This article really resonates with me. During college and graduate school studying philosophy, picking apart someone's argument and pointing out the esoteric and nuanced ways which made it wrong was celebrated. The general attitude in my cohort was:
"I want to be wrong, because when I realize I'm wrong, I've become smarter."
This was probably the most intellectually fulfilling period of my life.
After graduate school, I literally had to re-learn how to interact with people. No conversation was good faith. Everyone cared much more about the vibe of the conversation -- even when discussing highly nuanced political opinions suggesting they were genuinely curious for feedback -- more than they cared about having a coherent view on the topic.
I slowly realize that the best way forward was to have three interaction profiles with people. Generally there is the "I don't know you" profile, with all Dale Carnegie's rules fully in place. After that, there is the "we know each other" profile, where I would occasionally offer some probing questions on more or less uncontroversial topics to see whether or not good faith disagreement is allowed. And lastly there is the "we know and trust each other" profile, where I can actually have the open and honest real discussions with people that were so trivially normal in the philosophy department lounge.
Learning to do this was honestly one of the saddest and most disheartening things I've gone through in my life. It's genuinely stupid that we can't just talk to each other like adults.
Went from working in a highly specialized DoD lab to corporate america, and this too was a horrific surprise. Everyone turning work into the promotion hunger games was great for the mental health.
Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
And three interpretations to consider:
0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.
2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?
I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.
My style of online participation has been shaped by 2 ideas:
1. I rarely fully understand my own positions on minutia
2. Writing is rewriting.
I write forum posts to solidify my understanding of my own interests, beliefs, and reasoning. I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter. I can reference them and have to other people who ask my opinion. Sometimes I do respond back to replies immediately, and sometimes I revisit days later, after I've had time to put it in my day-to-day context. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Posting stopped being about convincing someone else maybe 20 years ago (around age 30). I do post to look back and understand myself. To others, I'm sure this sounds like existential navel-gazing and self-centered blathering, but I don't mind.
Every time they asked this, it always put me into a deep thinking mode. In some cases it did trigger defensive mindsets, but I think having to actually engage by taking a step back and think deeply is for the best if you want to have any hope of changing your mind on something.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
> 0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
Disagree here, because:
* Most of us have an irrational attachment to many of our positions. Arguing may or may not be futile, but if you can't "walk away" from most people (except if you sit at home and do nothing, and maybe not even then).
* These people may well be your coworkers on your project or at the organization you work for. So there is no "walk away", you're working with them and will continue working with them.
I don't really like that quote, what is a position but an opinion and how do you reason about options? It doesn't really make sense. Its like when liberals say "reality has a liberal bias", its not a very useful thing to say either because it doesn't work that way in practice. Why do you support abortion? Why do you oppose abortion? People will give perfectly reasonable answers to either question.
Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."
仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。
The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.
Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"
`Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."`
I never thought about this but I really believe it to be true and would love to know why is that. For example, whenever I want to get an interaction going with very small kids, I would pretend to not know something and they'd be super happy to teach me - works every time.
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.
This is indeed part of the problem. Life today is just too complicated. Take a simple topic like wind turbines: there is so so much to truly understand about materials, net lifetime carbon offset, environmental issues, recycling, capacity, placement, etc. that is is all but impossible to become a true subject matter expert on this one issue alone. Even gaining a cursory understanding of the issues at hand requires many many hours of reading and research from all positions. And this just makes you knowledgeable on this one small subject.
So what we do in practice is this: Pick the issue I care most about, then assume that any group that agrees with me on that position is a safe source to trust for ALL issues. This is our human need to belong (and tribalism). The problem is that the groups pushing these positions leverage this other'ing to create divisiveness for the sole purpose of making more and more money.
> One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
A takeaway from that: if you think you're right about everything and rarely find yourself in situations where you're forced to doubt your ideas (at least a little), it's possible what's actually going on is you're just too isolated from others.
When I reflect on it, we are in a state of hyper-individualism on every single front. Is it wrong? Well, yes and no. It is a consequence of freedom. What I ultimately see happening is that we solved evolution on a biological level. Now, it is evolution on an ideological level.
What makes me sad is that some people don't have friends that can call them out and argue in good faith. I'm a very disagreeable person, and I have a good friend group that I can argue with without any fear.
I dunno, I think this is only really true online. Once you step out into the real world people are a lot more moderate and reasonable. I'm the Enlightened centrist of my friend group and my friends from both sides of the political centrum give me plenty of shit but are still good buddies, which doesn't happen so much online ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
> isolating themselves & having their [...] views spread far and wide
> most cancerous developments & the less contentious it becomes
Your comment complains that people cannot articulate their reasons, while making a sweeping, emotionally loaded claim whose reasons are themselves barely articulated.
Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.
Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).
However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:
- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.
- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.
- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.
- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.
These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.
But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.
You would be steel-manning his essay if you assume he’s right in these arguments. Unless you believe that no position is more correct than another or that no one is more often correct than others, you can imagine scenarios where the author is often more correct than the people he is dealing with.
There are 2 very different kinds of arguments. Arguments where you're trying to convince the other person. And arguments where you're trying to convince bystanders. These require completely different tactics.
If you're trying to convince the other person, be humble. Be gentle. Be subtle. Ask them questions. Let them think they came up with the idea entirely on their own. If any bystanders are watching this discussion, they are more likely to think that the other person is right, or that they are "winning". But this will give you the best possible chance of convincing the person you're talking to.
If you're trying to convince bystanders, project confidence. Present compelling evidence. Pick apart the other person's arguments and show why its flawed. Chances are, this will make the other person dig in even more strongly and resent you. But this will give you the best chance of convincing neutral bystanders.
Use the right tool for each job. If you're using "debate tactics" in a 1:1 discussion, you will never get the desired results, no matter how data-driven and logical your arguments are. I've made this mistake far too many times, and this seems to be what OP is getting at as well
I like this distinction, but it reminds me to cherish the people who don't require such confidence games.
Feynman has a famous anecdote about sitting around the table with senior scientists in contentious argument where he was perplexed because it was obvious to him who was right. They argued all sides, and ultimately agreed, having proofed the idea and its alternatives.
That's who I want on my team: people who can shake things out without needing to be right or needing others to be humble, and without playing games. After viability, that's my primary criterion for a position.
If you're trying to convince an audience, it matters how you treat the person you're arguing with. Don't be a jerk. People notice that, and judge you for it. They judge your position for it - perhaps not intellectually, but emotionally.
The best possible thing to do in that situation is to out-evidence them, out-argument them, and out-nice them. And really, if the facts are on your side, you shouldn't have to be a jerk or manipulative.
When you join a new team, don't try to change team tools, processes etc. starting in the very first week.
Most things are the way they are for a reason. Your "obviously better" idea may lack the full context. Start with observing the situation, talking to people to build understanding and historical context, and don't jump to conclusions too early.
Sometimes you'll be right, and things are suboptimal and based on long-outdated assumptions. Then, it's great to change them and improve! Freshman eyes are great for spotting such inefficiencies, and "new blood" is critical to make the team well-functioning and to improve the legacy stuff.
But improving and rewriting everything all the time has a cost. If you do too much of it too quickly, the team loses the understanding of long-stable processes and things. You may become a bottleneck as the "last person who touched this" in too many areas. People also have limited bandwidth to support your "rewrite everything" ideas every day, while trying to move on with their tasks.
Don't hesitate to suggest improvements, but please be mindful about the volume - especially in times of AI where everything can be vibecoded in an hour.
Finally, some "objectively better" things have no business justification. Improving performance of a piece of code than runs once a month? There's probably 10 more important things to do in your backlog.
They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.
How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.
If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place
It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.
Yes, my thought exactly.. In my experience it is always how you behave when arguing. If you "blame" the other will become defensive and nothing is accomplished. If you generalize and and talk in a helpful supportive way they will see their fault themselves and correct the fault. I usually get most on my side. We openly discuss and I genuinely look for faults in my own arguments too.
This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.
One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"
One thing I genuinely try to do is fully grasp the other persons points, and eventually I back away from an argument because some people will not change their minds, but I do try to have a take away. I also admit if I'm wrong, I hate when people don't do this just to spite you during an argument. I don't care about being proven wrong, especially if we're discussing tech, please show me why I'm wrong, otherwise, if you're wrong, don't take it personal.
Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.
This could work with someone you don’t know well and should be the default approach. But you also need to trust your instinct and know when debating it’s not worth pursuing. It could be a coworker you have known for years who has certain toxic attitude. Humans are complex beings, we don’t know what’s going on with other people’s lives and minds. It takes years of dedicated study and experience to attempt to understand other people’s issues. You are not going to suddenly become a psychologist or behavioral therapist by just listening and kindly discussing. Some of these attitudes have an underlying problem that has nothing to do with work, it could be upbringing or mental health, or a combination. It just happens that Software Engineers may be more likely to suffer from these problems than people in other professions, just by the nature of it.
Exactly. You assume and imply for most of your comment that the OP is wrong about his premise.
But people aren’t equally wrong about things. Some people are more right more often. So how should your POV change if you accept his premise that he’s usually right in these situations? Then could you make a fair reading of his post?
There's no mention of anything slightly anecdotal so we could produce our own opinions, so we have to take everything at face value. But even then, if if the author we're completely right technically, he is completely wrong and still is, because it's much more important for the author to change minds than it is to stick with his duty. It's just someone unaware of their own ego thinking there is no ego just because he feels like he is right all the time.
I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.
It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.
Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.
You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.
I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.
Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).
I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.
>They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right
Everybody assumes they're right when they argue, else they wouldn't be arguing their points.
So for the point this post makes whether they're right or wrong during those times, doesn't matter. Even if they 100% were (by some freak natural phenomenon) always right, the points they make about not arguing would still be valid.
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.
And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.
Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.
>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
>Arthur: And are you?
>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.
>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.
Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.
In my workplace we argue without ego and with the assumption that we are working together to find the best way to do something. If someone realizes that the other person is right, they will say something like "Ah, OK, yes that's true..." and from that point on it stops being an argument and becomes a collaboration where both of us examine the correct position to make sure we're clear on it and its potential downfalls.
Reading this article has me a bit surprised, and the culture the author describes does not sound like an engineering culture to me. I am a bit saddened to think that people have to work in such an environment, and I am curious what it would take to change such an environment for the better.
Most people make their ideas and opinions part of their identity. And so if it turns out they are wrong about something then a part of them has died, or at least severely injured and needs to be healed. A few people are not like this and their ideas are more like a collection of trading cards they keep in their pocket. They think they have a pretty good collection but are not opposed to throwing out one for another if they find something more valuable.
The latter types are the only ones who you can have honest intellectual debates with.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper. With the second, there is no answer being sought, only a self to be defended. Knowing which conversation you’re in is half the battle. The other half is having the discipline to walk away from the second one.
This is something I've learned over the last year and it's made life a lot better.
Once you detect that you're having a battle of egos (not minds/ideas), cut and run is the next best step. I've internalized a little mantra I start saying to myself as soon as I catch it: "they want the fight, you don't." Repeating that internally made it very easy to move away from arguing with others all of the time and knowing when to move away from people who just want to fight to fight.
"Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it."
Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.
If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.
And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.
Lot to unpack and there is some real gold here (at least for me).
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet. Only yourself.
A few years ago, working at $PREVIOUS_COMPANY, we had 4-5 hours of company-sponsored time with a a coach/counselor and she also said those words to me. It's something that hit something inside myself and it's really, really true and... liberating, when you fully embrace it. Especially when you are a parent, but also in many other situations. You cannot change the others. You can only change yourself.By changing yourself MAYBE you might influence others - especially kids, by being a virtuous example, and they can decide to follow what you do.
But changing people, let alone by arguing, that's impossible and will only cause you frustration.
"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
Also, attributed to him - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help. When someone asks, the cause and effect reverse. You’re no longer imposing your judgment on someone who never wanted it.
Maybe this is why pull request reviews can become contentious. The reviewer thinks the author is open for feedback while in fact it’s just the widely accepted practice and team/company enfored that you are supposed to give feedback.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
― George Bernard Shaw
I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.
