They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.
How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.
I've been reading the writings of stoic philosophers each morning and journaling about what I read and I think this fits in well with that philosophy. We're all here on Earth to enrich ourselves (and I don't mean materially) and those around us. Arguing with strangers online is antithetical to that premise. You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling, and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so. They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?
Epictetus writes that the truely educated aren't quarrelsome. "The beautiful and good person neither fights with anyone nor, as much as they are able, permits others to fight.. this is the meaning of getting an education - learning what is your own affair and what is not. If a person carries themselves so, where is there any room for fighting?"
What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
For me the goal is twofold. I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I know it's nearly impossible to convince someone you are arguing with. But also I do try and have an open mind. It's not common that I change my position, but it does happen.
For example, I was once a climate change denier. It was debating with people online which caused me to reflect and change that position.
> I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake.
I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online. All too often these days, folks are just engaging in point scoring type arguments and readers just agree with their tribe.
Not saying it doesn't happen, nor that it's a good goal taken with care. But me personally the ROI just isn't there (your calculus is different, and that's okay!)
A lot of times when I engage in arguments online, I think of it more as showing nuance to a person. I'm not trying to persuade them, I'm not trying to win, I'm just trying to show them that the problem space is a bit more complicated than their view is showing them. At least that's how I justify it to myself when I do engage. And of course, I'm no where close to perfect, I engage in petty point scoring arguments because it feels good at the time but isn't fruitful or healthy in the long run.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online
I do, and I have. I’ve also argued something with someone and come out the other side convinced of their position. (Sometimes immediately. More often down the road. Nevertheless, a valuable exchange.)
The only times it has helped is when I am researching something like say gardening or researching a product. I find the back and forth between people helpful in making my decision on what to do.
Check out the sceptic Sextus Empiricus. Hackett has a collection of his writings. Admittedly he was strongly opposed to the stoics as he considered them dogmatists, but at its heart scepticism is the idea that we should hold all arguments about non-evident things in suspension of judgement, because against any argument put forward we can balance an equally plausible argument. Instead, we should "turn our back upon the whole dispute and go back to talking and acting like a civilised, common-sensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist".
I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.
I will do that, thanks for the recommendation. Stoics are a mixed bag for me, I definitely had a better opinion of them before I actually read their works. Most of my journalling is about how blatantly obvious and non-helpful their writings often are, or how they miss the point. But there are certainly value in the general guidelines and they certainly have nuggets of value. I find they add flavor to my personal philosophy, but don't dictate it. After I get through my book of writings, I was planning on moving on to humanists and Camus.
The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.
So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)?
I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics.
No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.
But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy.
If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot.
So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this.
What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning.
> You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling
Not always, but it is at least always entertainment. If the alternative you would have chosen is watching a mindless movie then you're no worse off.
> and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so.
It is inherently a solitary activity. You are right that the likelihood of a bystander gaining anything from it is nearly zero, but there was never any reason to think they would. It was never about them. Squabbling, as you call it, happens so you can learn about yourself.
> They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Sometimes it's worth considering what the effort is on. Another assumption is that you should effort is in convincing someone rather than understanding them: play dumb on the topic, and perhaps ask the other person questions to see why they think the thing(s) they do.
Knowing other people's cognitive blindspots may help you avoid them yourself. Make the effort on understanding.
Now listen, I think you are dead wrong about this.
:)
It's a healthy attitude I believe. I think a little argument is fine, but there does need to be a time when you learn to stop. A lot of people want to get the last word in and I'm at the point where I just let that happen generally (though I do often want that last word myself :) )
What I've found is that when an argument feels like it's running in a circle, that's the time to bow out. You don't need to say anything or point anything out, just stop responding. The person with the last word doesn't automatically "win" and you certainly aren't always the one to "win". Winning doesn't really matter, the argument and the persuasion of the readers of the comment chain is what matters more.
But also real life isn't the internet and how you write shouldn't mirror how you talk. I have loads of family members I disagree with, and we do argue about hot button issues. But everyone approaches it with a "we love each other" and we listen and respond to what's being said. In fact, I generally make it a point in conversation to find common ground and agree with the person I'm talking to. Unlike an internet comment train where I know I'm probably going to disappear from memory, with real relationships I know I'll see my family again, a lot.
> fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you
Fighting every battle is toxic. But calling something out doesn’t need to be a fight. I’m still halfway convinced a lot of Silicon Valley’s success derived from having lots of folks on the spectrum who wouldn’t bat an eye at calling out the CEO for making a mistake. (And said CEO, and everyone around them, having to get accustomed to that.)
I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.
This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.
One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"
If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place
It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.
Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I'm 52, and over my lifetime I felt that there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff. And, while I agree with the author's approach to let people learn from the consequences of their mistakes, what if the consequences of their mistakes (or the mistakes of the people they elect) affect all of us?
Thats the thing. We never really know if there will be consequences. If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election. If Trump becomes president democracy is dead! I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
I honestly think a lot of the flat earther types in particular are basically trolls and/or enjoy being stubborn/argue about common knowledge, for no other reason because they can.
The flat earther I knew was sincere. He had fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole after decades of religious indoctrination had dulled his critical thinking skills.
Another religious friend became a 9/11 truther and Elon-stan (post cave diver).
I honestly believed the Earth may be only 6K years old because of the magic sky being and similar indoctrination.
I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.
I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.
It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.
Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.
When you say you "give it back the same," are you saying you also are savage in reviewing their PRs, or that you are savage when replying negatively to their feedback?
If just the former, I strongly disagree that the two of you are arguing.
You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.
And yet, a statement is a position, and this blog is stating his case, which is an argument for truth.
So he's still arguing, yet not listening, as it's all one sided now. This isn't actually that unusual, books, newspapers, and more often do one way communication.
But as soon as you state a position, you're arguing it.
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.
[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.
Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme. There are countless facts, indisputably so. Gravity, death, the fact you wrote me an answer, the fact I'm writing you an answer. These aren't opinions
Objective reality is complex and hard to explain or list all the facts in a single argument session. People are also good at cherry picking the facts they agree with and disregarding other related facts. As others wrote, there are also bunch of trade offs, not many subjects have clear and low amount of facts that everyone can agree upon. People tend to argue most about society rather than theoretical math or physics. Like you can argue about what is the perfect form of government but you also have to account for the people who are part of the governing and being governed, they are not ideal actors, so the practical reality isn't straightforward.
Coming back, what is objective reality, anyway? Each person perceives the reality differently. And if you go down to measure single basic part of the reality you will find out the act of measurement already changes the outcome. Or we can agree about the final, ideal state but not how to get there.
There people that gravity doesn’t exist and it’s some kind of buoyancy.
Death as the final end of existence? There are many religions that claim that isn’t true.
Nowadays it’s even harder who wrote what but next week if I don’t find that text again, can I be sure it was written or could be just in a dream?
Do I need to hold the opinion that water is wet for it to be factual?
To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".
Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
And three interpretations to consider:
0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.
2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?
I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.
My style of online participation has been shaped by 2 ideas:
1. I rarely fully understand my own positions on minutia
2. Writing is rewriting.
I write forum posts to solidify my understanding of my own interests, beliefs, and reasoning. I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter. I can reference them and have to other people who ask my opinion. Sometimes I do respond back to replies immediately, and sometimes I revisit days later, after I've had time to put it in my day-to-day context. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Posting stopped being about convincing someone else maybe 20 years ago (around age 30). I do post to look back and understand myself. To others, I'm sure this sounds like existential navel-gazing and self-centered blathering, but I don't mind.
I do the same, except mostly I delete the responses. The writing was important to me, but the reading is rarely important to someone else. It would be wasting their time.
I would guess I post about 40% of the comments I write.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
I had a little chat recently with a glaciologist and he told me about a student who had come from a very religious family. The guy had to learn all about the formation of Earth, etc, and decided to give up geology because it would put him at odds with his family and friends and he decided that they were more important.
So, you could say he rationally decided to keep his irrational beliefs.
Isn't that just point #2 from above? He rationally decided that his friends and family, and the values he is a part of, are more important to him, then being in geology, and some deep truth that it would supposed show him. Maybe he just didn't care enough about _this_ truth, compared to being part of the world he is in.
