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Cunningham's Law
- nadermx 5y agoI'd like to point out that there is a parallel to this, that if you post something online, it's likely someome will point out how to make it better.
- ineedasername 5y agoA sort of interesting "corollary" to this is something I've noticed in mobile games with in-app ads for other mobile games: The best way to attract a player isn't by showing them someone playing well, it's by showing them someone playing very bad Because these ads show demo play (usually of puzzles) where the player is making obviously bad decisions, and watching it is sort of like seeing a dozen objects in a row, but one of them is completely askew, and there's an urge to straighten in out a bit. I only noticed this after seeing a bunch of ads recently for perhaps a dozen different games, and realized that I felt somewhat uneasy when they came on instead of simply impatient, and eventually. I tracked this feeling down to the crappy gameplay phenomenon. And once I realized that was the issue, the unease went away. Further reflection made me realize I'd been much more tempted to download those games to "do it right" than other random games that didn't seem to use this tactic. It was actually when I broke and was about to download one that I had the realization, basically "this game looks awful and tedious, why am I about to download it?"
- kerkeslager 5y agoMan, I just don't understand people who don't use ad blocking[1]. You just wrote a whole post analyzing how you are being manipulated, causing you to feel "uneasy", "impatient", so that you almost do things that are "awful and tedious". Why do people live like this? [1] You can block ads in mobile games with a proxy that takes less than a minute to set up, at least on Android.
- chairmanwow1 5y agoYou could probably reframe your post in positive light given that you are suggesting a pretty straightforward solution that you seem to use to help make this problem go away~
- dylan604 5y agoI find nothing wrong with someone expressing their lack of understanding of something. They didn't phrase it in a way like "people that don't use adblocking are so dumb". They just stated they don't get why people continue to not use tools.
- creakingstairs 5y agoI try to not use ad blocks for my work chrome profile so I understand what my users are experiencing. It is depressing to see what normal users go through in their daily lives and I hope at least I can alleviate some of frustration in the apps I work on.
- kerkeslager 5y agoWhile I laud your empathy for your users, I think that you can improve user experience more effectively by refusing to work on apps that insist on invading their users' headspace with ads. I made the decision to not work on anything that got its money primarily from advertising early on in my career, and I have no regrets. It hasn't hurt my career at all: if anything, my friends who work for ad companies often end up in bad situations because such companies tend to have thinner profit margin than companies with an actual product that people are willing to pay for.
- gmuslera 5y agoI suppose that the title comes from https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/ I miss those old times when people were honestly wrong because lack of technical knowledge or understanding, instead of today's standards of fake news, misinformation and propaganda.
- rectang 5y agoI figured from the HN title this would be a link to that XKCD cartoon, which is probably my favorite XKCD ever. I feel let down that it's just an editorialized title linking to Cunningham's Law. The XKCD is not really related in my view — it's more about arguing pointlessly and wasting time, while Cunningham's Law leads to getting the right answer. I suppose the best way to get a discussion of Cunningham's Law on the internet isn't to ask a question, it's to dupe people with misleading clickbait.
- ianai 5y agoAnd of course if you want to simply promulgate a falsehood just search on the internet for someone claiming it to be resolved truth.
- blueprint 5y agoDid Ward Cunningham coin this principle so that I would comment and say it's actually b.s.? :) In nature, you have an apple appear by the genetic expression of apple DNA. You don't have it by making stuff that claims to be an apple but forgot how to make apples.
- dylan604 5y agoCleary, you have not had a Grapple[0]. https://www.grapplefruits.com/ https://www.grapplefruits.com/ Yes, I realize the irony of correcting someone in this thread ;-)
- blueprint 5y agolol wut? that's merely another example. nothing exists beyond or without what i mentioned. it's how the world works.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- prvc 5y agoBeware of this technique. "Speak with authority to attract followers."
- dylan604 5y agoOne of the things they teach new referees is to make any call with authority. Even when you're not really sure on the call, whatever call you make, own it. If the players/coaches/fans see any kind of ambiguity in your calls, they will eat you alive from that point on.
- itsnotlikethat 5y ago
- xwdv 5y agoThis was one of the first things I realized in my early age on the internet. I would often post straight up wrong or wildly flawed arguments that were the opposite of my actual beliefs and when people came to respond against me with well reasoned and thorough counter arguments, I would end up using their arguments as my new arguments in real life.
- marcodiego 5y agoThis. Actually I use it frequently. Usually I follow the script: 1) Hear someone saying something I agree with. 2) Walk there and ask: "Well, have you considered..." and present a counter-argument I think is reasonably strong. 3) Listen and learn objections, sometimes asking for clarifications, pointing weaknesses or going back to 2 until I'm convinced position is consistent or the person doesn't know what is talking about. 4) I say: "Thanks, I now understand your point. I actually didn't know or had not thought about it." The problem is that sometimes I lose a friend between steps 2 and 3.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoYeah a lot of people don’t like insincerity and gamed interaction in their personal relationships.
- marcodiego 5y agoHmmm... Never thought about it this way. I'd mostly seen it as if some people were unable to separate argument from the messenger. Maybe I got so used to talk to and live with people I disagree with that I expect others to be able to handle it just like I do.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoSpeaking as someone who can say I’ve lost or damaged friendships with sporting disagreements: I have very real significant disagreements with people I care about. I now take them seriously and treat them with care. I try to remember those disagreements might part me with people who are important to me, and try to remember that sometimes that parting is necessary and other times it’s not. Most of the time it’s not.