I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.
"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."
I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.
There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.
Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.
I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.
But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.
> I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support
Naturally. What purpose would arguing for what you support serve anyway? The only value argument can offer is an opportunity for you to take an opposing view and try to defend it in order to challenge your preconceived notions. It is pointless to repeat what you already know and believe is over and over again. You already have that information.
I adopted a behaviour at work that if I am fairly convinced about X ending up being wrong, and I see that trying X is not too costly (esp compared to arguing about it), then I just let X eventually fail, and take it from there, already knowing why this happened.
People seem to learn better this way, and there is no better argument than reality itself. Of course it cannot be used everywhere, eg if trying X until it fails takes too long, if it involves buying an expensive machine that we will not be able to change etc, but there is a good portion of stuff it can actually reduce interpersonal friction on. And the process of changing from X to Z happens organically that sometimes I don't even have to explicitly say that "I knew all along" (though I must admit I derive an internal satisfaction that I knew all along).
It was a time when at work there was a widespread interpersonal tension between everyone, and reducing interpersonal friction was more important than spending more or less time on sth that would not work. I dont think arguing and discussing things are to be avoided per se, but in certain circumstances, if one knows that a team will eventually go down on path Z anyway due to necessity, it may not be worth arguing about at all.
There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":
* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.
* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.
I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.
The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.
One thing that I find helps is just avoiding the word "why" as well. Restructuring to say "how come" or "I'm wondering..." or "am I understanding right that..." helps avoid putting people on their guard.
The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost.
Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.
I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.
The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.
I realized many arguments end up not well because we keep focusing on the wrong thing and neglect the question that actually matter: why do you believe in what you believe; asking people to define the terms they use is also helpful and forces them to be precise and think more about their beliefs, which a healthy thing to do.
People are often much nicer than we think when we approach them with kindness and they can see in our eyes that we actually care about them and not just winning.
Yet at the same time we need to lower our expectations. Because we need to be kind to ourselves, otherwise we would feel too frustrated.
I'm talking about daily life arguments. In some online arguments or public debates, sometimes you need to be harsher to protect others from what you claim and believe is wrong.
Yeah, I also got suspicious and checked it with Pangram. Sadly 100% AI. Perhaps it still has good points, but my heart drops whenever I sniff the AI prose. I can just query Claude or ChatGPT myself, you know?
It turns out AI writes like that because humans write like this. It seemed like AI to me too but when I read all of it, it definitely does not seem like AI anymore, just the style of self help blog post seem a couple decades ago.
> Most people don’t reason their way to conclusions and then feel accordingly. They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling.
That is how sales work, if someone is ever interested in increasing sales and one of the pieces of advice that opened my eyes the most. It is like the argument: hey, stop reasoning about features with your potential customer and making them bored: make an impact, something that creates reaction. Good or bad (bad is even better than indifferent sometimes).
Something that provokes emotion. Otherwise they are going to be indifferent.
They are not going to end up buying bc of the features most of the time anyway when there are ten or fifteen similar. They will do it bc you cause some kind of emotional impact, be that trust, authority or something else, though those ones are pretty important.
This is epic:
"People Are Not Rational
We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
C. S. Lewis participated in many arguments about Christianity. He was a professor and had a very good memory (the biography says "total recall") so he was a formidable opponent. Yet he himself wrote in private writings that he never felt himself farther from Christianity than after having won in another such dispute. It was around fifty, I think, when he decided to stop doing that and started to write the first book about Narnia.
Sincere communication is only possible when the ego defenses are down; when ego is vulnerable. Ego is scared of that, so this rarely happens. But this is the only true communication; all the rest are status games. (If you haven't read "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, pick it when you have a chance.)
One point that was not addressed is the sorry feeling one gets when others are wrong and you are right, but for whatever reason you cannot convince them otherwise, and as a consequence they are going to go in a direction that they will severely regret, or would regret if they survived it, entirely foreseeable (sadly).
I have often had to tell myself "I wish they had listened to me." or, not quite "I wish I was wrong", but at least "I regret that I was right." because it led to a situation where someone suffered without objective need for it. Only a jerk
would proudly state "Ha, of course I was right, they should have listened to me."
I experienced myself at least two of those points. In different words:
Never teach to people that did not ask you to teach them. They will not listen to you. They will forget. They will not thank you. Time wasted. As a corollary, I'm sorry for most teachers at school and even at universities.
You can change your mental state. A friend of mine told me about 3 years ago "When X happens I can't change the way I react" and she was not necessarily reacting in a good way. My answer was "Your mental state is the only thing you can control." She stopped talking and started thinking. I don't know if it had an effect. Changing the way one reacts to a stimulus takes time and effort but it can be done.
I once had a manager who was extremely quiet and very good at winning arguments. They too would never argue. Instead they would present themselves in as supportive of a way as possible, and then just ask questions. There was never a point in the questioning where he would declare you made a mistake. Instead, he would just remain silent and maybe write something down. It was astonishing to watch. There was no counter to it. Maybe the clock, but he was persistent too, like Colombo.
This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.
1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.
2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.
Absolutely! And if you are seeing out opposite points of view, don’t underestimate the power of being (or appearing to be) ignorant and/or wrong. Of course, the article’s conclusion about just asking questions, instead of trying to contradict, is also a very good way to seek out points of view and also keep people talking, without making them angry or shut down…
> Once you accept this, arguing with logic starts to look absurd. You’re bringing a proof to a feeling. The proof is airtight. The feeling doesn’t read.
> There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic.
Humans don't write like this. "The feeling doesn't read" is nonsense.
I've met quite a few people who see themselves as rare rational individuals in a world full of irrational, emotion-driven people. In each case, when I've gotten to know them better, I realize they actually have pretty low awareness of their own emotions and are as prone to irrational outbursts as anyone.
Saying something like this signals to me not that you've achieved mastery of your emotions, but rather that you haven't even learned to notice when you're having them.
Or, perhaps you're just an AI operating autonomously and in fact have no emotions, in which case well played for making it to the top of HN and successfully wasting my time.
Tempted to hate this guy but he's probably like, 19? Just starting to learn how humans work but still not aware he is one. Ahh the world, full of humans (always with the pronoun "they" and not "we"), full of ego and totally resistant to being wrong, rejecting my noble and completely egoless resistance to being wrong. As well as my compulsive need to best them in an argument, er I mean nobly rescue them from their ignorance! But sadly they will all have to live their lives first-hand without my help, developing reasons for thinking about certain things in certain ways, as if completely unaware that I was finally born and came to save them from all that!
I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).
If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.
> If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected counterarguments the way I collected patches. I believed that if I just laid out the logic clearly enough, the other person would have no choice but to come around. Truth would win.
This is probably how flat earthers think. If you engage in arguments without being prepared to be proven wrong, and you're hoping people to accept your argument as truth instead of both of you arriving at the truth together, you're not debating, you're being eristic (which is a fancy word I just found).
Arguing has negative connotations and conveys the author is bringing up minor quibbles for the sake of being pedantic: "Is the sky blue?" -> "No, the sky is not blue we just perceive it to be that way due to..."
My main complaint of the article, though, is the lack of nuance. Especially amongst complex topics where, maybe the definition of correct is not established, or there are multiple correct/valid interpretations.
"I would walk away technically right and completely alone."
Seen many great engineers walk that road right into burnout and then exiting tech all together being fed up.
It's a sad and anti social state that drives people to depression and more sad is the fact that all you really can do is just take it and accept at work things just aren't always logical and correct.
It's more and more, unlikely to lessen as more people enter tech with shallower required upfront knowledge due to more advanced tooling being available to them (more often then not, built by that 'grumpy guy' who quit.)
Try to accept it and have hobby projects you can scratch your real engineering itch with, would be my advice.
In career, I found infrastructure a great place to work in the sense that data wins arguments since the nemesis is physics. In product spaces, I flounder because there is no real data as products depends on people and people can massage data any way they want.
In life, I've learned "don't cast pearls before swine" as you have to understand if someone wants to learn something. I fully accept that I can be wrong, but I look at results I drive and I would like to believe others want similar results. This is far from true since some people just like complaining about problems and doing nothing about it. I don't understand this mindset, at all, but I've come to learn that I will tell what I'm doing, answer questions to the curious, and then stop there.
> I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
There is a certain logic to this. If someone can't reason, there is no point in giving them the truth. You might as well lie to them.
Of course, your ability to assess someone's reasoning depends often on their existing opinions, so there is a circular reasoning here where two sides with the same mindset can each believe the other to be stupid because of their position, and then refuse to engage in good faith discussions.
I don't make a lot of friends this way, but I usually try to just focus on facts no matter what, and do my best to separate the fact that I'm discussing ideas and not people. An idea might be good or bad given a certain situation, but not the people involved.
> There is no “right” without a “wrong” to make it right
> Once I stopped treating correctness as an absolute, I stopped needing to win.
> Arguments Are About Ego
> They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling
> let people meet their own consequences, because that’s the only teacher they’ll actually listen to.
> when someone [asks], I give everything I have.
> Let people disagree. Their disagreement is where the money, and the meaning, is.
> Every hour spent trying to change someone who didn’t ask is an hour stolen from the one person (yourself) you can change
I am sure each person will extract different lessons here from their walk of life, but as an engineer the lines above are a watershed moment on how to view the world. Engineers are quite intelligent creative people who have big dreams. And sometimes in pursuit of those dreams with a feeling of intelligence we swim in creativity ... and put ourselves in a God-complex. We don't judge humans appropriately when we are in this God-complex.
1. Appreciate the wrong. It is a different way of thinking.
2. Stop trying to win. This is not a fight.
3. Arguments are about ego, but ego is about defending yourself. So arguments are really in self-defense.
4. If someone has more emotion than intelligence at a given moment, ignore their ideas. It doesn't count. It is clouded. This is how women judge between informations. They look at the emotion of the person speaking. The calmest one wins.
5. Some people like making bad decisions because it helps them learn. You can't do anything here.
6. Information provided vs Corrections made: But when someone does not seek information, don't give it. And don't correct someone unless you are their boss.
7. You can't change people... is a lesson I can never understand.
That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.
Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.
I have tried my best to stop arguing period.
I am not the poster boy you want for your cause.
I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.
What I do now:
Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.
For example:
I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.
---
Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!
That blog post is technically correct but not very human. To be curious human to me means questioning other people why they believe what they believe and trying to understand their thinking about it. Of course not always there's good place to have such open minded discussion. If one side, or both sides are only talking and not listening to each other it's pointless monologue and waste of time. It's not helpful to state bunch of facts and let the other person "deal with it". As it's pointed out, often people want to just share something and aren't interested to be lectures or have their opinion changed, that can come later with some introspection, when ready. Personally I wouldn't want to talk to someone who thinks they know it all already and are looking only for arguments.
<Many people are ego-driven. Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position. Prove the idea wrong and you haven’t corrected a fact, you’ve attacked a person. So they defend it the way anyone defends themselves: not with reason, but with resistance. The stronger your argument, the harder they dig in.>
Wouldn't it have been easier to say they are idiots? (I guess you needed to explain it, but like you said, it won't help.)
>If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge. The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will. Instead of persuading the skeptic, ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it.
I wonder if victims of religious persecution agree...
Facts do not always win. The evolutionary fitness of an idea is (sadly) not entirely dictated by its truthfulness.
There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.
A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.
- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.
- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.
- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.
- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.
Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.
I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.
It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.
I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.
The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.
This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.
I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.
I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.
I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.
If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.
The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.
Haidt, in his great book "The Righteous Mind," has been arguing that reasoning evolved not to discover truth but to win arguments. There's a lot of scientific research backing his idea.
Haidt's metaphor is the rider and the elephant: the elephant (intuition) leans, and the rider (reasoning) invents the justification afterward and then defends it like a lawyer, not a truth-seeker.
Intelligence doesn't fix this - it just makes people better at coming up with hard-to-defeat arguments; that explains why smart people disagree all the time.