I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.
I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.
"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."
I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.
Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."
仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。
The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.
Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"
Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.
I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.
Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.
Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).
However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:
- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.
- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.
- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.
- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.
These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.
But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the most outlandish and direct.
This is epic:
"People Are Not Rational
We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.
This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.
This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.
I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.
The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost.
Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.
I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.
The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.
>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
>Arthur: And are you?
>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.
>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.
Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.
Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.
If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.
And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.
There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":
* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.
* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.
I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.
The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.
In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.
Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.
There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.
Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.
I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.
But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.
> I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support
Naturally. What purpose would arguing for what you support serve anyway? The only value argument can offer is an opportunity for you to take an opposing view and try to defend it in order to challenge your preconceived notions. It is pointless to repeat what you already know and believe is over and over again. You already have that information.
I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.
I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.
And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.
Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
― George Bernard Shaw
This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.
1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.
2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.
I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).
If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.
Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.
There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.
A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.
- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.
- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.
- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.
- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.
Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.
This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.
I have tried my best to stop arguing period.
I am not the poster boy you want for your cause.
I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.
What I do now:
Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.
For example:
I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.
---
Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!
I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.
It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.
I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.
The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.
This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.
I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.
I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.
I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.
If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.
The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.
It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made.
If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.
Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.
Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.
So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.
Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.
Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.
I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.
It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!
> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference
Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.
Yeah, I also got suspicious and checked it with Pangram. Sadly 100% AI. Perhaps it still has good points, but my heart drops whenever I sniff the AI prose. I can just query Claude or ChatGPT myself, you know?
Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):
1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.
2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.
3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.
4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.
5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.
This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.
That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.
Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.
Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).
You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.
You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.
I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.
This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.
I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.
You are not doing this, but I always laugh when people trot this one out accusatorially in an argument or discussion. Like, if you disagree with somebody to the point of frustration then what exactly do you think you're doing by saying that? It always gets me when people pick verbal fights then take a detour to this non-existent high road that ends in a giant ad hominem road block. It isn't the gotcha that they think it is.
On topic: the whole of this post is sage advice. Having found myself on the opposite side of a belief that I've previously had enough times I now try and treat everything like a truth-seeking discussion rather than an attempt to inflict my worldview on somebody. If they don't match my energy then I constructively admit "defeat" ("Wow, I'll have to check that out!") and change the subject.
...unless they say something patently ridiculous like "vanilla is better than chocolate" (or even a real flavor as opposed to the bland absence thereof) or "Black Sabbath invented heavy metal". Then I give them a piece of my mind!
What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.
At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.
The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.
people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .
Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes
This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.
The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.
> The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
Setting aside a few levels of irony in arguing with arguers on arguing, I think there are multiple framings for arguments. Things go off the rails all the time when neither party is aligned on what kind of argument the current one is.
Programmers and engineers tend to carry around this worldview that every conversation is about correct information or future decision-making, but everyone is operating on different planes. God help you if you go into an argument with the spouse implicitly about acknowledging how your actions made them feel armed with facts and logic about how this is irrelevant because the problem is solved or there is no new action to take.
They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.
So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.
You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.
I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.
Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."
Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."
(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)
Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .
I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /
everything being ai is the only reason i stopped arguing hard. because as somebody else today put it, there are notable signs of widespread coordinated activity intended to skew the noise to signal ratio. i see it everywhere on the net nowadays, bots hammering hard on the most minor percievable conflict. this behaviour is technically a simulacrum of real human activity - it closely mimics the training set of reddit comments. but what im seeing is insane amounts of toxicity more than ive ever seen on the net. not worth giving an inch anymore.
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
This seems more true for the author than everyone else.
They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.
While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.
Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.
> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.
=====
re: the content
You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.
This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.
Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.
Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.
----
The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.
There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.
The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.
Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.
I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s
Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.
I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.
One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?
You aren't answering the question. You are reframing the question so you can give the answer you want, thereby avoiding giving the real answer to the question presented.
Not much about being correct or incorrect, but I recalled myself in a meeting looking at the issue on the screen suggesting "at least leave a typo so it doesn't look auto generated right off the bat". I got laid off that year.
They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.
