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My day job is working with programmers to find better ways of doing things. As part of that, I share with them things that folks have found make their lives bet

My day job is working with programmers to find better ways of doing things. As part of that, I share with them things that folks have found make their lives better in 70-95% of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time. You would think this would be easy, but it is not. Instead of accepting the heuristics I'm sharing, many programmers want to argue about whether something "works" or not. They want a logical, rigid proof of why it works. They have tons of objections as to why it wouldn't work. They have anecdotes about other people who tried the same thing and it didn't work (Remember, I'm sharing things that mostly work, not Newtonian Laws) Anything at all besides actually trying it out to see for themselves! Smart people, indeed all humans, reason emotionally and then use logic to justify reasons for their conclusions. People who aren't so smart are used to demurring to others for answers -- a priest, a counselor, a politician, a teacher. After all, they've learned they're not so smart. Society has told them that folks in authority are there for good reason. People who are smart will also demur -- but to somebody who already agrees with them. And the internet is full of authority figures taking every position imaginable. I really love working with extremely smart people, but you don't ever want to get in an argument with them. It's not good for either of you. They'll be able to convince themselves -- and you -- of just about anything they want. It's truly a terrible thing to be super smart, have blind spots, and be completely in the dark about it. EDIT: And to the other commenter's point, this is not about arrogance. Even nice, humble people do this. This is about smarts -- the ability to use resources and solve problems creatively. When you put that to work to justify something (or avoid something, as in this article), it's amazing the things you can come up with. Even if you're the most humble person in the world.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> They want a logical, rigid proof of why it works. They have tons of objections as to why it wouldn't work. They have anecdotes about other people who tried the same thing and it didn't work (Remember, I'm sharing things that mostly work, not Newtonian Laws) Anything at all besides actually trying it out to see for themselves! The problem with "actually trying it out" is that it's extremely costly. They might be afraid to risk wasting two weeks on something that ultimately didn't bring any benefit. That's understandable. Part of this is also because a lot of "better ways of doing things" probably actually don't work. People think they do, but that's because of a mix of popularity, good marketing, just-so stories and the fact that it's often incredibly hard to measure actual impact of such changes on work performance. Add to the last point that majority of people seem to not understand data, statistics, and that 86% of population believes any number they read on the Internet. So I completely understand that they ask for "logical, rigid proof of why it works" - because most likely it doesn't, otherwise you could provide a reason why it does.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> They want a logical, rigid proof of why it works. They have tons of objections as to why it wouldn't work. They have anecdotes about other people who tried the same thing and it didn't work (Remember, I'm sharing things that mostly work, not Newtonian Laws) Anything at all besides actually trying it out to see for themselves! The problem with "actually trying it out" is that it's extremely costly. They might be afraid to risk wasting two weeks on something that ultimately didn't bring any benefit. That's understandable. Part of this is also because a lot of "better ways of doing things" probably actually don't work. People think they do, but that's because of a mix of popularity, good marketing, just-so stories and the fact that it's often incredibly hard to measure actual impact of such changes on work performance. Add to the last point that majority of people seem to not understand data, statistics, and that 86% of population believes any number they read on the Internet. So I completely understand that they ask for "logical, rigid proof of why it works" - because most likely it doesn't, otherwise you could provide a reason why it does.