- To convince myself. Sometimes I start writing and convince myself I’m wrong. Other times I just move to a more specific opinion or find a stronger justification
- Because sometimes a responder does convince me to change my opinion. Or they provide some interesting related information I didn't know before
- To be a voice of reason in comments mostly by people dumb enough to feel their surface-level opinion is still worth posting. Although obviously I’m only a voice of reason to those who share my opinions, sometimes even I recognize I’m again restating an obvious observation
- To get better at writing and arguing in case one day it does really matter
- Because I’m bored and have nothing better to do. At least it’s more productive than YouTube
I read “how to win friends and influence others” many times but didn’t realize the main lesson is not to argue. That is until I reached 40. So, some lessons will take certain age to understand. I bet the OP is not in their 20s or 30s even.
I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.
This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.
This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.
But I think the core part is WHY we want to be right? To prove something to others, or to ourselves? To feel better? As a compulsion? As a gambler's fallacy? Many motivations are less lofty that we dare to admit.
I wasted way to much time arguing online. It was mostly wasted time, and wasted emotions. I mean, I also had many eye-opening and enlightening discussions, but these rarely were fights.
This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.
Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.
The author's argument is hilariously wrong because we've been doing something for thousands of years: teaching.
And it works, to some degree.
And how do teachers teach? They don't start by trying to argue or by trying to prove students wrong. They teach by showing what's fascinating.
Taking the time to show people what's fascinating, what's perplexing, where the tension lies, and how it's resolved, is teaching.
Argument construction in social contexts is ironically ego-driven. Demonstrating something interesting, on the other hand, means asking yourself what what they would find interesting about what you want to tell them.
FWIW I appreciate people like the author's old self. I am one of those who hates and simultaneously appreciates being corrected when I'm mistaken. I hate being mistaken and I appreciate the opportunity to correct the mistake.
While much of what the author says is true, I'm not so cynical as to think that it's impossible to change others.
The fact that you can change yourself — as the author acknowledges — means you can change others, because much of self-change comes from your observation of others. Perhaps it's the approach that matters most.
The ego thing is a spectrum and the most powerful treatment I've experienced so far is watching someone with a substantially larger ego trip operate right in front of me. I think this one of the best possible cures. To see yourself in the proverbial mirror.
If you insist on the ego trip, at least make it about how much of a raging badass you are with the customer. The egos that work backward from the technology are a nightmare to deal with.
It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made.
If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.
Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.
Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.
So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.
I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.
Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.
Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.
Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.
I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.
Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):
1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.
2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.
3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.
4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.
5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.
Nice quote from Tao Te Ching about complexity and simplicity completing each other.
The rules of go could be explained to a 4 years old. On the other hand, the superficial complexity of so many framworks/systems is just a facade and nothing more.
The same goes for NP-hard problems where complex solutions have trivial verification methods.
Careful with this philosophy. It does work well for the short term. At some point of constant following of 'disagree and commit' mantra, you'll end up in a world where you have zero agency and zero energy to constantly do the work you hate.
Well I think that a proper implementation of "disagree and commit" differs significantly from what's described in the article.
The author seems to be suggesting that rather than discussing technical trade-offs and nuance, you instead ship whatever the other person proposes, even if you believe it is wrong, without going through the discussion.
I always interpreted "disagree and commit", at least in a healthy form, to be more about cases where, after both sides had presented their interpretation of a technical decision and both had understood the other's point of view, they still differed in opinion as to how it should be handled a meaningful way that was unlikely to be resolved from further communication. From there, rather than wasting more time on debating, simply agreeing to disagree, shipping to move on.
The key difference being that you aren't simply accepting whatever is told you, even if you believe it to be blatantly wrong, and silently shipping based on that feedback. You're actually engaging with each other and trying to solve the problem together but not getting locked in intractable arguments.
What OP is proposing seems significantly more toxic and honestly like something I would expect from someone playing corporate politics rather than trying to excel as an engineer.
I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.
In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.
Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.
I’ve had friends refer to me as a “yes-man”, because I don’t really care where a group of people decide to go to dinner. It’s of little consequence and doesn’t create any negative downstream effects.
At work, when a poor decision means unnecessary work today, and ongoing maintenance for the next 5-10 years, I will oppose these things quite loudly and tell people they are wrong. I don’t see why I’d sign up for 10 years of thankless work I don’t understand without a fight.
Alternatively I’ve found it beneficial to try and clarify and further elaborate on your “opponents” reasoning. If you’re correct, then you should find the errors in their reasoning; without ever actually having to oppose them (your opponent and their arguments).
I love this bit from the documentary "Behind the Curve (2018)." One of the scientists poses the following question: "What evidence could I show you that would change your position?"
If someone can't answer that, it's probably not worth arguing about.
> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference
Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.
"I don't really like arguing because everyone wants to convince the other person, and in the end, everyone leaves thinking they have convinced the other person, and no one has changed an inch."
I also stopped arguing, I don't waste energy or my focus on random stuff, did happen with the age I think... unless... unless it's my wife or my mum who is wrong. If I think I'm right and they wrong, I will argue with al my energy. Of course!
I never really understood the “Being right is overrated” mindset. It’s easy enough to understand the good of harmony, but that’s not really how I see it used. They’re not really oppositional, a person has to see it that way. And to the extent that cohesion is valuable, that's just built in to a better calculation of right. But saying it this way, I suspect means that the person doing the calculating needs to overstate this cohesion beyond its value. This is a convenient sorta trusim to make a case.
The premise is that there are factors beyond accuracy which are for the greater good. That seems reasonable, but what are they? There are things like peace and happiness, which sound great, but aren’t at odds with accuracy, or more precisely the pursuit of it. This isn’t really a tradeoff. When people frame accuracy as overrated, it seems they’re often obscuring and gliding over that they don’t have a counter argument. There isn’t necessarily one discoverable truth, but there are better hypotheses and more sincere attempts. To the degree, that optimizing for peace and happiness can be a better goal, the measure of those things is typically self-centered. They would be happier. It can be group self-centered too, as in our team would be happier. It’s not a neutral truism, it’s a personal weighing, of the value of the better outcome resulting from right/better/good decision and the desire for (at least surface-level) harmony.
But more important than that, even if the group would be happier, there is the false tradeoff thing. Embedded in “being right isn’t what’s most important” is agreement about what’s right. Why are we unhappy with something more right? Accuracy/truth seems conspired against at a dispositional level in this situation. Disagreement and disharmony are not the same thing. So it’s not even disagreement leading to disharmony. It seems more of a personal desire against either a particular outcome or against disagreement generally. Both questionable. Relatedly, diplomacy is not a bad trait exactly, but I don’t see it as essentially positive. It betrays a lot. It is a kind of tax, which can be worth it up to a point (there is value in the internal functioning of the group), but probably not as often as the truism has it play out. Something should be questioned when a person/team diverges so much from better/accurate/right.
The idea of picking your battles makes a form of self-centered sense, while also making a (I think large) form of nonsense outside it. There are many forms of dissent that occur before cussing or violence, it is much different to (1) disagree, (2) disagree, but go along, (3) disagree, but say you agree, (4) disagree, but convince yourself to agree for harmony (and perhaps eventually forget that you disagree). A phrase I’ve come to dislike is “I wouldn’t die on that hill”. People should defend, if not die on, more hills. It also might recruit others. We have all these hills that have been ceded because we weren’t willing to say we liked them.
I think that there are times as a leader\supervisor\co-worker\parent\coach where you might argue despite knowing you won't change the outcome simply to show that you are willing to fight for those you represent.
There is also some value it stating your beliefs about something going in the wrong direction. Maybe not a full blown argument, but putting it out there so when things eventually fail and blow up, there are no stones cast in your direction for not speaking up earlier. Just be careful to avoid the, “I told you so,” which is also off-putting.
I realized long ago that this is a complete waste of time and now I'll usually only argue with people for (blood) sport and love of the game but only if I feel like it.
This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.
Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
Identifying the market is also important. There's the free market of capitalism. Then there are the other powers even in that market that can still say you're wrong, such as regulators, governments, politics, violence, etc.
If you're looking for an outcome, you still need to assess the circumstances that can generate that outcome, even if the author has identified one particular strategy that people often get wrong and one possible alternative.
This is a good reason to argue with people! Forcing yourself to look critically at your own positions via debate is a key self-improvement method. Simply not engaging and never having a back-n-forth is no way to improve. Feedback, critical self-evaluation, and more feedback.
Ofc, that's not encouragement to flame people on the internet or in-person.
This is still about being right or wrong. About people and not ideas, otherwise there would be no issue in the first place, there would just be the duty and the acceptance.
What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.
At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.
The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.
I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.
Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes
That's true, and avoiding (direct) argument may well be the #1 takeaway in How to Win Friends And Influence People.
I read it in my early 20s and at that time my main takeaway, as I recall, was to (paraphrasing), "carefully plant the evidence, thus making the conclusion something the audience comes to on their own (they 'think of it' themselves)".
In entrepreneurship, this was slightly dangerous to me, since I immediately started implementing this successfully. Before long, I (apparently) took "credit" for "my idea" (that I successfully got the audience to see, oh so carefully), whereas audience thought that we "came up with it together"!
Oy vey! So, a word to the wise. I now subscribe to more of a "plain honesty but with tact" approach.
people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .
While I like the article there are way too many telltale signs of AI writing. I'm sure the author expresses his direction but I'm just so tired of reading articles where AI has done most of the work. I want to hear from humans, grammar and spelling and punctuation mistakes and all.
I think the main point of the article is sound, the idea that arguing with people puts you in an adversarial position with the person, even if you think you are debating the merits of the ideas.
This is frustrating to those of us who are focused on the project or the task - to try and find the best way to do something and come at the conversation from a place that feels like logic, and be met with ego and emotion.
But I think the overall conclusion lacks subtlety. I don’t think the best response is to disengage completely, then say “I told you so” and/or swoop in to profit off of the mistake.
So yes, recognizing that you also have an ego and can benefit from feedback but just take it a little further. Ask clarifying questions about why their solution is better, come from a place of collaboration rather than competition. Have them explain why their solution is better and once it’s clear you are collaborating, voice your concerns and weight the pros and cons together.
I know this is a simplistic version of how these conversations actually happen, but it’s an example of the fact that you can make more progress by recognizing some subtlety.
People will know they are wrong, but if they are supporting a friend's case or boss's they will choose them over you (naturally) even if you can definitively prove them wrong. There's upside and often no downside to being wrong or even outright lying in some cases, so people do it.
People will know 1 of the 4 in the group is right, but they don't want to be outnumbered or cast in an unfavorable light, so they will all choose the "wrong" stance on purpose, to be more socially accepted.
100% of people in a conversation can know that 1 person is right, but because nobody likes that person, nobody will agree with them.
You might be right a lot but that isn't going to help you win any arguments. It nearly means nothing. You get from a group what you negotiate with the group, and short of showering everyone in $100 bills daily nobody is going to worship you for anything, especially not "being right a lot". You're better off being conventionally attractive rather than conventionally intelligent (when it comes to easy social acceptance).
Furthermore, there are so many battlefields, so many arguments to lose, you'll eventually (hopefully) find a better use of your time!
A few months ago I came to this same conclusion. I watched this YouTube video[1] that argued needing to be right and thinking we can save people is our own ego at work. It helped me realize why I felt anger towards people I cared about deeply, not seeing what's obviously to me the RightThing™ to do; I think I can save everyone.
Also see this video[2], which extrapolates on the types of people you shouldn't try to save. Gives pointers on how to deal with narcissists (both videos use AI-generated imagery and narration, which I typically despise but I had both playing in a background tab so I didn't have to see it at least).
This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.
The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.
> The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
Setting aside a few levels of irony in arguing with arguers on arguing, I think there are multiple framings for arguments. Things go off the rails all the time when neither party is aligned on what kind of argument the current one is.
Programmers and engineers tend to carry around this worldview that every conversation is about correct information or future decision-making, but everyone is operating on different planes. God help you if you go into an argument with the spouse implicitly about acknowledging how your actions made them feel armed with facts and logic about how this is irrelevant because the problem is solved or there is no new action to take.