How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.
I could well be wrong about this :)
The point being made is to pick your battles.
The author’s point is that, even if you are correct 100% of the time, fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you.
They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Now, I will attempt to put down my phone and not respond to any replies I get to the contrary.
Sweating intensifies…
I've been reading the writings of stoic philosophers each morning and journaling about what I read and I think this fits in well with that philosophy. We're all here on Earth to enrich ourselves (and I don't mean materially) and those around us. Arguing with strangers online is antithetical to that premise. You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling, and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so. They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?
Epictetus writes that the truely educated aren't quarrelsome. "The beautiful and good person neither fights with anyone nor, as much as they are able, permits others to fight.. this is the meaning of getting an education - learning what is your own affair and what is not. If a person carries themselves so, where is there any room for fighting?"
What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?
For me the goal is twofold. I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I know it's nearly impossible to convince someone you are arguing with. But also I do try and have an open mind. It's not common that I change my position, but it does happen.
For example, I was once a climate change denier. It was debating with people online which caused me to reflect and change that position.
> I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake.
I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online. All too often these days, folks are just engaging in point scoring type arguments and readers just agree with their tribe.
Not saying it doesn't happen, nor that it's a good goal taken with care. But me personally the ROI just isn't there (your calculus is different, and that's okay!)
A lot of times when I engage in arguments online, I think of it more as showing nuance to a person. I'm not trying to persuade them, I'm not trying to win, I'm just trying to show them that the problem space is a bit more complicated than their view is showing them. At least that's how I justify it to myself when I do engage. And of course, I'm no where close to perfect, I engage in petty point scoring arguments because it feels good at the time but isn't fruitful or healthy in the long run.
> I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online
I do, and I have. I’ve also argued something with someone and come out the other side convinced of their position. (Sometimes immediately. More often down the road. Nevertheless, a valuable exchange.)
The only times it has helped is when I am researching something like say gardening or researching a product. I find the back and forth between people helpful in making my decision on what to do.
Check out the sceptic Sextus Empiricus. Hackett has a collection of his writings. Admittedly he was strongly opposed to the stoics as he considered them dogmatists, but at its heart scepticism is the idea that we should hold all arguments about non-evident things in suspension of judgement, because against any argument put forward we can balance an equally plausible argument. Instead, we should "turn our back upon the whole dispute and go back to talking and acting like a civilised, common-sensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist".
I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.
I will do that, thanks for the recommendation. Stoics are a mixed bag for me, I definitely had a better opinion of them before I actually read their works. Most of my journalling is about how blatantly obvious and non-helpful their writings often are, or how they miss the point. But there are certainly value in the general guidelines and they certainly have nuggets of value. I find they add flavor to my personal philosophy, but don't dictate it. After I get through my book of writings, I was planning on moving on to humanists and Camus.
The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.
So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)?
I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics.
No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.
But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy.
If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot.
So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this.
What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning.
Boom.
> You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling
Not always, but it is at least always entertainment. If the alternative you would have chosen is watching a mindless movie then you're no worse off.
> and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so.
It is inherently a solitary activity. You are right that the likelihood of a bystander gaining anything from it is nearly zero, but there was never any reason to think they would. It was never about them. Squabbling, as you call it, happens so you can learn about yourself.
Engage in arguments that decide the direction of a project.
> They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Sometimes it's worth considering what the effort is on. Another assumption is that you should effort is in convincing someone rather than understanding them: play dumb on the topic, and perhaps ask the other person questions to see why they think the thing(s) they do.
Knowing other people's cognitive blindspots may help you avoid them yourself. Make the effort on understanding.
Now listen, I think you are dead wrong about this.
:)
It's a healthy attitude I believe. I think a little argument is fine, but there does need to be a time when you learn to stop. A lot of people want to get the last word in and I'm at the point where I just let that happen generally (though I do often want that last word myself :) )
What I've found is that when an argument feels like it's running in a circle, that's the time to bow out. You don't need to say anything or point anything out, just stop responding. The person with the last word doesn't automatically "win" and you certainly aren't always the one to "win". Winning doesn't really matter, the argument and the persuasion of the readers of the comment chain is what matters more.