- wanderer_ 5y agoSame vein: the best way to get a knowledgeable person to talk about a subject is to ask an "ignorant" leading question, such as 'Don't they do x with y ?' that has an inaccuracy or just outright falsehood.
- marcodiego 5y agoWhy isn't this a wikipedia article?
- Maursault 5y agoUnclear, but someone should submit this to Hacker News.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y agoI have learned so much more about antiques by posting false statements (increasingly knowingly) about things I have found while out thrifting than I have asking for information or help. If you ask for help, you're usually asking into the void. If you make an incorrect statement, you get repeatedly bashed with facts and research. So if I must... I shall.
- ryanjshaw 5y agoA similar idea works in real life when you're looking for something. If you say out loud "I can't find the whiteboard markers, they're not where they are supposed to be!", somebody will magically appear to remind you that you moved them to another meeting room earlier that morning.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoI’ve found it really helpful to post the right answer and collect all the other right answers also.
- notafish 5y agoI noticed a similar thing with my own young kids: if someone asked them a question and they weren't answering out of shyness, the the surest way to get them to respond would be to suggest a wrong answer, at which point they couldn't help but correct you (which was generally enough to break the ice).
- bricemo 5y agoI have started saying aloud “Someone on the internet is saying something I disagree with, and it’s making me upset”. I say this whenever I notice it happening. It immediately makes me realize how silly it is for this to take up my time, and frees me to let go and move on.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't editorialize titles. It's against the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (Submitted title was "Someone Is Wrong on the Internet".)
- corvettez0606 5y agoSorry. I didn't know that rule when I posted the link. Thanks for correcting me.
- kevincox 5y agoThis should probably be noted on the submit page, right next to the title box. Or at least the submit page should have a link to the guidelines.
- waffle_maniac 5y ago
- dang 5y agoOnly one past thread? Cunningham's Law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7364997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7364997 - March 2014 (107 comments) Also, hasn't Ward disavowed coming up with it? Pretty sure I read that somewhere. Edit: ah yes! I never suggested asking questions by posting wrong answers. This is a misquote that disproves itself by propagating through the internet as Cunningham's Law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fclyQt6R5Dc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fclyQt6R5Dc
- divbzero 5y agoBut does the misquote really disprove itself? Commenting about Cunningham’s disavowal ends up being evidence in support of Cunningham’s Law.
- nayuki 5y agoWikipedia's context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#%22Cunningham's_Law%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#%22Cunningham'...
- barlog 5y agoThe number of discussions is high despite . It doesn't seem to apply to the hackers here (⑅•ᴗ•⑅)
- dustintrex 5y agoWhenever I join a new team and need to inhale a new architecture or complex process, I take a stab at documenting what currently exists, and then share my notes with the team. Corrections immediately pour in, and this "wrong answer" inevitably produces a much better end result than asking any single person to tell me the "right answer".
- beyti 5y agoThat's a really clever strategy and so obvious that now I'm feeling guilty of not thinking it out myself earlier. Thanks a lot.
- shagie 5y agoOne of my favorite collections of "stories" of software development is The Codeless Code http://thecodelesscode.com/contents http://thecodelesscode.com/contents (which draws some inspiration from The Rootless Root - http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ ) The story of The Purple Beggar ( http://thecodelesscode.com/case/170 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/170 ) is about that phenomenon.
- rincewind 5y agoThis might be controversial, but I honestly think it's important to recognise and counteract his in content moderation. When people deliberately give bad info they should be banned, and posters in good standing who exercise insufficient caution and feed the trolls must be reprimanded. If you allow people to troll a help forum or bug tracker with low-grade content, you will soon be overrun with low-quality information, and that will make the search function in your forum useless, leading to a cascade of more low-quality questions. I know reprimanding people for answering badly phrased questions or clear trolling is not something many people want to do because they want to be beginner friendly, but harsh penalties for deliberate disinformation should be the norm. Punishing people for falling for this would at least starve the trolls of oxygen.
- BasDirks 5y agoThis is not true at all, in the domain of computer science there are no concrete examples of this.
- jl2718 5y agoThe meme commands me to obey: Terry Tao once famously published a result with non-mathematicians Denton et al., and was bombarded by responses (including my own first math paper) showing the result previously published in many different ways in several fields of math. Of all that Tao has accomplished as a Fields medalist and espoused “greatest living mathematician”, this became the most famous single moment of his career. https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/eigenvectors-from-eigenvalues/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/eigenvectors-from-...
- BasDirks 5y agoI really appreciate this comment, it was exactly what I was hoping for.
- thinkingkong 5y agoPeople are a lot more prone to editing than writing. PR nits, architecture diagrams, product briefs, etc. Everyone will weigh in and hopefully make things better, but very few people are willing to start from a blank canvas.
- dahart 5y agoThe link should be to WikiPedia’s article, not WikiMedia. There’s a lot more information & context here too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Cunningham's_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Cunningham's_L... Seems like the linked page and the parent page called “Laws” is misplaced and likely to come down.
- zw123456 5y agoThis is similar to what I call the "red sock in the wash theory". When I was growing up (back in the 1970's) my Dad insisted that my Mom do his shirts for him (back then all men had to wear a white shirt and tie to work). My Mom suggested that he should take them to the cleaners like everyone else does. But my Dad insisted that it would save money if she did them for him. She dutifully complied but "accidentally" put a red sock in the wash with them so they came out pink. Of course, in those days, a man wearing a pink shirt would be considered a "sissy" or whatever. After that, my Dad did his work shirts himself a few times then realized it was a hassle and used the cleaners ever after that.