They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.
Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."
Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."
(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)
You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.
You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.
I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.
This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.
I like this post as it landed at a really good time for me. But, I had a remaining question based on one of the lines:
>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ the kinds of folks the author is describing here? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.
A lot of the theoretic today and the 'logic' behind it bears strong resemblance of as it were from a cult follower. Reasoning doesn't really work as a argument.
There have been many books written on cults written by reputable people and some are even on youtube talking about this.
I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational ego-driven people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.
It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!
I'll apply my vast intellect to solving this riddle.
"Argumentation" is one of the necessary rhetorical modes. You cannot escape it altogether in human interactions since it is central to conflict resolution and negotiation. The key is to understand psychology/sociology of both oneself/others along with rational approaches and know when to emphasize one over the other.
>Everything exists only in relation to its opposite
The fuck? Words mean things. The moon does not exist because the Sun exists. And what about Earth? It doesn't have an opposite, therefore it has no way to exist? If this is the logic you're going to use in an argument, you did the right thing by stopping.
the main pieces that i had to truly understand in order to recognize and stop most online arguing were:
1) performativeness. if the person responding to you is performing for other readers rather than having a genuine good-faith discussion with you, just move on. i still catch myself being performative sometimes and it grosses me out when i recognize it lol.
2) real world vs online behaviors. if someone is an asshole in the real world, we just wouldnt talk to them. not sure how we've convinced ourselves that online is different. if someone refuses to take the time to respond in a socially normal way, then why would you take the time to respond? if they wont take the time to be social, why would you?
little ass kids learn this shit in like kindergarten. if someone is a dick, no one is friends with them. if my friends and i are in a bar and some random is being an asshole, we dont "debate" them, we move on. again, tiny children learn this shit lol.
3) real people whose opinions you care about. make a list. when i did it, it turned out to be less than 20. the people on your list are the only people you should feel any obligation towards. not randoms on the internet. dont spend your valuable time/energy/mental arguing with random internet assholes. your list of real people are the only ones you should feel any obligation towards because if you value them, they likely value you opinions as well.
4) good faith. you'll know in one or two responses if the person replying is there in good-faith. if they're not, move on.
5) knowledge peers. its ok to recognize that someone is not on the same knowledge level as you in a topic. whether they know more or know less, either way, its ok. if we're lucky we are experts in one or two topics and dipshits in most topics. accept that fact. i know this is tough in our industry, we are overflowing with people who think they're smarter than they are. its ok to recognize that the other person is not your knowledge peer on the topic and adjust accordingly: up, down, or out.
6) conversation vs debate. if someone doesnt recognize there is a vast difference between normal conversation and debate, dont waste your time. honestly, they're typically gross to engage with.
and of course, find real world hobbies. once you have the hobby, it naturally becomes "why would i argue with this dickbag online when i could be doing something way more fun."
As others have discussed, people argue for many reasons, ego being one of them.
I didn't really understand this. I grew up before the internet, and I have ADHD, which essentially means I have limited working memory.
One of my compensatory strategies for this is to have a fairly comprehensive world model at the ready in long-term memory.
If you told me something that contradicts my mental model, I might argue, in order to figure out whether I need to update my model or not.
The argument between someone ego-driven operating on a motte-and-bailey basis, and someone who just truly wants to understand, but won't let it go because they feel they need to understand, gets ugly quickly.
Fortunately, I'm older, my model doesn't need to change as often, I'm better at discriminating about things I care about or that are irrelevant, and, of course, I can always disengage with "that's interesting; I'll have to research it" and go down a rabbit hole on the internet if what they are saying doesn't seem to make a lick of sense.
I will say that the need to be right -- not the need to lord it over others, or the need to prove I'm right -- has probably helped my programming career immensely.
The burning desire to be right can be completely orthogonal to giving a shit about whether others think you're right or not, or giving a shit about others when they're wrong and it doesn't adversely affect you.
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
This seems more true for the author than everyone else.
They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.
While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.
I don't know, arguing gives me kind of a high, even when my position is weak. I don't go out of my way to argue (especially about politics) but if you bring up a point I oppose, I don't stay quiet.
So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.
You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.
Not much about being correct or incorrect, but I recalled myself in a meeting looking at the issue on the screen suggesting "at least leave a typo so it doesn't look auto generated right off the bat". I got laid off that year.
I interpret all posts online to be micro-essays intended to sway the multitude of anonymous readers in some way. When I argue with a post, I am not in dialogue with the poster, not really; I am working to counteract the first micro-essay's sway with my own ideas.
Kantian ethics indicate that it would be unethical for me to allow posts I consider harmful in sway to remain unargued. I am fighting for truth or what I think should be truth.
everything being ai is the only reason i stopped arguing hard. because as somebody else today put it, there are notable signs of widespread coordinated activity intended to skew the noise to signal ratio. i see it everywhere on the net nowadays, bots hammering hard on the most minor percievable conflict. this behaviour is technically a simulacrum of real human activity - it closely mimics the training set of reddit comments. but what im seeing is insane amounts of toxicity more than ive ever seen on the net. not worth giving an inch anymore.
> Sometimes I won on points and lost the person. More often I won nothing at all: I’d watch someone grow more certain of the very thing I had just disproven, while the room quietly drifted to their side. I would walk away technically right and completely alone.
This is why debating is taught in school in the Netherlands (and I'm sure other countries, too). Winning an argument is not the same as convincing someone they were wrong: that's something you need to learn how to do and then something you need to actively practice with others.
Just having good arguments makes you a dick. Having good arguments and being able to empathize with the opposition's and conceding their position on any merit, while showing there's a solution that'd they'd prefer even if they don't know that yet, makes you someone helpful and trustworthy.
How do I pass this to coworkers without coming off as passive aggressive? Because this article pretty much sums up what adds a lot of stress for me currently.
I would rather sit alone in truth than with a million friends in fiction.
I don't think we need to disengage in debate with everyone. That said, you have to know if you're talking to someone who's willing to reason, and you have to be open to their reasoning as well. There is absolutely no sense in contradicting the opinion of an irrational person who has made their beliefs part of their core identity. That person will hate you for showing them the truth, no matter how clear.
I used to think, when I disagreed with someone, we were on a journey together to find out what the truth is. Maybe my understandng was wrong, maybe theirs, maybe it's something neither of us thought of.
But then I realized that most people don't think that way. It's more important to not be alone than to know the truth, and people tie their individual identity to their group identity - if a fact contradicts their group identity's approved list of observances, they'll take it as a personal attack. So I just say 'ok' now.
I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.
Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .
I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /
the author is 100% correct. this is why i find it pointless to debate politics and social issues with most people. far too often people are not arguing for an idea, they are arguing to defend something that has become their identity and it is fused with their ego.
I like to think that I change my mind based on evidence, but the more I battle test my ideas in a specific thesis, the less reluctant I am to give it up, and prefer to see a synthesis incorporating the new arguments.
Often though, I find the arguments are things I have already heard before and either incorporated or debunked - either way they do not affect my positions.
Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.
> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.
=====
re: the content
You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.
This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.
Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.
Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.
----
The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.
I removed myself from Facebook years ago because of all the toxic arguments about politics - almost entirely whataboutism and name calling. I've recently rediscovered Facebook and came up with a little game: sit back, watch all the political arguments, and take a drink every time someone concedes a point (not the whole argument, just a single point), as in, "Shit, you're right. I didn't realize that." I'm probably gonna quit soon because it's been around 2 months and I haven't taken a single drink.
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.
There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.
The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.
Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.
I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s
Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.
I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.
One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?
democracy demands that a drooling idiot gets to have equal say as any genius with his vote. since there are far more drooling idiots than geniuses we can easily see why democracy has typically been so dystopian, and only seems to get worse over time.
maybe you should educate us as to why democracy like this belongs in professional settings where efficiency and correctness determine outcome and profit/ job security.
This article really resonates with me. During college and graduate school studying philosophy, picking apart someone's argument and pointing out the esoteric and nuanced ways which made it wrong was celebrated. The general attitude in my cohort was:
"I want to be wrong, because when I realize I'm wrong, I've become smarter."
This was probably the most intellectually fulfilling period of my life.
After graduate school, I literally had to re-learn how to interact with people. No conversation was good faith. Everyone cared much more about the vibe of the conversation -- even when discussing highly nuanced political opinions suggesting they were genuinely curious for feedback -- more than they cared about having a coherent view on the topic.
I slowly realize that the best way forward was to have three interaction profiles with people. Generally there is the "I don't know you" profile, with all Dale Carnegie's rules fully in place. After that, there is the "we know each other" profile, where I would occasionally offer some probing questions on more or less uncontroversial topics to see whether or not good faith disagreement is allowed. And lastly there is the "we know and trust each other" profile, where I can actually have the open and honest real discussions with people that were so trivially normal in the philosophy department lounge.
Learning to do this was honestly one of the saddest and most disheartening things I've gone through in my life. It's genuinely stupid that we can't just talk to each other like adults.
Went from working in a highly specialized DoD lab to corporate america, and this too was a horrific surprise. Everyone turning work into the promotion hunger games was great for the mental health.
Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
And three interpretations to consider:
0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.
2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?
I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.
My style of online participation has been shaped by 2 ideas:
1. I rarely fully understand my own positions on minutia 2. Writing is rewriting.
I write forum posts to solidify my understanding of my own interests, beliefs, and reasoning. I often edit them multiple times before moving on and ignoring the responses thereafter. I can reference them and have to other people who ask my opinion. Sometimes I do respond back to replies immediately, and sometimes I revisit days later, after I've had time to put it in my day-to-day context. It's not a hard and fast rule.
Posting stopped being about convincing someone else maybe 20 years ago (around age 30). I do post to look back and understand myself. To others, I'm sure this sounds like existential navel-gazing and self-centered blathering, but I don't mind.
> What if their position represents their values
One of my best professors often asked me:
"what are you trying to achieve here?"
Every time they asked this, it always put me into a deep thinking mode. In some cases it did trigger defensive mindsets, but I think having to actually engage by taking a step back and think deeply is for the best if you want to have any hope of changing your mind on something.
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
this is a pithy think to say but its really not true, and every person that has lost their religion and been convinced by rational argument is a counter example.
3. Are you really really sure that person is wrong?
> You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
That's demonstrably not true, people deconvert from religion and other irrational beliefs all the time.
> 0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.
Disagree here, because:
* Most of us have an irrational attachment to many of our positions. Arguing may or may not be futile, but if you can't "walk away" from most people (except if you sit at home and do nothing, and maybe not even then).
* These people may well be your coworkers on your project or at the organization you work for. So there is no "walk away", you're working with them and will continue working with them.
I don't really like that quote, what is a position but an opinion and how do you reason about options? It doesn't really make sense. Its like when liberals say "reality has a liberal bias", its not a very useful thing to say either because it doesn't work that way in practice. Why do you support abortion? Why do you oppose abortion? People will give perfectly reasonable answers to either question.
孟子曰：「人之患在好爲人師。」
Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."
仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。
The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.
孟子曰：「愛人不親，反其仁；治人不治，反其智；禮人不答，反其敬。行有不得者，皆反求諸己，其身正而天下歸之。《詩》云：『永言配命，自求多福。』」
Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"
`Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."`
I never thought about this but I really believe it to be true and would love to know why is that. For example, whenever I want to get an interaction going with very small kids, I would pretend to not know something and they'd be super happy to teach me - works every time.
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.
This is indeed part of the problem. Life today is just too complicated. Take a simple topic like wind turbines: there is so so much to truly understand about materials, net lifetime carbon offset, environmental issues, recycling, capacity, placement, etc. that is is all but impossible to become a true subject matter expert on this one issue alone. Even gaining a cursory understanding of the issues at hand requires many many hours of reading and research from all positions. And this just makes you knowledgeable on this one small subject.
So what we do in practice is this: Pick the issue I care most about, then assume that any group that agrees with me on that position is a safe source to trust for ALL issues. This is our human need to belong (and tribalism). The problem is that the groups pushing these positions leverage this other'ing to create divisiveness for the sole purpose of making more and more money.
