Be careful about what you dislike • Hacker News Board

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#101

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

hiou wrote: post #64

hellofunk wrote: post #51

I have realized over the years that it is wise to be naturally skeptical of any opinion that is strong, either positive or negative. People who have an appreciation for gray areas, even if they ultimately do have a preference, tend to be a lot more emotionally balanced than those who maintain a very strong stance on something. I have noticed this so consistently over the last 15 years that I now consider it a fundame…

I find that people who sit in the greys tend to be very worried about their public perception or have very little passion beyond maintaining personal comfort. The people I look for are those that take strong stands but are willing and able to adjust and even quickly reverse those stances. To me it's the difference between a leader and a worker bee.

That sounds like something I might've said long ago, but today it seems to me that those at the extremes are the ones concerned about public perception. Like "Hey everybody look at me with my strong opinions!" It's a sales pitch for that person, for you to like and pay attention to them. And it will be necessarily very simplified and won't represent reality per se. A clickbait headline would get no clicks if it said "10 nuanced observations on the subtly complex and contradictory nature of reality, complete with all the exceptions. Number 6 will leave your mind totally blank as you stare out at the foggy hilltops!"

Also look at Trump (if you can stand it). He sells himself by saying extreme stuff. You do want that "extreme" person in a position where they can sell your company! But sales is orthogonal to leadership. A person who appreciates subtleties, if a leader, will quietly lead you to a river of money and not make your life hell on the way there. Or if they're a worker-bee, they'll quietly write bug-free and dependable code at a steady pace.

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#102

Post by ambivalence » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

dorianm wrote: post #78

maxerickson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python 2.6 has from __future__ import print_function. There the saving of implementation effort would be not supporting print statements in 3.0.

Nice it actually gives "SyntaxError: invalid syntax", but then it affects all the imported libraries so I still prefer the per-file way as a transition.

__future__ imports are per file. A few posts up you were proposing an interpreter-wide switch. Did you change your mind?

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#103

Post by danso » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

As a relative newcomer to Python, I had no real interest in working with 2.x. But I appreciated Armin's critiques of 3.x -- it was really difficult finding thorough, thoughtful critiques that were focused on 3.x's flaws, not on the pain of porting/division of the community, which is of less concern to recent bandwagon jumpers like me. Most of all, I appreciate that his libraries -- Flask, flask-sqlalchemy, Lektor -- are 3.x compatible.

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#104

Post by adrusi » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #69

hiou wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that people who sit in the greys tend to be very worried about their public perception or have very little passion beyond maintaining personal comfort. The people I look for are those that take strong stands but are willing and able to adjust and even quickly reverse those stances. To me it's the difference between a leader and a worker bee.

> The people I look for are those that take strong stands but are willing and able to adjust and even quickly reverse those stances. Sometimes called "strong opinions, weakly held". I find this principle to be incoherent - if you understand something well enough to have a strong opinion, you understand it well enough to hold that opinion strongly. Holding strong opinions on things you don't understand that well seems…

You don't need to understand something well to be justified in having a strong opinion about it. Your belief should be based on the evidence you have, even if that means a small amount that leads you to an extreme conclusion. Otherwise you will have a bias toward the median belief, and there's no reason to expect, in general, that a median belief is any better than an extreme one. The strength of your evidence should only affect the level of attachment that you have to your belief.

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#105

Post by Unman » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #85

Unman wrote: post #62

Hmmm... while agreeing with the sentiment I am unimpressed by the lack of evidence for one of his supporting examples. What stood out for me was this bald assertion with no reference to falsifiable specifics: "_Not_only_was_it_already_a_much_improved_agreement_from_ the_start_,but it kept being modified from the initial public version of it to the one that was finally sent to national parliaments." Either the writer…

Same thing with this line: > TTIP was negotiated in secrecy (as all trade agreements are) That seems like a really steep assumption to try to start a conversation about changing perspectives with time. He opens with a purported tautology about how you must do trade deals, which I feel hurts the argument against moving goalposts - because that seems like the exact kind of sentiment that leads to the behavior in the fi…

That's another good example. The original post is actually nearly an example of "How to start a flamewar."

You can even see the discussion of CETA spawning a long, subsidiary thread which distracts from the central thesis which we should be arguing about. (I am not offering an opinion on the content of that discussion.)

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#106

Post by Unman » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

pimlottc wrote: post #58

This brings to mind a fantastically lucid comic about the utility of questions vs answers: http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park After all, the an opinion is just an answer to the question, "What do I think of this?"

That is superb. Thank you for referencing it.

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#107

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #99

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider where CETA started and where it ended, the transparent tribunal solved the initial complaints same as with the restrictions on when you can sue. That now the new tribunals are also not good enough is a moved goalpost.

You really think that's true for everyone , or are you just looking at a subset of complaints? There have been huge protests against TTIP and CETA in Germany and around Europe, and you can't resolve their legitimate concerns by saying "excuse me sir, but by your own logic, you just proved my point".

> You really think that's true for everyone, or are you just looking at a subset of complaints?

That is true for the group of people that nearly derailed CETA in Austria (green party and the right wings party). I don't think I wrote everybody.

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#108

Post by zanny » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

Unman wrote: post #105

zanny wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with this line: > TTIP was negotiated in secrecy (as all trade agreements are) That seems like a really steep assumption to try to start a conversation about changing perspectives with time. He opens with a purported tautology about how you must do trade deals, which I feel hurts the argument against moving goalposts - because that seems like the exact kind of sentiment that leads to the behavior in the fi…

That's another good example. The original post is actually nearly an example of "How to start a flamewar." You can even see the discussion of CETA spawning a long, subsidiary thread which distracts from the central thesis which we should be arguing about. (I am not offering an opinion on the content of that discussion.)

The real takeaway should be that if you want to make a point about the topic of discussion you really cannot use real world examples. Nothing is black and white, everything is nuanced, and online someone will argue anything (including the connotations associated with the word "is" in this very thread).

It should be no surprise that if you make a post trying to talk about the meta of controversial topics, that if you start directly citing said topics the discussion ends up being a debate about the controversy rather than the original intent.

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#109

Post by rexpop » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #65

hellofunk wrote: post #51

I have realized over the years that it is wise to be naturally skeptical of any opinion that is strong, either positive or negative. People who have an appreciation for gray areas, even if they ultimately do have a preference, tend to be a lot more emotionally balanced than those who maintain a very strong stance on something. I have noticed this so consistently over the last 15 years that I now consider it a fundame…

Espousing nuanced opinions and making effective arguments are often at odds though. It's very easy for people to lose the thread of an argument if it is chock full of footnotes. I try to aim for "strong opinions, weakly held" - present a specific, actionable and strong position but be open to changing it if a better argument is made.

Where did you pick up the phrase "strong opinions, weakly held"?

Re: Be careful about what you dislike

#110

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

Unman wrote: post #105

zanny wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with this line: > TTIP was negotiated in secrecy (as all trade agreements are) That seems like a really steep assumption to try to start a conversation about changing perspectives with time. He opens with a purported tautology about how you must do trade deals, which I feel hurts the argument against moving goalposts - because that seems like the exact kind of sentiment that leads to the behavior in the fi…

That's another good example. The original post is actually nearly an example of "How to start a flamewar." You can even see the discussion of CETA spawning a long, subsidiary thread which distracts from the central thesis which we should be arguing about. (I am not offering an opinion on the content of that discussion.)

Any example about a topic with a lot of emotions is going to do that. Be it static Be static typing, free trade vs protectionism. Etc.