but as a guy, its biologically fun to be aggressive. Now what? :-(
Play sports before/after work and get it out of your system on the field. Or be aggressive about your product winning in the marketplace.
Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#22I feel like this article starts off on the wrong foot:
"An argument is the use of aggressive opposition to weed out weak logic, keeping the strongest ideas possible. The philosophy behind using arguments for problem-solving is that attacking the weak parts of an idea will leave the best solutions."
I'm with you so far. Being able to distinguish good from bad is the basis of critical thought.
"The metaphor for argument in our culture is war. We think of people we argue with as opponents ..."
I know a lot of people who do this, but I certainly don't, and I consider it a sign of maturity when somebody is able to separate ideas from egos. Remember, we started off by talking about the good and bad parts of ideas; not good and bad people. It's not a fight, it's a collaboration to share perspectives and discover new insight.
"... we attack their position and defend our own, we can gain or lose ground, and ultimately we can win or lose arguments—just like battles"
Whether you're focusing on the idea, or the person who generated it, there's really no use in considering them an opponent, and even less use in framing things in terms of winning or losing. Ideas don't "compete" with each other, any more than 1 and 2 compete to see which is the bigger number. There's only truth. If you're winning or losing, you've already missed the point and you're focusing on the wrong thing.
I think "aggression" is unfortunately not the real problem here, the real problem is that people often aren't mature enough to admit they're wrong, or to consider another person's perspective, or to say "I don't know".
I don't want to focus on this aspect of the article, but I find it really discouraging to continually see these articles which try to spin things in terms of gender. Developing this "men vs women" perspective is exactly the kind of "adversarial mind" the author denounces in the introduction.
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#23> There's an online meme that goes, "Arguing with an engineer is a lot like wrestling with a pig in the mud; after a couple of hours, you realize the pig likes it."
I'm an engineer. I've been online for over 30 years, including Usenet days, and I never even once saw such a "meme".
This is slander, and I object to it.
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#24I keep seeing references to the IDEO brainstorming process, but do we have any actual evidence that the "shared safe space" for ideas actually produces good ideas? The actual studies I've looked at (such as http://psp.sagepub.com/content/19/1/78.short ) show that the most productive brainstorming method is to have each person think of ideas on their own, and then have everyone comes together to defend their ideas in…
Given that IDEO is still seen as the pinnacle of design consultancy shops, and most other successful design consultancy shops have similar processes... that seems like a pretty good evidence (yes, I know that is not a particularly rigorous experiment). I'd love to hear from someone who's been at IDEO or frog or wherever chime in with any experiments they've done in alternative practices.
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#25I feel like this article starts off on the wrong foot: "An argument is the use of aggressive opposition to weed out weak logic, keeping the strongest ideas possible. The philosophy behind using arguments for problem-solving is that attacking the weak parts of an idea will leave the best solutions." I'm with you so far. Being able to distinguish good from bad is the basis of critical thought. "The metaphor for argumen…
Yes, it is possible to have absolutely, completely emotion-less arguments. No, it is not easy, or particularly common.
If you truly feel like you & your work environment do have such pure-truth-seeking arguments: great. However, please take some time to really critically evaluate & test that assertion -- the people who are most at home in such an environment are the people least likely to notice its negative effects on other team members & potential hires. I'm speaking from experience here: I love arguing (or "debating" as I prefer to think of it), and have been on plenty of teams where it was a common interaction. It was only with some time, helpful feedback from my direct reports, and critical examination that I was really able to see the subtle ways in which it was hurting our org.
Re: gender -- I hope you see why gender was brought up in the article. No, it was not some "spin" or needless us vs. them. Women are, as the article states, the canary in the coal mine of toxic & aggressive interpersonal dynamics. Not because of any weaknesses of women, but rather because men have been shown over and over again to reject the arguments of assertive women no matter their merits, and to accept the same arguments from equally assertive men instead (cited in the article). In other words: an argumentative environment is one which punishes women by putting them in a position where their peers judge them in a gendered way.
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your answer is a), what evidence do you have to support this? A claim requires evidence, skepticism is just asking for evidence to support a claim. B is just skepticism when you paraphrase it fairly.
Sorry, B is not skepticism. B is another claim. It is the claim that men do not compete more strongly with women than with men in domains outside of physical activity. Unless you have evidence to support this claim, we should be skeptical of it, especially in light of A.
It's a claim only in the sense that any skepticism is a claim (which, sure, is true in a narrow semantic sense). Skepticism is disbelieving an assertion due to lack of evidence. All B is saying is that there's no evidence provided that trends in physical competition can be used to extrapolate intellectual or political competition. Extrapolation from one set of evidence requires more than just gut feeling -- it requires supplementary evidence to show that the two situations are more than coincidentally related.
Of course, I would expect men to be more competitive with women in a number of areas (not just grade school PE races) based on my limited experience and the cited study, but where's the evidence?
edit: speeling
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#27If I am arguing with someone and I change my mind as a result of the argument, I consider myself to have "won" because I gained knowledge. If we accept all beliefs as provisional and only look to the argument as a method of hypothesis testing, it can be part of a group's rational process. However in my opinion the best way to approach group decision making is to acknowledge that all decisions have tradeoffs and then…
This is an excellent perspective. Those tradeoffs are often the root of these arguments anyway: Alice comes up with a solution that has some advantage x. Bob comes up with a solution that has some advantage y. They'll argue endlessly because neither one of them will say "Oh you're right, I didn't consider x" or "I like your solution, but I don't know what's more important: x or y. Let's focus on determining that instead."
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#28So..... this article is making a good point, but it's not following from the presented arguments.
It's almost a tautology that unregulated aggression is a bad idea and should be dealt with.
but -
If you have an idea, how do you know it's a bad idea? That requires critical engagement, taking it apart, putting it back together and performing analysis on it. Doing this well will involve some fairly in-depth reasoning and questioning. If someone is losing their temper in that process, then (1) they are too sensitive/protective and/or (2) someone's being a jerk to the offended party and it's time to knock it off. Egofree programming is an old ideal, but not a bad one.
I also retain the mildly heretical notion that a really and truly aggressive environment about code, design, and the quality thereof is probably a more enjoyable place to work than one that focuses on relationships and keeping them smooth. Wrong stuff is wrong, and should be called out and removed. IMO. :)
I don't have any comments about gender here, because any gender comment will draw down 'unregulated aggression', and I'm tired of reading such.
Re: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression
#29> There's an online meme that goes, "Arguing with an engineer is a lot like wrestling with a pig in the mud; after a couple of hours, you realize the pig likes it." I'm an engineer. I've been online for over 30 years, including Usenet days, and I never even once saw such a "meme". This is slander, and I object to it.
I know right? She calls names at the start of the article and then attempts to strike a superior pose. This is one of the worst articles I've read in a long while. It is emotionalism writ large. The mere fact that she poisons the well at the very beginning shows she is ignorant of argument.