> One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.
A takeaway from that: if you think you're right about everything and rarely find yourself in situations where you're forced to doubt your ideas (at least a little), it's possible what's actually going on is you're just too isolated from others.
Knowing when to stop is a key learning in wisdom.
When I reflect on it, we are in a state of hyper-individualism on every single front. Is it wrong? Well, yes and no. It is a consequence of freedom. What I ultimately see happening is that we solved evolution on a biological level. Now, it is evolution on an ideological level.
What makes me sad is that some people don't have friends that can call them out and argue in good faith. I'm a very disagreeable person, and I have a good friend group that I can argue with without any fear.
Even worse than "a bunch of people" is when the majority behaves like that.
I dunno, I think this is only really true online. Once you step out into the real world people are a lot more moderate and reasonable. I'm the Enlightened centrist of my friend group and my friends from both sides of the political centrum give me plenty of shit but are still good buddies, which doesn't happen so much online ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:
1. Infinite supply of people.
2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".
At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.
Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but
1. Most of the people don't even know rules.
2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.
3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.
It's just such a waste of energy.
Nowadays, you can even get twenty sycophantic AIs to reinforce your beliefs daily.
> isolating themselves & having their [...] views spread far and wide
> most cancerous developments & the less contentious it becomes
Your comment complains that people cannot articulate their reasons, while making a sweeping, emotionally loaded claim whose reasons are themselves barely articulated.
Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.
Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).
However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:
- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.
- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.
- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.
- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.
These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.
But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.
You would be steel-manning his essay if you assume he’s right in these arguments. Unless you believe that no position is more correct than another or that no one is more often correct than others, you can imagine scenarios where the author is often more correct than the people he is dealing with.
There are 2 very different kinds of arguments. Arguments where you're trying to convince the other person. And arguments where you're trying to convince bystanders. These require completely different tactics.
If you're trying to convince the other person, be humble. Be gentle. Be subtle. Ask them questions. Let them think they came up with the idea entirely on their own. If any bystanders are watching this discussion, they are more likely to think that the other person is right, or that they are "winning". But this will give you the best possible chance of convincing the person you're talking to.
If you're trying to convince bystanders, project confidence. Present compelling evidence. Pick apart the other person's arguments and show why its flawed. Chances are, this will make the other person dig in even more strongly and resent you. But this will give you the best chance of convincing neutral bystanders.
Use the right tool for each job. If you're using "debate tactics" in a 1:1 discussion, you will never get the desired results, no matter how data-driven and logical your arguments are. I've made this mistake far too many times, and this seems to be what OP is getting at as well
I like this distinction, but it reminds me to cherish the people who don't require such confidence games.
Feynman has a famous anecdote about sitting around the table with senior scientists in contentious argument where he was perplexed because it was obvious to him who was right. They argued all sides, and ultimately agreed, having proofed the idea and its alternatives.
That's who I want on my team: people who can shake things out without needing to be right or needing others to be humble, and without playing games. After viability, that's my primary criterion for a position.
If you're trying to convince an audience, it matters how you treat the person you're arguing with. Don't be a jerk. People notice that, and judge you for it. They judge your position for it - perhaps not intellectually, but emotionally.
The best possible thing to do in that situation is to out-evidence them, out-argument them, and out-nice them. And really, if the facts are on your side, you shouldn't have to be a jerk or manipulative.
Semi-related piece of advice for younger folks:
When you join a new team, don't try to change team tools, processes etc. starting in the very first week.
Most things are the way they are for a reason. Your "obviously better" idea may lack the full context. Start with observing the situation, talking to people to build understanding and historical context, and don't jump to conclusions too early.
Sometimes you'll be right, and things are suboptimal and based on long-outdated assumptions. Then, it's great to change them and improve! Freshman eyes are great for spotting such inefficiencies, and "new blood" is critical to make the team well-functioning and to improve the legacy stuff.
But improving and rewriting everything all the time has a cost. If you do too much of it too quickly, the team loses the understanding of long-stable processes and things. You may become a bottleneck as the "last person who touched this" in too many areas. People also have limited bandwidth to support your "rewrite everything" ideas every day, while trying to move on with their tasks.
Don't hesitate to suggest improvements, but please be mindful about the volume - especially in times of AI where everything can be vibecoded in an hour.
Finally, some "objectively better" things have no business justification. Improving performance of a piece of code than runs once a month? There's probably 10 more important things to do in your backlog.
Chesterton's Fence. I recommend people read more into this and other concepts in mental models, such as logical fallacies.
They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.
How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.
I could well be wrong about this :)
The point being made is to pick your battles.
The author’s point is that, even if you are correct 100% of the time, fighting every battle is toxic to yourself and everyone around you.
They are saying to look past the fact that you might be right and consider that it’s not worth the effort anyway.
Now, I will attempt to put down my phone and not respond to any replies I get to the contrary.
Sweating intensifies…
I agree. Despite ending on a note of self-improvement, I wasn't really convinced that the author has any self-awareness to speak of. For example:
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
Oh, they're going to acknowledge that there are emotional reasons for their addiction to arguing.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people
Oh, never mind.
> The author assumes they’re always right
If the author didn't think they were right, they likely wouldn't be arguing in the first place
It's a phase a lot of us go through. Young, hot-headed engineer, sure of how the tech (and the world) should work. Eventually you get tired of arguing, even (maybe especially) if you are usually right.
> They never mention they could’ve been wrong.
I noticed that as well. He's oblivious to why he enjoys correcting people in the first place, the emotion that compels him to do it.
The black and white, right or wrong thinking is also a fallacy.
It also reeks of an engineer with no real appreciation of how to run a business, who's never had to fire someone, or make tough financial decisions
Yes, my thought exactly.. In my experience it is always how you behave when arguing. If you "blame" the other will become defensive and nothing is accomplished. If you generalize and and talk in a helpful supportive way they will see their fault themselves and correct the fault. I usually get most on my side. We openly discuss and I genuinely look for faults in my own arguments too.
This. The problem is that the author may have been right, every time, in the narrow context of consideration they were arguing from and about. But often the problems being solved are multi-dimensional and on some other level.
One could get closer to your wonderful suggestion with the far more indulgent "Maybe I'm right but not yet thinking about a contextual factor or value that might be important. What could possibly be important enough that they don't care about my correctness?"
One thing I genuinely try to do is fully grasp the other persons points, and eventually I back away from an argument because some people will not change their minds, but I do try to have a take away. I also admit if I'm wrong, I hate when people don't do this just to spite you during an argument. I don't care about being proven wrong, especially if we're discussing tech, please show me why I'm wrong, otherwise, if you're wrong, don't take it personal.
Also most things worth arguing over fall somewhere in the middle, and won’t have an absolute right answer. It sounds like the author has learned something important though.
I noticed that with some people (and possibly most people), it's not even a matter of who's wrong or right, simply asking to justify or explain their claims may be perceived as an attack and enough to trigger an argument.
This could work with someone you don’t know well and should be the default approach. But you also need to trust your instinct and know when debating it’s not worth pursuing. It could be a coworker you have known for years who has certain toxic attitude. Humans are complex beings, we don’t know what’s going on with other people’s lives and minds. It takes years of dedicated study and experience to attempt to understand other people’s issues. You are not going to suddenly become a psychologist or behavioral therapist by just listening and kindly discussing. Some of these attitudes have an underlying problem that has nothing to do with work, it could be upbringing or mental health, or a combination. It just happens that Software Engineers may be more likely to suffer from these problems than people in other professions, just by the nature of it.
> I could well be wrong about this :)
Exactly. You assume and imply for most of your comment that the OP is wrong about his premise.
But people aren’t equally wrong about things. Some people are more right more often. So how should your POV change if you accept his premise that he’s usually right in these situations? Then could you make a fair reading of his post?
Isn't that what they mean by "changing yourself"?
There's no mention of anything slightly anecdotal so we could produce our own opinions, so we have to take everything at face value. But even then, if if the author we're completely right technically, he is completely wrong and still is, because it's much more important for the author to change minds than it is to stick with his duty. It's just someone unaware of their own ego thinking there is no ego just because he feels like he is right all the time.
I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same.
It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches.
Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invested in code the way they are on a political issue.
His point is, it didn't matter if he was wrong or right about the topic because he admitted he was wrong about the reason: his ego.
ironically, you wont get a reply from the author...
You should read the whole thing. At the end he switches the argument on to himself and says that one should always ask questions, put the ego away and try to get better. He already made the point you made.
I can't control other people. I believe in extreme accountability. If my arguments are not working on someone, then I need to make different arguments.
Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).
I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.
I'd love to know what one of those conversations looked like.
"Using this construct in this part of the code increases it's performance by half of a percent. Obviously, this should be changed."
"That code isn't in a hot loop and doing it that way makes it much less clear about what's going on there."
(rolling their eyes) "Using this construct..."
>They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right
Everybody assumes they're right when they argue, else they wouldn't be arguing their points.
So for the point this post makes whether they're right or wrong during those times, doesn't matter. Even if they 100% were (by some freak natural phenomenon) always right, the points they make about not arguing would still be valid.
>They never mention they could’ve been wrong
As thrw045 has pointed out, they do precisely this toward the end of the post.
Or maybe they are rational and just let go of their mistakes once they have seen sufficient data to prove them otherwise?
I may be wrong if I am stating an opinion and I cannot be wrong if I stating a fact. Our society, since it got consumed by “social” media, has lost ability to accept facts, everyone doing their own “research” and all that…
I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.
And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.
Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.
This article and your comment really resonates with me. My experience in the philosophy department was almost identical.
I like the author’s viewpoint, but I would have appreciated mentioning that:
1. Truth does not always rely on Boolean logic. Both A and non A can be true at the same time
2. Truth is often relative, so it may change depending on the viewpoint
>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
>Arthur: And are you?
>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.
>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.
Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.
In my workplace we argue without ego and with the assumption that we are working together to find the best way to do something. If someone realizes that the other person is right, they will say something like "Ah, OK, yes that's true..." and from that point on it stops being an argument and becomes a collaboration where both of us examine the correct position to make sure we're clear on it and its potential downfalls.
Reading this article has me a bit surprised, and the culture the author describes does not sound like an engineering culture to me. I am a bit saddened to think that people have to work in such an environment, and I am curious what it would take to change such an environment for the better.
Most people make their ideas and opinions part of their identity. And so if it turns out they are wrong about something then a part of them has died, or at least severely injured and needs to be healed. A few people are not like this and their ideas are more like a collection of trading cards they keep in their pocket. They think they have a pretty good collection but are not opposed to throwing out one for another if they find something more valuable.
The latter types are the only ones who you can have honest intellectual debates with.
I don't think that's opinions, but, rather, going wherever the wind blows.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper. With the second, there is no answer being sought, only a self to be defended. Knowing which conversation you’re in is half the battle. The other half is having the discipline to walk away from the second one.
This is something I've learned over the last year and it's made life a lot better.
Once you detect that you're having a battle of egos (not minds/ideas), cut and run is the next best step. I've internalized a little mantra I start saying to myself as soon as I catch it: "they want the fight, you don't." Repeating that internally made it very easy to move away from arguing with others all of the time and knowing when to move away from people who just want to fight to fight.
"Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it."
My human-written summary:
Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.
If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.
And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.
"With those who will not listen, it is useless to have a conversation."
Lot to unpack and there is some real gold here (at least for me).
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet. Only yourself.
A few years ago, working at $PREVIOUS_COMPANY, we had 4-5 hours of company-sponsored time with a a coach/counselor and she also said those words to me. It's something that hit something inside myself and it's really, really true and... liberating, when you fully embrace it. Especially when you are a parent, but also in many other situations. You cannot change the others. You can only change yourself.By changing yourself MAYBE you might influence others - especially kids, by being a virtuous example, and they can decide to follow what you do. But changing people, let alone by arguing, that's impossible and will only cause you frustration.
