The social obligation to be bad at things • Hacker News Board

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#51

Post by jmaa » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #4

commandlinefan wrote: post #3

Can I agree with his overall premise but disagree with thinking that scheduling weekly one-on-one's with your wife is in any way a good idea? I also wonder if the social obligation to be bad at things - that is, to avoid arrogance at all costs, even at the risk of withholding potentially useful advice - is more an American thing than a worldwide phenomenon. Not being embarrassed when you can't spell words correctly s…

> Can I agree with his overall premise but disagree with thinking that scheduling weekly one-on-one's with your wife is in any way a good idea? No. That's the whole point. If it works for them why would it be bad? Let's try and not shame people for having different approaches to things.

Well, depends what he means with "your"; OP specifically, or an arbitrary person? Because I think we are getting dangerously close to shooting down useful criticism and discussion for fear of hurting someones feelings. It's obviously insensitive to say that OP is a bad person because he is doing one-on-ones, but it should be totally acceptable to say "this is weird (from my perspective), I can see several issues with this, I wouldn't personally do this, but you-do-you", and often "(from my perspective)" and "but you-do-you" parts are implied; their absence shouldn't necessarily be taken as proof of mocking.

(Disclaimer: I have no opinion on partner one-on-ones.)

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#52

Post by danans » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #46

danans wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll also add that this conflation is particularly damaging to people and communities where intelligence is highly valued, and people base much of their self-worth in being knowledgeable Another issue with intelligence-idolizing environments like the ones you describe is that if you don't find a way to gain the self-esteem needed to admit not knowing something, you might end up coping by pretending that you know th…

Just to point out: Hacker News is definitely an intelligence-idolizing environment. :)

Yep, which is what makes your original comment so interesting in this context.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#53

Post by Mvandenbergh » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #3

Can I agree with his overall premise but disagree with thinking that scheduling weekly one-on-one's with your wife is in any way a good idea? I also wonder if the social obligation to be bad at things - that is, to avoid arrogance at all costs, even at the risk of withholding potentially useful advice - is more an American thing than a worldwide phenomenon. Not being embarrassed when you can't spell words correctly s…

I think the main reason people don't like it is aesthetic.

If you told people that whatever else was happening, you always made time to have a conversation with your wife at least once a week that wasn't purely transactional (discussing the week's meal planning, children's school schedules etc.). I think people would think that was a good idea.

Using a "corporate" term for it, rubs many people the wrong way.

Secondarily, some people are uncomfortable using scheduling for personal relationships in general because they feel that these things should be spontaneous. That is, this should be unnecessary because you have deep meaningful conversations with your wife all the time as a matter of course.

That's nice if that's the case, but what is not so nice is the attitude that if it doesn't happen spontaneously then it is somehow illegitimate to schedule it.

When I was younger, I thought "date night" for couples was unbearably gauche. Surely, going out for dinner, going to a concert was just an inevitable part of a relationship? If you're going to plan it, you might as well move to the suburbs, buy a Subaru, and give up.

I don't think that any more. If you're living a life where spontaneous time is indeed filled with activities like that, that's great and no need for cringy "date nights". Realistically for a lot of people that's just going to mean sitting at home eating takeaway in front of the tv.

We are in a slightly odd place in society where it is considered a bit lame to try. Society feels that it is indeed better to go out for a nice dinner than to sit on the couch watching sitcoms, but society is also a little uncomfortable with people who put effort into doing that rather than it just happening effortlessly.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#54

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

dorkwood wrote: post #50

evmar wrote: post #12

I found that, as a person who (sometimes) creates things, my attitude towards other people who create things has significantly shifted. When I was younger I would just see the fault -- the typos, the narcissism, the pointlessness, the already-been-done-better-by-others -- of people's work. But after trying a bit, it sometimes (for the same reasons the OP talks about) creating anything new ends up being really hard in…

Years ago I can remember seeing an artist on Twitter hitting back against some critics in the comments, saying something like "I didn't ask for your criticism". At the time, I didn't understand why they were posting their work online if they didn't want to be criticized. I thought they needed to get a thicker skin. Now that I've started sharing my own work with others, I completely see where they're coming from. Havi…

> Having someone who makes nothing and shares nothing log on to tell you how you should have done things differently is unwanted and not at all useful.

Until you're trying to sell your work instead of just exhibiting it.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#55

Post by fewaw2322 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

I can't see the original tweet, so I don't know the full details. But my first reaction to hearing "weekly one-on-ones with the wife" is that it sounds impersonal and disrespectful. You don't describe personal relationships with business jargon.