But also real life isn't the internet and how you write shouldn't mirror how you talk. I have loads of family members I disagree with, and we do argue about hot button issues. But everyone approaches it with a "we love each other" and we listen and respond to what's being said. In fact, I generally make it a point in conversation to find common ground and agree with the person I'm talking to. Unlike an internet comment train where I know I'm probably going to disappear from memory, with real relationships I know I'll see my family again, a lot.
At a reply depth of 4, the parent can never have the last laugh.. unless he replies to himself.
> fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you
Fighting every battle is toxic. But calling something out doesn’t need to be a fight. I’m still halfway convinced a lot of Silicon Valley’s success derived from having lots of folks on the spectrum who wouldn’t bat an eye at calling out the CEO for making a mistake. (And said CEO, and everyone around them, having to get accustomed to that.)
I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.
This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.
One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"
> The author assumes they’re always right
If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place
It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.
Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I'm 52, and over my lifetime I felt that there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff. And, while I agree with the author's approach to let people learn from the consequences of their mistakes, what if the consequences of their mistakes (or the mistakes of the people they elect) affect all of us?
I don't think that was really the author's approach--to let them learn from their own mistakes.
It was to quit wasting his time trying to correct their mistakes when they weren't ready to accept criticism.
Do you think you've changed many votes with your corrections? Even in arguments you won?
> what if
Thats the thing. We never really know if there will be consequences. If a flat earther became president what would be the consequences? Will we still have AC in the summer and heat in the winter, food on the table etc? Its fruitless going down the rabbit hole based off "what if". Look at the last US election. If Trump becomes president democracy is dead! I think our (assuming ur American) is the strongest its ever been and I didn't even vote for the guy.
> Whether the earth is round
I honestly think a lot of the flat earther types in particular are basically trolls and/or enjoy being stubborn/argue about common knowledge, for no other reason because they can.
The flat earther I knew was sincere. He had fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole after decades of religious indoctrination had dulled his critical thinking skills.
Another religious friend became a 9/11 truther and Elon-stan (post cave diver).
I honestly believed the Earth may be only 6K years old because of the magic sky being and similar indoctrination.
I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.
On the other hand on this web site at least I think people ask questions passive aggressively at times.
Instead of honestly saying "I think you are wrong because..." they passive aggressively pretends they are "just asking questions."
Of course on non controversial topics a question is likely to just be a question.
I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.
It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.
Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.
When you say you "give it back the same," are you saying you also are savage in reviewing their PRs, or that you are savage when replying negatively to their feedback?
If just the former, I strongly disagree that the two of you are arguing.
Isn't that what they mean by "changing yourself"?
It is exactly that. You aren't crazy to question this.
You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.
And yet, a statement is a position, and this blog is stating his case, which is an argument for truth.
So he's still arguing, yet not listening, as it's all one sided now. This isn't actually that unusual, books, newspapers, and more often do one way communication.
But as soon as you state a position, you're arguing it.
This is why we can't have good things :)
ironically, you wont get a reply from the author...
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
Every "fact" you state really includes the opinion that the "fact" is indeed a fact.
Is climate change man-made?
> Is climate change man-made?
When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.
[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.
Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme. There are countless facts, indisputably so. Gravity, death, the fact you wrote me an answer, the fact I'm writing you an answer. These aren't opinions
Objective reality is complex and hard to explain or list all the facts in a single argument session. People are also good at cherry picking the facts they agree with and disregarding other related facts. As others wrote, there are also bunch of trade offs, not many subjects have clear and low amount of facts that everyone can agree upon. People tend to argue most about society rather than theoretical math or physics. Like you can argue about what is the perfect form of government but you also have to account for the people who are part of the governing and being governed, they are not ideal actors, so the practical reality isn't straightforward.
Coming back, what is objective reality, anyway? Each person perceives the reality differently. And if you go down to measure single basic part of the reality you will find out the act of measurement already changes the outcome. Or we can agree about the final, ideal state but not how to get there.
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality?
I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.
There people that gravity doesn’t exist and it’s some kind of buoyancy. Death as the final end of existence? There are many religions that claim that isn’t true. Nowadays it’s even harder who wrote what but next week if I don’t find that text again, can I be sure it was written or could be just in a dream?
