>Here’s a theory for why there are so many negative comments on the Internet: We train people to write them. I agree. >Indeed, Western culture trains us to di

>Here’s a theory for why there are so many negative comments on the Internet: We train people to write them. I agree. >Indeed, Western culture trains us to disagree as part of learning to be critical thinkers. I disagree. I don't think Western culture teaches critical thinking at all. My wife just took a Critical Thinking course at college. I never took such a thing in all my years of schooling. The key to Critical Thinking, if anything, is to develop in oneself the ability to not react automatically, and to start from a position of no-bias. On the other hand, any child who has ever sat in a Western class room knows that many teachers (for some children, all their teachers) "teach" by asking students a question and then telling them they are wrong. I think the fundamental problem, however, is fantasy vs reality. I find I do this with my development team: I have this idea in my head of what the product should look like; I ineffectively deliver this vision to my team; the team delivers (well) on this ineffective vision; I berate them for what is wrong with it. I, in my role as teacher, perpetuate the awful process, by teaching it to my team as I learned it from my teachers. It is hard to turn fantasies into reality through communication. We have learned to solve this through "trial and error", with an emphasis on "error". Perhaps changing the conversation from, "This sucks! This isn't at all what I wanted!" to "This is great! Now how about if it does this...!"