It's an unspoken social rule, so maybe the person who said that wasn't aware. If that's the case, they deserve leniency for an honest mistake.

Or, maybe the person really thinks of their relationship in terms of a business arrangement. Maybe the husband and wife have a mutual understanding of that. Or maybe the husband sees nothing wrong with treating love like a business transaction, and the wife does. Of course people would call that out, to re-enforce the norm that this is not okay.

So what's the reality? You don't know. You don't know this person, and they don't know you. So why are they posting this, to an audience of strangers, who have no context for their remarks? And why are you replying to it, acting like you understand the context?

Twitter is designed to nurture this sort of discourse. It's the perfect medium for drive-by commentary, arm chair experts, and context-free conversations. Not to mention, the perfect vacuum for bad faith actors to spread bullshit.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#56

Post by war1025 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

leroy_masochist wrote: post #36

> I was at a liberating structures event recently, and one of the people I was working with related an anecdote in which he tried a party game as an ice breaker. Many of those are cringe, but this one sounded fun and inoffensive (it was a sentence continuation game where each person said a word following on from a previous one, in an attempt to construct something that sounded like an aphorism). Most people were relu…

Amen.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#57

Post by kgin » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

There isn’t an obligation to be bad.

But there are things in life that people generally feel lose their meaning when subjected to the dispassionate tools of efficiency and productivity.

For many “engineering types”, we may not feel the distinction as acutely (isn’t all the world just problems to solve?)

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#58

Post by jerf » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

s0rce wrote: post #19

kerkeslager wrote: post #9

I'm glad the author is talking about this problem, but I think there's a slight misidentification of the cause. I don't think it's that we're supposed to be bad at things, it's that we're expected to already be good at things . This still applies (irrationally) even when: 1. There is no mechanism provided for becoming good at the things we're expected to be good at. 2. Most people aren't good at the things we're expe…

This was my experience in most of my primary and secondary education (K-12) in Canada. If you were good at something right away, math, science, 2nd language, art, even gym class, you basically got some instruction and were able to learn a bit more and maybe even excel. This was my experience in Math and Science (I'm a Scientist/Engineer now). However, learning French, I struggled and rapidly fell behind. If you didn'…

"the system appeared to be designed around this idea"

It is. If you have a bunch of people tied together by chronological age, who only in extreme circumstances can be held back or advanced early, in a 20th century classroom environment all sitting together listening to one person "teach", then structurally, an environment is created that can handle only one speed of learning. There is no good choice for that one speed, because the standard deviation is too large. In the worst cases, since neither the teaching pace nor the learning pace is itself a constant, you end up with a situation that serves no one at all a good chunk of the time.

I'm not saying this was or is the deliberate intent; it's just what the structure inevitably produces. It's not clear how to structure it any other way with 20th century technology in a cost-effective manner (e.g., "classrooms of 3 people" was never on the table). I'm hoping we'll start cracking this nut in the next few years, though. The tech is increasingly there and it's the social inertia about what school has "always been" holding us back now.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#59

Post by codingdave » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #3

Can I agree with his overall premise but disagree with thinking that scheduling weekly one-on-one's with your wife is in any way a good idea? I also wonder if the social obligation to be bad at things - that is, to avoid arrogance at all costs, even at the risk of withholding potentially useful advice - is more an American thing than a worldwide phenomenon. Not being embarrassed when you can't spell words correctly s…

Of course you are allowed to disagree. But would you think of it differently if it was phrased as "We go to couples therapy to strengthen our marriage"? What about "We have a weekly date night."

I believe the larger point is not about the status of the author's marriage, not about American arrogance,or even our spelling. Instead it is to see the underlying goal people are trying to achieve, and appreciate that they are working to improve something in their life.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#60

Post by clairity » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

jack_pp wrote: post #33

This is because people have egos. Most people have fragile ones. All this pussyfooting is to protect their egos. Watching Revoler (2005) is very eye opening in this regard.

don't dismiss so quickly the importance of some "pussyfooting".

we're all thrown together randomly, at different points in our various growth cycles, so we stub toes and step on foots constantly, in that relentless sorting of status in the midst of developing ability.

it's good to remember that we need to constantly build our own fragile egos, protecting them when necessary, and do the same for others. chicks are encouraged out of the nest when their wings are likely strong enough to fly, not before.