"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” -- Mahatma Gandhi
Also, attributed to him - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help. When someone asks, the cause and effect reverse. You’re no longer imposing your judgment on someone who never wanted it.
Maybe this is why pull request reviews can become contentious. The reviewer thinks the author is open for feedback while in fact it’s just the widely accepted practice and team/company enfored that you are supposed to give feedback.
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” ― George Bernard Shaw
Why was the title changed? It no longer reflects the original title but did previously
I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.
I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.
"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."
I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.
There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.
Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.
I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.
But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.
> I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support
Naturally. What purpose would arguing for what you support serve anyway? The only value argument can offer is an opportunity for you to take an opposing view and try to defend it in order to challenge your preconceived notions. It is pointless to repeat what you already know and believe is over and over again. You already have that information.
I adopted a behaviour at work that if I am fairly convinced about X ending up being wrong, and I see that trying X is not too costly (esp compared to arguing about it), then I just let X eventually fail, and take it from there, already knowing why this happened.
People seem to learn better this way, and there is no better argument than reality itself. Of course it cannot be used everywhere, eg if trying X until it fails takes too long, if it involves buying an expensive machine that we will not be able to change etc, but there is a good portion of stuff it can actually reduce interpersonal friction on. And the process of changing from X to Z happens organically that sometimes I don't even have to explicitly say that "I knew all along" (though I must admit I derive an internal satisfaction that I knew all along).
It was a time when at work there was a widespread interpersonal tension between everyone, and reducing interpersonal friction was more important than spending more or less time on sth that would not work. I dont think arguing and discussing things are to be avoided per se, but in certain circumstances, if one knows that a team will eventually go down on path Z anyway due to necessity, it may not be worth arguing about at all.
There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":
* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.
* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.
I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.
The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.
> Why did you do it this way?
One thing that I find helps is just avoiding the word "why" as well. Restructuring to say "how come" or "I'm wondering..." or "am I understanding right that..." helps avoid putting people on their guard.
It even works on AIs, interestingly enough.
The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost. Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.
I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.
The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.
I realized many arguments end up not well because we keep focusing on the wrong thing and neglect the question that actually matter: why do you believe in what you believe; asking people to define the terms they use is also helpful and forces them to be precise and think more about their beliefs, which a healthy thing to do. People are often much nicer than we think when we approach them with kindness and they can see in our eyes that we actually care about them and not just winning. Yet at the same time we need to lower our expectations. Because we need to be kind to ourselves, otherwise we would feel too frustrated. I'm talking about daily life arguments. In some online arguments or public debates, sometimes you need to be harsher to protect others from what you claim and believe is wrong.
Reeks of AI prose past the first paragraph or two. I don't need to know a bot's opinion on how to convince others.
Yeah, I also got suspicious and checked it with Pangram. Sadly 100% AI. Perhaps it still has good points, but my heart drops whenever I sniff the AI prose. I can just query Claude or ChatGPT myself, you know?
It turns out AI writes like that because humans write like this. It seemed like AI to me too but when I read all of it, it definitely does not seem like AI anymore, just the style of self help blog post seem a couple decades ago.
Yeah I enjoyed the first bit, then “the one exception” made me go “hey, Claude does this to me all the time” and then it ruined the article for me.
I thought the same thing. I do think the first section was written or at least edited by hand. The rest could've been an email, so to speak.
Yeah, disappointing to see it so highly upvoted. So many tells of AI slop:
> There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic.
> If letting go of the argument sounds like pure loss, here’s the reframe that turns it into a gain.
> The ego is lowered. The defenses are down. The advice lands.
Even if there was some human insight that went into it, the output could be reduced in length by 80+% without any loss of substance.
> Most people don’t reason their way to conclusions and then feel accordingly. They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling.
That is how sales work, if someone is ever interested in increasing sales and one of the pieces of advice that opened my eyes the most. It is like the argument: hey, stop reasoning about features with your potential customer and making them bored: make an impact, something that creates reaction. Good or bad (bad is even better than indifferent sometimes).
Something that provokes emotion. Otherwise they are going to be indifferent.
They are not going to end up buying bc of the features most of the time anyway when there are ten or fifteen similar. They will do it bc you cause some kind of emotional impact, be that trust, authority or something else, though those ones are pretty important.
This is epic: "People Are Not Rational We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Thanks for sharing
Exactly.
C. S. Lewis participated in many arguments about Christianity. He was a professor and had a very good memory (the biography says "total recall") so he was a formidable opponent. Yet he himself wrote in private writings that he never felt himself farther from Christianity than after having won in another such dispute. It was around fifty, I think, when he decided to stop doing that and started to write the first book about Narnia.
Sincere communication is only possible when the ego defenses are down; when ego is vulnerable. Ego is scared of that, so this rarely happens. But this is the only true communication; all the rest are status games. (If you haven't read "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, pick it when you have a chance.)
What's that old saying?
> "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
Due to my odd approach to life, I'm not competitive. Haven't been, for most of my life. It hasn't been a problem.
I always find it fascinating, that folks can't just be good at something; They have to be better than someone else.
I know that it happens, because I see it all the time, but I can't actually understand it.
One point that was not addressed is the sorry feeling one gets when others are wrong and you are right, but for whatever reason you cannot convince them otherwise, and as a consequence they are going to go in a direction that they will severely regret, or would regret if they survived it, entirely foreseeable (sadly).
I have often had to tell myself "I wish they had listened to me." or, not quite "I wish I was wrong", but at least "I regret that I was right." because it led to a situation where someone suffered without objective need for it. Only a jerk would proudly state "Ha, of course I was right, they should have listened to me."
I added this post to my HN favorites.
I experienced myself at least two of those points. In different words:
Never teach to people that did not ask you to teach them. They will not listen to you. They will forget. They will not thank you. Time wasted. As a corollary, I'm sorry for most teachers at school and even at universities.
You can change your mental state. A friend of mine told me about 3 years ago "When X happens I can't change the way I react" and she was not necessarily reacting in a good way. My answer was "Your mental state is the only thing you can control." She stopped talking and started thinking. I don't know if it had an effect. Changing the way one reacts to a stimulus takes time and effort but it can be done.
I once had a manager who was extremely quiet and very good at winning arguments. They too would never argue. Instead they would present themselves in as supportive of a way as possible, and then just ask questions. There was never a point in the questioning where he would declare you made a mistake. Instead, he would just remain silent and maybe write something down. It was astonishing to watch. There was no counter to it. Maybe the clock, but he was persistent too, like Colombo.
This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.
1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.
2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.
One reason TO argue is to seek out opposite points of view, which you can then use to hone your own thinking, including doing a 180.
Yep!
I do it all the time, just to listen to a completely different POV from mine.
It's like the good old trick to get an answer on Reddit:
Create Account #1.
Ask your question.
Wait.
Create Account #2.
Post a confidently wrong answer.
Watch 37 people rush in to correct you.
Absolutely! And if you are seeing out opposite points of view, don’t underestimate the power of being (or appearing to be) ignorant and/or wrong. Of course, the article’s conclusion about just asking questions, instead of trying to contradict, is also a very good way to seek out points of view and also keep people talking, without making them angry or shut down…
Another reason is to refine your point of view, which is most effectively done when it is challenged.
> Once you accept this, arguing with logic starts to look absurd. You’re bringing a proof to a feeling. The proof is airtight. The feeling doesn’t read.
> There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic.
Humans don't write like this. "The feeling doesn't read" is nonsense.
I've met quite a few people who see themselves as rare rational individuals in a world full of irrational, emotion-driven people. In each case, when I've gotten to know them better, I realize they actually have pretty low awareness of their own emotions and are as prone to irrational outbursts as anyone.
Saying something like this signals to me not that you've achieved mastery of your emotions, but rather that you haven't even learned to notice when you're having them.
Or, perhaps you're just an AI operating autonomously and in fact have no emotions, in which case well played for making it to the top of HN and successfully wasting my time.
Tempted to hate this guy but he's probably like, 19? Just starting to learn how humans work but still not aware he is one. Ahh the world, full of humans (always with the pronoun "they" and not "we"), full of ego and totally resistant to being wrong, rejecting my noble and completely egoless resistance to being wrong. As well as my compulsive need to best them in an argument, er I mean nobly rescue them from their ignorance! But sadly they will all have to live their lives first-hand without my help, developing reasons for thinking about certain things in certain ways, as if completely unaware that I was finally born and came to save them from all that!
I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).
If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.
IDK, I’ve had my mind changed on music and art that I saw little value in.
> If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected counterarguments the way I collected patches. I believed that if I just laid out the logic clearly enough, the other person would have no choice but to come around. Truth would win.
This is probably how flat earthers think. If you engage in arguments without being prepared to be proven wrong, and you're hoping people to accept your argument as truth instead of both of you arriving at the truth together, you're not debating, you're being eristic (which is a fancy word I just found).
I would question how effective this would be in any kind of professional engineering setting.
Oh your math is wrong? Well i guess i cant discuss this...
Arguing has negative connotations and conveys the author is bringing up minor quibbles for the sake of being pedantic: "Is the sky blue?" -> "No, the sky is not blue we just perceive it to be that way due to..."
My main complaint of the article, though, is the lack of nuance. Especially amongst complex topics where, maybe the definition of correct is not established, or there are multiple correct/valid interpretations.
See below "The Blind Men and the Elephant" fable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
"I would walk away technically right and completely alone."
Seen many great engineers walk that road right into burnout and then exiting tech all together being fed up.
It's a sad and anti social state that drives people to depression and more sad is the fact that all you really can do is just take it and accept at work things just aren't always logical and correct.
It's more and more, unlikely to lessen as more people enter tech with shallower required upfront knowledge due to more advanced tooling being available to them (more often then not, built by that 'grumpy guy' who quit.)
Try to accept it and have hobby projects you can scratch your real engineering itch with, would be my advice.
In career, I found infrastructure a great place to work in the sense that data wins arguments since the nemesis is physics. In product spaces, I flounder because there is no real data as products depends on people and people can massage data any way they want.
In life, I've learned "don't cast pearls before swine" as you have to understand if someone wants to learn something. I fully accept that I can be wrong, but I look at results I drive and I would like to believe others want similar results. This is far from true since some people just like complaining about problems and doing nothing about it. I don't understand this mindset, at all, but I've come to learn that I will tell what I'm doing, answer questions to the curious, and then stop there.
> I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
There is a certain logic to this. If someone can't reason, there is no point in giving them the truth. You might as well lie to them.
Of course, your ability to assess someone's reasoning depends often on their existing opinions, so there is a circular reasoning here where two sides with the same mindset can each believe the other to be stupid because of their position, and then refuse to engage in good faith discussions.
I don't make a lot of friends this way, but I usually try to just focus on facts no matter what, and do my best to separate the fact that I'm discussing ideas and not people. An idea might be good or bad given a certain situation, but not the people involved.
Some key lines:
> There is no “right” without a “wrong” to make it right
> Once I stopped treating correctness as an absolute, I stopped needing to win.
> Arguments Are About Ego
> They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling
> let people meet their own consequences, because that’s the only teacher they’ll actually listen to.
> when someone [asks], I give everything I have.
> Let people disagree. Their disagreement is where the money, and the meaning, is.
> Every hour spent trying to change someone who didn’t ask is an hour stolen from the one person (yourself) you can change
I am sure each person will extract different lessons here from their walk of life, but as an engineer the lines above are a watershed moment on how to view the world. Engineers are quite intelligent creative people who have big dreams. And sometimes in pursuit of those dreams with a feeling of intelligence we swim in creativity ... and put ourselves in a God-complex. We don't judge humans appropriately when we are in this God-complex.
1. Appreciate the wrong. It is a different way of thinking.
2. Stop trying to win. This is not a fight.
3. Arguments are about ego, but ego is about defending yourself. So arguments are really in self-defense.
4. If someone has more emotion than intelligence at a given moment, ignore their ideas. It doesn't count. It is clouded. This is how women judge between informations. They look at the emotion of the person speaking. The calmest one wins.