1. yes they are objectively wrong, a persons belief does not need to be tied to a fact
2. death as in death of the body, it's very much inescapable
3. the last part is just uncertainty, hardly an argument against objective reality
It's too early in the morning for this much sophistry.
Do I need to hold the opinion that water is wet for it to be factual?
To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".
Is water wet though? It’s the substance that makes other things wet, but is it wet itself?
Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
And three interpretations to consider:
0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.
2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?
I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.
My style of online participation has been shaped by 2 ideas:
1. I rarely fully understand my own positions on minutia 2. Writing is rewriting.
I write forum posts to solidify my understanding of my own interests, beliefs, and reasoning. I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter. I can reference them and have to other people who ask my opinion. Sometimes I do respond back to replies immediately, and sometimes I revisit days later, after I've had time to put it in my day-to-day context. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Posting stopped being about convincing someone else maybe 20 years ago (around age 30). I do post to look back and understand myself. To others, I'm sure this sounds like existential navel-gazing and self-centered blathering, but I don't mind.
I do the same, except mostly I delete the responses. The writing was important to me, but the reading is rarely important to someone else. It would be wasting their time.
I would guess I post about 40% of the comments I write.
Lincoln famously wrote and never mailed letters as a way to vent emotions.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
I had a little chat recently with a glaciologist and he told me about a student who had come from a very religious family. The guy had to learn all about the formation of Earth, etc, and decided to give up geology because it would put him at odds with his family and friends and he decided that they were more important.
So, you could say he rationally decided to keep his irrational beliefs.
Isn't that just point #2 from above? He rationally decided that his friends and family, and the values he is a part of, are more important to him, then being in geology, and some deep truth that it would supposed show him. Maybe he just didn't care enough about _this_ truth, compared to being part of the world he is in.
I always interpreted it more as saying that the person has to reason themselves out of their position.
A similar saying that I think I picked up here would be, "I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.
I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.
"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."
I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.
This is very correct.
However, occasionally you’ll see code so bad you need to leave.
You need to lie in your next interview. Your co workers, who are doing such a poor job it’s borderline fraud, are fantastic smart people.
You have a great relationship with your manager who knows the code pretends to do things it actually doesn’t, and tells you the KPIs come first.
But some mean ole man who you’ve never met is trying to lay everyone off.
That’s the only reason to ever quit a job. Pending blameless layoffs.
孟子曰：「人之患在好爲人師。」
Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."
仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。
The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.
孟子曰：「愛人不親，反其仁；治人不治，反其智；禮人不答，反其敬。行有不得者，皆反求諸己，其身正而天下歸之。《詩》云：『永言配命，自求多福。』」
Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"
Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.
I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.
Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.
Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).
However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:
- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.
- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.
- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.
- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.
These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.
But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
It's just such a waste of energy.
Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the most outlandish and direct.
Nowadays, you can even get twenty sycophantic AIs to reinforce your beliefs daily.
This is epic: "People Are Not Rational We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Thanks for sharing
I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.
This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.
This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.
I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.
The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost. Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.
I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.
The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.
>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
>Arthur: And are you?
>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.
>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.
Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.
My human-written summary:
Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.
If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.
And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.
"With those who will not listen, it is useless to have a conversation."
There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":
* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.
* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.
I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.
The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.
In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.
Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.
There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.
Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.
I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.
But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.
> I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support
Naturally. What purpose would arguing for what you support serve anyway? The only value argument can offer is an opportunity for you to take an opposing view and try to defend it in order to challenge your preconceived notions. It is pointless to repeat what you already know and believe is over and over again. You already have that information.
I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.
[delayed]
I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.
And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.
Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” ― George Bernard Shaw
This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.
1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.
2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.
I would question how effective this would be in any kind of professional engineering setting.
Oh your math is wrong? Well i guess i cant discuss this...
I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).
If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.
IDK, I’ve had my mind changed on music and art that I saw little value in.
Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.
There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.
A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.
- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.
- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.
- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.
- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.
Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.
This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.
