12 ms·

See, you need to read up on puppy education. Hitting the puppet with a newspaper will not achieve the desired goal - now the puppy is confused and afraid.[1] S

See, you need to read up on puppy education. Hitting the puppet with a newspaper will not achieve the desired goal - now the puppy is confused and afraid.[1] Same is true in work environments: You criticise the work, do not insult the person. Otherwise problems will be swept under the rug until they start to rot and can't be hidden any more. [1] You can actually achieve the exact opposite: Peeing is a gesture of submission for dog puppies, so if you yell at them, they might just pee again.

derefr 13y ago
Right--and indeed, what Linus was doing here was criticizing the work ("the work" not being the commit itself--there are plenty of horrible commits submitted to the kernel every day--but rather the process that allowed this commit to end up in a stable merge patchset.) The puppy-newspaper thing was intended to just be an evocative metaphor--I'm well-aware that hitting actual puppies with actual newspapers doesn't help anything. This is mostly because it's hard to understand, whether as a puppy or a human, exactly what you did that led you to being hit with a newspaper. Harsh words are much clearer than newspapers in giving causal structure. (Though, if the stimulus-response is direct enough, words aren't exactly necessary; those "invisible fence" shock/noise collars for dogs do work, since the dog is given a much tighter feedback loop. As soon as they leave the defined zone, a pain-signal begins; as soon as they re-enter the zone, it ends. They can do science to figure out what is and is not painful, rather than being presented with a punishment and then having to use abductive logic to derive (that is, to guess at) possible causes. On the other hand, it is very hard to do science about where is or is not safe to defecate, unless you have the runs. ;)

12 ms·

See, you need to read up on puppy education. Hitting the puppet with a newspaper will not achieve the desired goal - now the puppy is confused and afraid.[1] S

by Xylakant 13y ago

derefr 13y ago
Right--and indeed, what Linus was doing here was criticizing the work ("the work" not being the commit itself--there are plenty of horrible commits submitted to the kernel every day--but rather the process that allowed this commit to end up in a stable merge patchset.) The puppy-newspaper thing was intended to just be an evocative metaphor--I'm well-aware that hitting actual puppies with actual newspapers doesn't help anything. This is mostly because it's hard to understand, whether as a puppy or a human, exactly what you did that led you to being hit with a newspaper. Harsh words are much clearer than newspapers in giving causal structure. (Though, if the stimulus-response is direct enough, words aren't exactly necessary; those "invisible fence" shock/noise collars for dogs do work, since the dog is given a much tighter feedback loop. As soon as they leave the defined zone, a pain-signal begins; as soon as they re-enter the zone, it ends. They can do science to figure out what is and is not painful, rather than being presented with a punishment and then having to use abductive logic to derive (that is, to guess at) possible causes. On the other hand, it is very hard to do science about where is or is not safe to defecate, unless you have the runs. ;)