5. Some people like making bad decisions because it helps them learn. You can't do anything here.
6. Information provided vs Corrections made: But when someone does not seek information, don't give it. And don't correct someone unless you are their boss.
7. You can't change people... is a lesson I can never understand.
That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.
Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.
And is Claude the one that got frustrated arguing with people? If not, why is Claude the one writing this?
I have tried my best to stop arguing period. I am not the poster boy you want for your cause. I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.
What I do now:
Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.
For example:
I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.
---
Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!
That blog post is technically correct but not very human. To be curious human to me means questioning other people why they believe what they believe and trying to understand their thinking about it. Of course not always there's good place to have such open minded discussion. If one side, or both sides are only talking and not listening to each other it's pointless monologue and waste of time. It's not helpful to state bunch of facts and let the other person "deal with it". As it's pointed out, often people want to just share something and aren't interested to be lectures or have their opinion changed, that can come later with some introspection, when ready. Personally I wouldn't want to talk to someone who thinks they know it all already and are looking only for arguments.
<Many people are ego-driven. Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position. Prove the idea wrong and you haven’t corrected a fact, you’ve attacked a person. So they defend it the way anyone defends themselves: not with reason, but with resistance. The stronger your argument, the harder they dig in.>
Wouldn't it have been easier to say they are idiots? (I guess you needed to explain it, but like you said, it won't help.)
>If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge. The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will. Instead of persuading the skeptic, ship the thing they think is wrong and let reality settle it.
I wonder if victims of religious persecution agree...
Facts do not always win. The evolutionary fitness of an idea is (sadly) not entirely dictated by its truthfulness.
There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.
A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.
- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.
- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.
- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.
- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.
Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.
I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.
It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.
I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.
The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.
This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.
I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.
I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.
I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.
If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.
The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.
Haidt, in his great book "The Righteous Mind," has been arguing that reasoning evolved not to discover truth but to win arguments. There's a lot of scientific research backing his idea.
Haidt's metaphor is the rider and the elephant: the elephant (intuition) leans, and the rider (reasoning) invents the justification afterward and then defends it like a lawyer, not a truth-seeker.
Intelligence doesn't fix this - it just makes people better at coming up with hard-to-defeat arguments; that explains why smart people disagree all the time.
Some reasons I still argue over the internet
- To convince myself. Sometimes I start writing and convince myself I’m wrong. Other times I just move to a more specific opinion or find a stronger justification
- Because sometimes a responder does convince me to change my opinion. Or they provide some interesting related information I didn't know before
- To be a voice of reason in comments mostly by people dumb enough to feel their surface-level opinion is still worth posting. Although obviously I’m only a voice of reason to those who share my opinions, sometimes even I recognize I’m again restating an obvious observation
- To get better at writing and arguing in case one day it does really matter
- Because I’m bored and have nothing better to do. At least it’s more productive than YouTube
I read “how to win friends and influence others” many times but didn’t realize the main lesson is not to argue. That is until I reached 40. So, some lessons will take certain age to understand. I bet the OP is not in their 20s or 30s even.
I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.
This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.
This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.
'Intelligence is what you do when you don't know, -> came up somewhere, I think on LinkedIn but stuck in my head.
There was "It’s Not Enough to Be Right – You Also Have to Be Kind" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21490714
But I think the core part is WHY we want to be right? To prove something to others, or to ourselves? To feel better? As a compulsion? As a gambler's fallacy? Many motivations are less lofty that we dare to admit.
I wasted way to much time arguing online. It was mostly wasted time, and wasted emotions. I mean, I also had many eye-opening and enlightening discussions, but these rarely were fights.
This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.
If both are equally persistent, I’d say the first one to fulfill Godwin's law is the loser.
Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.
The author's argument is hilariously wrong because we've been doing something for thousands of years: teaching.
And it works, to some degree.
And how do teachers teach? They don't start by trying to argue or by trying to prove students wrong. They teach by showing what's fascinating.
Taking the time to show people what's fascinating, what's perplexing, where the tension lies, and how it's resolved, is teaching.
Argument construction in social contexts is ironically ego-driven. Demonstrating something interesting, on the other hand, means asking yourself what what they would find interesting about what you want to tell them.
Teachers teach people who don't know the answer yet. So they aren't wrong when you teach them. They will (gladly) accept the knowledge.
Once they know the answer, it gets more difficult to convince them that the answer they know is incorrect.
This comment is so brutally ironic. Wow.
FWIW I appreciate people like the author's old self. I am one of those who hates and simultaneously appreciates being corrected when I'm mistaken. I hate being mistaken and I appreciate the opportunity to correct the mistake.
While much of what the author says is true, I'm not so cynical as to think that it's impossible to change others.
The fact that you can change yourself — as the author acknowledges — means you can change others, because much of self-change comes from your observation of others. Perhaps it's the approach that matters most.
The ego thing is a spectrum and the most powerful treatment I've experienced so far is watching someone with a substantially larger ego trip operate right in front of me. I think this one of the best possible cures. To see yourself in the proverbial mirror.
If you insist on the ego trip, at least make it about how much of a raging badass you are with the customer. The egos that work backward from the technology are a nightmare to deal with.
It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made. If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.
Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.
Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.
So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.
I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.
Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.
Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.
Arguing without a common goal (objective) is always about personal beliefs (subjective).
I was about to start arguing why I don't agree but then I thought it was better not to :P
What are you, weak? This is what comments are for!
Yeah, state your case. Done.
Thinking that a back-and-forth would eventually result in a "winner" and a "loser" was the way I used to think too.
Throw out your idea (counter-point, whatever) and then leave it for them to accept it or reject it.
“Every conversation not using logic is using emotions instead” - duhh
Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.
I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.
Well look how far ego has taken us
This is very correct.
However, occasionally you’ll see code so bad you need to leave.
You need to lie in your next interview. Your co workers, who are doing such a poor job it’s borderline fraud, are fantastic smart people.
You have a great relationship with your manager who knows the code pretends to do things it actually doesn’t, and tells you the KPIs come first.
But some mean ole man who you’ve never met is trying to lay everyone off.
That’s the only reason to ever quit a job. Pending blameless layoffs.
Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):
1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.
2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.
3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.
4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.
5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.
would you like to argue about this?
Do you know that feeling you feel when you are correct?
Well, it's the exact same feeling as when you are wrong.
This is something that has always stuck with me, and handy to keep in mind when arguing.
Nice quote from Tao Te Ching about complexity and simplicity completing each other.
The rules of go could be explained to a 4 years old. On the other hand, the superficial complexity of so many framworks/systems is just a facade and nothing more.
The same goes for NP-hard problems where complex solutions have trivial verification methods.
Careful with this philosophy. It does work well for the short term. At some point of constant following of 'disagree and commit' mantra, you'll end up in a world where you have zero agency and zero energy to constantly do the work you hate.
Well I think that a proper implementation of "disagree and commit" differs significantly from what's described in the article.
The author seems to be suggesting that rather than discussing technical trade-offs and nuance, you instead ship whatever the other person proposes, even if you believe it is wrong, without going through the discussion.
I always interpreted "disagree and commit", at least in a healthy form, to be more about cases where, after both sides had presented their interpretation of a technical decision and both had understood the other's point of view, they still differed in opinion as to how it should be handled a meaningful way that was unlikely to be resolved from further communication. From there, rather than wasting more time on debating, simply agreeing to disagree, shipping to move on.
The key difference being that you aren't simply accepting whatever is told you, even if you believe it to be blatantly wrong, and silently shipping based on that feedback. You're actually engaging with each other and trying to solve the problem together but not getting locked in intractable arguments.
What OP is proposing seems significantly more toxic and honestly like something I would expect from someone playing corporate politics rather than trying to excel as an engineer.
> It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth, and only speaks when he is questioned.
Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness
I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.
In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.
Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.
I’ve had friends refer to me as a “yes-man”, because I don’t really care where a group of people decide to go to dinner. It’s of little consequence and doesn’t create any negative downstream effects.
At work, when a poor decision means unnecessary work today, and ongoing maintenance for the next 5-10 years, I will oppose these things quite loudly and tell people they are wrong. I don’t see why I’d sign up for 10 years of thankless work I don’t understand without a fight.
"We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."
Well said.
Sometimes, the point of argument is not to convince the ego-driven person you're arguing with, but the others who are watching.
Alternatively I’ve found it beneficial to try and clarify and further elaborate on your “opponents” reasoning. If you’re correct, then you should find the errors in their reasoning; without ever actually having to oppose them (your opponent and their arguments).
I love this bit from the documentary "Behind the Curve (2018)." One of the scientists poses the following question: "What evidence could I show you that would change your position?"
If someone can't answer that, it's probably not worth arguing about.
Mythical place to argue with people:
1. Your anonymous or whatever you say can't be used by another party against you.
2. There is a code of conduct that is strictly held (no interrupting, no ad hominem etc)
3. You can ask for time-outs and think before answering.
4. There is a bank of known knowledge that is considered true, very strict standards, as unbiased as possible, including confidence scales.
5. You are face to face.
> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference
Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.
The author put it very well (with a little ai writing help :-)
I have come to the same conclusion; I saw my own journey in the author’s story.
At work, one of the statements I make to mentees, if asked, and to colleagues, if they lament people not listening to their advice, is this:
You’re only an expert if you’re invited to be one.
This is a way of saying that unsolicited advice is always unwelcome no matter how correct it is.
"I don't really like arguing because everyone wants to convince the other person, and in the end, everyone leaves thinking they have convinced the other person, and no one has changed an inch."
Jean-Luc Godard, 28th May, 1982
I also stopped arguing, I don't waste energy or my focus on random stuff, did happen with the age I think... unless... unless it's my wife or my mum who is wrong. If I think I'm right and they wrong, I will argue with al my energy. Of course!
I never really understood the “Being right is overrated” mindset. It’s easy enough to understand the good of harmony, but that’s not really how I see it used. They’re not really oppositional, a person has to see it that way. And to the extent that cohesion is valuable, that's just built in to a better calculation of right. But saying it this way, I suspect means that the person doing the calculating needs to overstate this cohesion beyond its value. This is a convenient sorta trusim to make a case.
The premise is that there are factors beyond accuracy which are for the greater good. That seems reasonable, but what are they? There are things like peace and happiness, which sound great, but aren’t at odds with accuracy, or more precisely the pursuit of it. This isn’t really a tradeoff. When people frame accuracy as overrated, it seems they’re often obscuring and gliding over that they don’t have a counter argument. There isn’t necessarily one discoverable truth, but there are better hypotheses and more sincere attempts. To the degree, that optimizing for peace and happiness can be a better goal, the measure of those things is typically self-centered. They would be happier. It can be group self-centered too, as in our team would be happier. It’s not a neutral truism, it’s a personal weighing, of the value of the better outcome resulting from right/better/good decision and the desire for (at least surface-level) harmony.
But more important than that, even if the group would be happier, there is the false tradeoff thing. Embedded in “being right isn’t what’s most important” is agreement about what’s right. Why are we unhappy with something more right? Accuracy/truth seems conspired against at a dispositional level in this situation. Disagreement and disharmony are not the same thing. So it’s not even disagreement leading to disharmony. It seems more of a personal desire against either a particular outcome or against disagreement generally. Both questionable. Relatedly, diplomacy is not a bad trait exactly, but I don’t see it as essentially positive. It betrays a lot. It is a kind of tax, which can be worth it up to a point (there is value in the internal functioning of the group), but probably not as often as the truism has it play out. Something should be questioned when a person/team diverges so much from better/accurate/right.
The idea of picking your battles makes a form of self-centered sense, while also making a (I think large) form of nonsense outside it. There are many forms of dissent that occur before cussing or violence, it is much different to (1) disagree, (2) disagree, but go along, (3) disagree, but say you agree, (4) disagree, but convince yourself to agree for harmony (and perhaps eventually forget that you disagree). A phrase I’ve come to dislike is “I wouldn’t die on that hill”. People should defend, if not die on, more hills. It also might recruit others. We have all these hills that have been ceded because we weren’t willing to say we liked them.