Mythical place to argue with people:
1. Your anonymous or whatever you say can't be used by another party against you.
2. There is a code of conduct that is strictly held (no interrupting, no ad hominem etc)
3. You can ask for time-outs and think before answering.
4. There is a bank of known knowledge that is considered true, very strict standards, as unbiased as possible, including confidence scales.
5. You are face to face.
This is one of the core principles of How To Win Friends And Influence People (Dale Carnegie). Since Ive read I tried to apply this rule. It works.
I have tried my best to stop arguing period. I am not the poster boy you want for your cause. I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.
What I do now:
Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.
For example:
I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.
---
Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!
Do you know that feeling you feel when you are correct?
Well, it's the exact same feeling as when you are wrong.
This is something that has always stuck with me, and handy to keep in mind when arguing.
I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.
It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.
I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.
The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.
This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.
I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.
I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.
I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.
If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.
The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.
It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made. If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.
Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.
Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.
So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.
Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.
Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.
One reason TO argue is to seek out opposite points of view, which you can then use to hone your own thinking, including doing a 180.
Another reason is to refine your point of view, which is most effectively done when it is challenged.
Yep!
I do it all the time, just to listen to a completely different POV from mine.
It's like the good old trick to get an answer on Reddit:
Create Account #1.
Ask your question.
Wait.
Create Account #2.
Post a confidently wrong answer.
Watch 37 people rush in to correct you.
I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.
It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!
> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference
Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.
Reeks of AI prose past the first paragraph or two. I don't need to know a bot's opinion on how to convince others.
Yeah I enjoyed the first bit, then “the one exception” made me go “hey, Claude does this to me all the time” and then it ruined the article for me.
Yeah, I also got suspicious and checked it with Pangram. Sadly 100% AI. Perhaps it still has good points, but my heart drops whenever I sniff the AI prose. I can just query Claude or ChatGPT myself, you know?
Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):
1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.
2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.
3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.
4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.
5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.
would you like to argue about this?
"We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Well said.
-- Also Lao Tzu saw this 2,500 years ago. In chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching:
True words are not fine-sounding; Fine-sounding words are not true.
The good man does not prove by argument; The he who proves by argument is not good.
I stopped arguing with people, so I started arguing with the whole internet instead :)
This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.
That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.
Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.
What's that old saying?
> "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
Due to my odd approach to life, I'm not competitive. Haven't been, for most of my life. It hasn't been a problem.
I always find it fascinating, that folks can't just be good at something; They have to be better than someone else.
I know that it happens, because I see it all the time, but I can't actually understand it.
Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).
The author put it very well (with a little ai writing help :-)
I have come to the same conclusion; I saw my own journey in the author’s story.
At work, one of the statements I make to mentees, if asked, and to colleagues, if they lament people not listening to their advice, is this:
You’re only an expert if you’re invited to be one.
This is a way of saying that unsolicited advice is always unwelcome no matter how correct it is.
> It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth, and only speaks when he is questioned.
Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness
You can be correct, but on different axis.
You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.
You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.
I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.
This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.
I was about to start arguing why I don't agree but then I thought it was better not to :P
What are you, weak? This is what comments are for!
Arguably attributed to Keanu Reeves (I choose to believe it is):
“I’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.”
Thinking human is rational is a highly irrational belief.
One can argue without being argumentative. The latter is poor form, but there are many benefits to the former.
Worth knowing which hills to die on and having a strategically chosen intention that is not rooted in ego. Ego is the enemy.
Makes sense.
I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.
Everyone believes they are right until they are shown otherwise. What matters most is not just what you say, but how you say it.
You get to see the other side's perspective and how their views shape their inner world.
You don't know what events they had experienced that caused them to shape those views.
Just smile, nod and agree :)
> The author assumes they’re always right
You are not doing this, but I always laugh when people trot this one out accusatorially in an argument or discussion. Like, if you disagree with somebody to the point of frustration then what exactly do you think you're doing by saying that? It always gets me when people pick verbal fights then take a detour to this non-existent high road that ends in a giant ad hominem road block. It isn't the gotcha that they think it is.
