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Shooting down ideas is not a skill

scottlawsonbc.com

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Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#171

Post by sfink »

satisfice wrote: post #118

This article commits exactly the sin that it claims to warn against. It has obligatory positive statements about the value of critical thinking, surrounded by highly disparaging comments about how people practicing critical thinking in good faith are not adding value. The net effect will be to discourage the healthy development of critical thinking practice. Taking generic potshots at critical thinking is not a skill…

I read it as "shooting down" implying low-effort "I'm going to kill this because it makes me uncomfortable" type responses, not legitimate critique. Well-calculated rejection is indeed a valuable skill, but also hopefully won't come across as "shooting down".

It's tough to write any article about any part of this topic, because there's so much nuance and the nuance matters. Yet none of us would read a post that captured the nuance, it'd be way too long and probably cover too much that is obvious. (But maybe now I'm shooting down someone who might attempt to write such a thing... please do, it's worth a try!)

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#172

Post by sfink »

simianwords wrote: post #147

I see this happening in modern day politics when it comes to critiquing tech. For instance, consider AI data centres in space: look, everyone knows its a high risk bet. If you do the easy thing of shooting it down, you may "win" the bet often enough. But try to understand that the world works by taking bold bets - each thing you see is a bold bet, not coming from a planned economy. I see my own laptop - the processor…

Heh, I'm usually on the ideas "side", but since I've publicly shot down the data centers in space idea, the shoe is on the other foot.

I'll just say that if there are some obvious enormous drawbacks to an idea, then you are responsible for mentioning your counter to them when presenting an idea. "Do X by seemingly breaking the laws of physics" had better be accompanied with at least some mention of how you are not, in fact, breaking the laws of physics.

There are two sides, the one presenting an idea and the one receiving it, and both have responsibilities. The article is about one way that one side often fails to maintain one of its responsibilities. No more than that.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#173

Post by Forgeties79 »

II2II wrote: post #169
Forgeties79 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“a lot of ideas fail because they’re not ready” =/= “all good ideas win out”

True, but you don't know which ideas are going to win out until they have won out (or an objectively better idea replaces them).

I agree. I do not think we are anywhere near the original conversation anymore, however. I certainly never said anything that contradicts your comment.

He had a comment that said, essentially, “all good ideas eventually win out.” He then heavily edited his comment after I responded. That could be the source of confusion for you here.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#174

Post by zephen »

osigurdson wrote: post #82

I think what most successful people do is avoid getting in situation where they have to ask for permission to do things. While there may sometimes be legitimate gate keepers that stop you, be careful not to create a gatekeeper out of people that don't care one way or the other. Just go ahead and do it if you can.

Not creating gatekeepers is good advice.

The sort of meeting described in the article seems custom-made for gatekeeper creation.

If a meeting is about something else, don't raise your irrelevant idea. If a meeting is about your idea, then why are you having it if you haven't fleshed out your idea and already talked individually with a lot of stakeholders?

The only reason I can see for this sort of behavior is a kind of naivete that ascribes immense valuation to ideas, coupled with fear of losing credit if the idea loses association with your name.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#175

Post by zephen »

robocat wrote: post #97
bawolff wrote: post #62

Meh, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You shouldn't listen to every nay-sayer. Sometimes criticism is not convincing and it can be a skill separating out useful criticism from unconvincing criticism. However if someone did X in the past and ran into problem Y, you should probably have an answer to why Y is not a problem for your use case or what you plan to do differently to avoid Y. If you…

> those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it This is a classic meta shutdown - the exact thoughtless criticism the article rails against. Make the future, deal with the relevant mistakes one discovers on one's path. There is an infinite number of mistakes to make. It doesn't help to waste oodles of time learning about mistakes made by others under different contexts and constraints. Avoiding mistakes…

> This is a classic meta shutdown - the exact thoughtless criticism the article rails against.

No, it's not. Read the rest of his comment. I agree with it wholeheartedly. The article describes a terrible way of surfacing a new idea, and if you keep trying to get buy-in that way, you will keep failing.

> It doesn't help to waste oodles of time learning about mistakes made by others under different contexts and constraints.

Intelligence is practically defined by the ability to learn from others' mistakes.

> Avoiding mistakes is hard.

But useful. I once read about a machinist who started at a new job. His boss caught him trying to rework a piece he had screwed up, took the piece away from him and threw it on the discard pile. "We want you to focus on doing things right the first time, not fixing your mistakes."

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#176

Post by zephen »

jasomill wrote: post #152

If you're pointing out a problem without offering a path through it, that's not contributing. This is bullshit. Having a solution to a problem has absolutely no bearing on the value of pointing it out. What if someone else who hasn't recognized the problem has a solution? What if no solution exists? What if the problem is complicated and will take hours, days, weeks, months, or years of work to solve? Or if I simply…

> This is bullshit.

Yeah, the there-are-no-problems-only-opportunities crowd hates to be told that their proposal contains an insurmountable opportunity.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#177

Post by zephen »

ipnon wrote: post #6

I like this quote from pg: >In a way this is virtuous, because I think startups are a good thing. But really what motivates us is the completely amoral desire that would motivate any hacker who looked at some complex device and realized that with a tiny tweak he could make it run more efficiently. In this case, the device is the world's economy, which fortunately happens to be open source. After a while you learn to…

> After a while you learn to ignore criticism.

Valid and useful criticism is rare.

Critics providing other sorts of criticisms fall into a bimodal distribution. There are those who criticize because your proposal seems risky and they don't want to see you fail, and then there are those who criticize because they don't want to see you succeed.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#178

Post by informal007 »

I wrote below comment when I read 20% of this article, like a person shooting everything down. But the more I read, the more I enjoy.

Thanks for pointing out that inherent physiological flaw in humans, it's hard to realize that, this is very meaningful.

""" > None of these people are wrong or stupid. And none of them have added any value. Different opinions and more experience on current topic bring some value. """

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#179

Post by kulahan »

ceejayoz wrote: post #163
kulahan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's pointing out that it's ironic to come into a thread about not shooting ideas and do nothing more than shoot down the idea. It's literally the exact behavior described in like the first paragraph of the article. It IS ironic.

It’s only ironic if the headline is correct. Or are you ironically shooting down my idea that it is a skill?

No, irony does not depend on correctness. When the discussion is X, if your only input is -X, then it's ironic in the face of a discussion on shooting down ideas.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#180

Post by zephen »

jmyeet wrote: post #122

If you happen to work at a company of even a moderate size, but particularlly a large company, here's some free advice. Never point out the problems. There is literally no upside to doing this and plenty of downside. You will be labelled "Mr/Ms Negative". When you are inevitably proven right, you won't be thanked or heeded on future predictions. Instead you will be get feedback and comments about "not being a team pl…

From personal experience, especially don't point out that you foresaw the problem and warned against the path in a putative "lessons learned" meeting, lest ye be admonished that the true meaning of "disagree and commit" includes "and forget this conversation ever happened," even though the singular point you were trying to make at the "lessons learned" meeting was about how paying attention to concerns might actually be useful in future projects.
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