161–170 of 401 posts
Should we be always singling out those born and developed with little empathy to appease those born and developed with high emotional sensitivity? It would serve both to put forth effort in improving their flaws.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based off of my vague memory, in "How To Win Friends and Influence People", one main point is not to contradict people. In text or in person, never tell someone they're wrong. In general, when I want to correct someone's understanding I frame it as a failure of my own understanding. Like, hey, I'm the asshole here, would you do me a favor by going over this one more time for me? This is great because it allows the ot…
I rather liked that book and want to disagree with many of the points it tries to make, but find myself choosing not to. It is not economically or socially beneficial for me to be as blunt as I am - but my personal morality triumphs over both of those. If someone is wrong, they are wrong and I will let them know they are wrong. It won't win me any friends and it isn't beneficial for me to be as blunt as I am - but I…
In that case, they will probably not understand that they are wrong. There's a saying that people will not remember what you said, but will remember how you made them feel. There is a lot of truth in that. Once you tell someone they're wrong, they feel bad and are much less likely to accept truth from you - even if it's obvious. A mountain of evidence will be seen as a personal attack and your message won't get through.
I went back and rewrote that paragraph after realizing that I basically said "you're approach is wrong". So instead I tried to frame it as a problem with the listener and their emotional response. There is truth in both way to present it, but isn't one more likely to get you to change your approach?
I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dulling your opinions. And it shouldn’t diminish the passion with which you present them. Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. It requires you be mindful of their feelings and considerate of the way your presence af…
This is very evident in the styles people do interviews. For example, Bill O'Reilly is loud, calls names etc when his guests disagree with him - to the point that some of his conversations end up being loud shouting matches and the only thing left to do (as a viewer) is to turn it off. Jon Stewart on the other hand - he disagrees with his guests in a kind, calm and funny manner - it is interesting to watch him and hi…
We are pansies.
We assume, wrongly, that argument about ideas and even light jabs at the person are tragic. They are not.
Worse we have enshrined that into law in most places with "hostile work environments". Some ideas deserve to die and you only discover that through _vigorous_ debate.
Do we have to be pricks about it? Probably not. Should we fire pricks that are often right? Absolutely not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
well said I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly r…
What if you could see who downvoted you? I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about. In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.
I admire PGs work too, but don't you think this criteria would introduce to the community a herd-like mindset of following perceived moral leaders instead of evaluating ideas for their own standing?
We are pansies.
We assume, wrongly, that argument about ideas and even light jabs at the person are tragic. They are not.
Worse we have enshrined that into law in most places with "hostile work environments". Some ideas deserve to die and you only discover that through _vigorous_ debate.
Do we have to be pricks about it? Probably not. Should we fire pricks that are often right? Absolutely not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not disagreeing with you, but there are also leaders like Jobs, Gates, Ellison etc. How come they are able to get amazing results, while being really nasty to their people?
Outliers, lucky, Right place, right time. The problem is with the people that try to emulate leaders like that - they try to play Steve Jobs in meetings and end up causing all of the damage without any of the greatness.
Baloney. What we have is a culture that has largely undermined the concept of constructive and well structured argument. One should read the exchanges between friendimies GK Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. They respected each other and were friendly but if you read their output about each other they would be fired today. Why? We are pansies. We assume, wrongly, that argument about ideas and even light jabs at the…
Patently false.