On topic: the whole of this post is sage advice. Having found myself on the opposite side of a belief that I've previously had enough times I now try and treat everything like a truth-seeking discussion rather than an attempt to inflict my worldview on somebody. If they don't match my energy then I constructively admit "defeat" ("Wow, I'll have to check that out!") and change the subject.
...unless they say something patently ridiculous like "vanilla is better than chocolate" (or even a real flavor as opposed to the bland absence thereof) or "Black Sabbath invented heavy metal". Then I give them a piece of my mind!
adjacent take: seek out people who don't mind being wrong & see it as contribution when you can help them understand something better
This is some high level hard earned wisdom.
What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.
At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.
The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.
as they say it wastes your time and annoys the pig
That’s funny, I thought you were referring to the Shaw quote [1], I had never heard that one from Heinlein.
[1] “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
Never wrestle with a pig; you both get muddy, and the pig's enjoying himself.
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help.
And then you encounter the askhole.
This ASCII character '|' is a bar.
people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
i would like to point out the irony that people are arguing about this in the comments.
my life has gotten so much better when i actively don't engage in arguments. especially when i know i'm right.
of course it's easier said than done but growth is a long road.
I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .
Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes
Good read and good breakdown. I feel like this is where I am in my journey is letting that roll off.
This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.
The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.
> The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
Setting aside a few levels of irony in arguing with arguers on arguing, I think there are multiple framings for arguments. Things go off the rails all the time when neither party is aligned on what kind of argument the current one is.
Programmers and engineers tend to carry around this worldview that every conversation is about correct information or future decision-making, but everyone is operating on different planes. God help you if you go into an argument with the spouse implicitly about acknowledging how your actions made them feel armed with facts and logic about how this is irrelevant because the problem is solved or there is no new action to take.
"There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic."
AI Slop
My same thought, precisely. Funny how certain expressions are now toxic telltale sign.
They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.
Another to put it, is how Dan Saks from C++ fame puts it.
> "If you remember one thing, it's this: if you are arguing, you are losing."
I don't argue hard because I could be wrong.
So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.
You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.
LLM-generated slop. Please don't post wastes of our time like this
I'm not sure if it's all LLM-generated or not, but I sat up and pointed like the DiCaprio meme when I read:
"If letting go of the argument sounds like pure loss, here’s the reframe that turns it into a gain."
well said
I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.
Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."
Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."
(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)
Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .
The 4 hour work week isn’t life
I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /
Do we care that 100% of this writing was generated with AI?
Your comment is also potentially being downvoted with AI. Crazy times we live in.
everything being ai is the only reason i stopped arguing hard. because as somebody else today put it, there are notable signs of widespread coordinated activity intended to skew the noise to signal ratio. i see it everywhere on the net nowadays, bots hammering hard on the most minor percievable conflict. this behaviour is technically a simulacrum of real human activity - it closely mimics the training set of reddit comments. but what im seeing is insane amounts of toxicity more than ive ever seen on the net. not worth giving an inch anymore.
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
This seems more true for the author than everyone else.
They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.
While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.
Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.
> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.
=====
re: the content
You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.
This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.
Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.
Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.
----
The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.
The whole article is AI slop.
My new approach is mimicking AI in an obvious way with a fourth wall break to show self awareness about a behavior pattern I avoid
“You’re absolutely right! And you know what - Haha this is how girls want me to talk to them - you know what, thats brave!”
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.
There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.
The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.
Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.
And do others care more now? Who gives a shit?
I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s
Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.
I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.
One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?
This is a bizarrely anti-democratic. "Winning" isn't the important part of discussing a topic with multiple points of view.
Do you believe all points of view are equally valuable?
If they are not (in a small team) you have real problems. Not everyone will be right or be happy, but their pov has value, and equally? More or less.
You aren't answering the question. You are reframing the question so you can give the answer you want, thereby avoiding giving the real answer to the question presented.
Some are more equal than others.
Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics
That sounds like an endlessly toxic workplace. Or maybe you're the toxic one if that's your experience everywhere you go.
Not much about being correct or incorrect, but I recalled myself in a meeting looking at the issue on the screen suggesting "at least leave a typo so it doesn't look auto generated right off the bat". I got laid off that year.
Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics
Three things you never discuss at work: Religion, politics, and The Great Pumpkin.