eyes of an engaging story is a strictly better way of _ingesting_ said lesson and makes you more capable of actually pattern matching situations where it is appropriate. "Consider things from others' viewpoints" is a summary of the lesson, but you could have told that to the mother in the story all day long and she wouldn't have grokked how to apply it to her situation, or even that she would benefit by doing so!

ozim 5y ago

It is banal but people often forget about banal things. Especially in technical discussion where they are focused on "important things that everyone should already understand". Then it turns out that simply asking to clarify assumptions helps a ton.

washadjeffmad 5y ago

Something the IQ measurement is actually kind of helpful for is being able to tell if a person is likely to be able to mentally model, understand the abstract and hypotheticals, or empathize intellectually with others. If you can model what someone else may think, what someone else thinks someone else may think, or understand "what ifs", your IQ will almost certainly measure higher than 80. An example of the opposite is asking, "had you done this instead, what would have happened?" and receiving a response like "that's not what I did". I have encountered people in functional corporate roles whose ability to grasp beyond what is directly in front of them was exactly why they held their positions. They were highly competitive of and motivated by metrics, no longer or unable to see how things done differently might produce different results ("that's not how we do it"), and generally didn't have a grasp of how their or their department's work fit into the company - they just knew it did. However, they often had a few great interpersonal qualities, like projecting confidence or leadership, patience and self-control in arguments, not easily being flustered or becoming nervous, or having a consistently positive demeanor. When I think about privilege and justice, I include the existence of people different from me, which means I have to be aware of and understand who they are and what they are like. There's more than one right way to be or live, and it often comes as a shock to some that their communities, classes, and societies are so effective at insulating them from what people different from them are like, only highlighting simple, shallow, or visual differences instead. My takeaway is that if the number of people this was helpful to was a surprise, your standard of common is too narrow.