Everyone believes they are right until they are shown otherwise. What matters most is not just what you say, but how you say it.
as they say it wastes your time and annoys the pig
That’s funny, I thought you were referring to the Shaw quote [1], I had never heard that one from Heinlein.
[1] “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
Never wrestle with a pig; you both get muddy, and the pig's enjoying himself.
There was a standup bit I saw recently guy says '"how to win an argument, you just say "I'm gonna stop you right there"' and then don't say anything
> I wanted to keep getting better. And the only door to that is the one ego keeps slamming shut.
Koan to the author: What was never lost can never be found.
Just stop arguing with your family or friends about politics and religion, not worth it.
Lately I think I only argue when I know I will get something about it...
I think that there are times as a leader\supervisor\co-worker\parent\coach where you might argue despite knowing you won't change the outcome simply to show that you are willing to fight for those you represent.
There is also some value it stating your beliefs about something going in the wrong direction. Maybe not a full blown argument, but putting it out there so when things eventually fail and blow up, there are no stones cast in your direction for not speaking up earlier. Just be careful to avoid the, “I told you so,” which is also off-putting.
I realized long ago that this is a complete waste of time and now I'll usually only argue with people for (blood) sport and love of the game but only if I feel like it.
This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.
Good, useful reflections. Thanks for putting these together and out
Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
Identifying the market is also important. There's the free market of capitalism. Then there are the other powers even in that market that can still say you're wrong, such as regulators, governments, politics, violence, etc.
If you're looking for an outcome, you still need to assess the circumstances that can generate that outcome, even if the author has identified one particular strategy that people often get wrong and one possible alternative.
bah, bait.
> You Can Only Change Yourself
This is a good reason to argue with people! Forcing yourself to look critically at your own positions via debate is a key self-improvement method. Simply not engaging and never having a back-n-forth is no way to improve. Feedback, critical self-evaluation, and more feedback.
Ofc, that's not encouragement to flame people on the internet or in-person.
The irony is hopefully not lost on anyone that an article about how the author stopped arguing is a list of points as to why arguing is wrong.
I feel like I just read a complete subchapter of the bible. Impressive writing. Keep it up.
This is still about being right or wrong. About people and not ideas, otherwise there would be no issue in the first place, there would just be the duty and the acceptance.
Just as I know there is no such thing as bug-free code, I know that I am always wrong, in one way or another.
— Lao Tzu said this too, 2,500 years ago. In chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching:
True words are not fine-sounding; Fine-sounding words are not true.
The good man does not prove by argument; The he who proves by argument is not good.
One can argue without being argumentative. The latter is poor form, but there are many benefits to the former.
Worth knowing which hills to die on and having a strategically chosen intention that is not rooted in ego. Ego is the enemy.
What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.
At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.
The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.
Makes sense.
I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.
A good puzzle for political philosophers: how do you build a decent system of government in a world where people to not listen to reasoned arguments?
> Help people when they explicitly ask for help.
And then you encounter the askhole.
Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes
You get to see the other side's perspective and how their views shape their inner world.
You don't know what events they had experienced that caused them to shape those views.
Just smile, nod and agree :)
This is one of the core principles of How To Win Friends And Influence People (Dale Carnegie). Since Ive read I tried to apply this rule. It works.
That's true, and avoiding (direct) argument may well be the #1 takeaway in How to Win Friends And Influence People.
I read it in my early 20s and at that time my main takeaway, as I recall, was to (paraphrasing), "carefully plant the evidence, thus making the conclusion something the audience comes to on their own (they 'think of it' themselves)".
In entrepreneurship, this was slightly dangerous to me, since I immediately started implementing this successfully. Before long, I (apparently) took "credit" for "my idea" (that I successfully got the audience to see, oh so carefully), whereas audience thought that we "came up with it together"!
Oy vey! So, a word to the wise. I now subscribe to more of a "plain honesty but with tact" approach.
Arguably attributed to Keanu Reeves (I choose to believe it is):
“I’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.”
Thinking human is rational is a highly irrational belief.
people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).
of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.
I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .
adjacent take: seek out people who don't mind being wrong & who see it as contribution when you can help them understand something better
While I like the article there are way too many telltale signs of AI writing. I'm sure the author expresses his direction but I'm just so tired of reading articles where AI has done most of the work. I want to hear from humans, grammar and spelling and punctuation mistakes and all.
I think the main point of the article is sound, the idea that arguing with people puts you in an adversarial position with the person, even if you think you are debating the merits of the ideas.
This is frustrating to those of us who are focused on the project or the task - to try and find the best way to do something and come at the conversation from a place that feels like logic, and be met with ego and emotion.
But I think the overall conclusion lacks subtlety. I don’t think the best response is to disengage completely, then say “I told you so” and/or swoop in to profit off of the mistake.
So yes, recognizing that you also have an ego and can benefit from feedback but just take it a little further. Ask clarifying questions about why their solution is better, come from a place of collaboration rather than competition. Have them explain why their solution is better and once it’s clear you are collaborating, voice your concerns and weight the pros and cons together.
I know this is a simplistic version of how these conversations actually happen, but it’s an example of the fact that you can make more progress by recognizing some subtlety.
It's really simple: do argue, but not to win, to understand.
Right/Wrong is almost useless in 2026+
People will know they are wrong, but if they are supporting a friend's case or boss's they will choose them over you (naturally) even if you can definitively prove them wrong. There's upside and often no downside to being wrong or even outright lying in some cases, so people do it.
People will know 1 of the 4 in the group is right, but they don't want to be outnumbered or cast in an unfavorable light, so they will all choose the "wrong" stance on purpose, to be more socially accepted.
100% of people in a conversation can know that 1 person is right, but because nobody likes that person, nobody will agree with them.
You might be right a lot but that isn't going to help you win any arguments. It nearly means nothing. You get from a group what you negotiate with the group, and short of showering everyone in $100 bills daily nobody is going to worship you for anything, especially not "being right a lot". You're better off being conventionally attractive rather than conventionally intelligent (when it comes to easy social acceptance).
Furthermore, there are so many battlefields, so many arguments to lose, you'll eventually (hopefully) find a better use of your time!
Honestly, one of my colleagues said it best.
"Do you want friends? Or do you want to be right?"
Sometimes there really is no glory on those hills you die on.
I stopped arguing with people, so I started arguing with the whole internet instead :)
Good read and good breakdown. I feel like this is where I am in my journey is letting that roll off.
> Sometimes I won on points and lost the person.
So, so true. Not worth it.
i would like to point out the irony that people are arguing about this in the comments.
my life has gotten so much better when i actively don't engage in arguments. especially when i know i'm right.
of course it's easier said than done but growth is a long road.
A few months ago I came to this same conclusion. I watched this YouTube video[1] that argued needing to be right and thinking we can save people is our own ego at work. It helped me realize why I felt anger towards people I cared about deeply, not seeing what's obviously to me the RightThing™ to do; I think I can save everyone.
Also see this video[2], which extrapolates on the types of people you shouldn't try to save. Gives pointers on how to deal with narcissists (both videos use AI-generated imagery and narration, which I typically despise but I had both playing in a background tab so I didn't have to see it at least).
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TspV1odsXo
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTMj28NS7to
This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.
The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.
> The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.
Setting aside a few levels of irony in arguing with arguers on arguing, I think there are multiple framings for arguments. Things go off the rails all the time when neither party is aligned on what kind of argument the current one is.
Programmers and engineers tend to carry around this worldview that every conversation is about correct information or future decision-making, but everyone is operating on different planes. God help you if you go into an argument with the spouse implicitly about acknowledging how your actions made them feel armed with facts and logic about how this is irrelevant because the problem is solved or there is no new action to take.
"There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic."
AI Slop
My same thought, precisely. Funny how certain expressions are now toxic telltale sign.
They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.
Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."
Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."
(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)
You can be correct, but on different axis.
You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.
You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.
I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.
This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.
Another to put it, is how Dan Saks from C++ fame puts it.
> "If you remember one thing, it's this: if you are arguing, you are losing."
LLM-generated slop. Please don't post wastes of our time like this
I'm not sure if it's all LLM-generated or not, but I sat up and pointed like the DiCaprio meme when I read:
"If letting go of the argument sounds like pure loss, here’s the reframe that turns it into a gain."
I like this post as it landed at a really good time for me. But, I had a remaining question based on one of the lines:
>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.
So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ the kinds of folks the author is describing here? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.
This ASCII character '|' is a bar.
This is some high level hard earned wisdom.
A lot of the theoretic today and the 'logic' behind it bears strong resemblance of as it were from a cult follower. Reasoning doesn't really work as a argument.
There have been many books written on cults written by reputable people and some are even on youtube talking about this.
I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational ego-driven people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.
It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!
I'll apply my vast intellect to solving this riddle.
"Argumentation" is one of the necessary rhetorical modes. You cannot escape it altogether in human interactions since it is central to conflict resolution and negotiation. The key is to understand psychology/sociology of both oneself/others along with rational approaches and know when to emphasize one over the other.
For some background see;
1) List of Cognitive Biases - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
2) List of Fallacies - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
3) Modes of Discourse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_discourse
4) Argumentation Scheme - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_scheme
5) Conflict resolution - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution
6) Negotiation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation
>Everything exists only in relation to its opposite
The fuck? Words mean things. The moon does not exist because the Sun exists. And what about Earth? It doesn't have an opposite, therefore it has no way to exist? If this is the logic you're going to use in an argument, you did the right thing by stopping.
the main pieces that i had to truly understand in order to recognize and stop most online arguing were:
1) performativeness. if the person responding to you is performing for other readers rather than having a genuine good-faith discussion with you, just move on. i still catch myself being performative sometimes and it grosses me out when i recognize it lol.
2) real world vs online behaviors. if someone is an asshole in the real world, we just wouldnt talk to them. not sure how we've convinced ourselves that online is different. if someone refuses to take the time to respond in a socially normal way, then why would you take the time to respond? if they wont take the time to be social, why would you?
little ass kids learn this shit in like kindergarten. if someone is a dick, no one is friends with them. if my friends and i are in a bar and some random is being an asshole, we dont "debate" them, we move on. again, tiny children learn this shit lol.
3) real people whose opinions you care about. make a list. when i did it, it turned out to be less than 20. the people on your list are the only people you should feel any obligation towards. not randoms on the internet. dont spend your valuable time/energy/mental arguing with random internet assholes. your list of real people are the only ones you should feel any obligation towards because if you value them, they likely value you opinions as well.
4) good faith. you'll know in one or two responses if the person replying is there in good-faith. if they're not, move on.
5) knowledge peers. its ok to recognize that someone is not on the same knowledge level as you in a topic. whether they know more or know less, either way, its ok. if we're lucky we are experts in one or two topics and dipshits in most topics. accept that fact. i know this is tough in our industry, we are overflowing with people who think they're smarter than they are. its ok to recognize that the other person is not your knowledge peer on the topic and adjust accordingly: up, down, or out.
6) conversation vs debate. if someone doesnt recognize there is a vast difference between normal conversation and debate, dont waste your time. honestly, they're typically gross to engage with.
and of course, find real world hobbies. once you have the hobby, it naturally becomes "why would i argue with this dickbag online when i could be doing something way more fun."
As others have discussed, people argue for many reasons, ego being one of them.
I didn't really understand this. I grew up before the internet, and I have ADHD, which essentially means I have limited working memory.
One of my compensatory strategies for this is to have a fairly comprehensive world model at the ready in long-term memory.
If you told me something that contradicts my mental model, I might argue, in order to figure out whether I need to update my model or not.
The argument between someone ego-driven operating on a motte-and-bailey basis, and someone who just truly wants to understand, but won't let it go because they feel they need to understand, gets ugly quickly.
Fortunately, I'm older, my model doesn't need to change as often, I'm better at discriminating about things I care about or that are irrelevant, and, of course, I can always disengage with "that's interesting; I'll have to research it" and go down a rabbit hole on the internet if what they are saying doesn't seem to make a lick of sense.
I will say that the need to be right -- not the need to lord it over others, or the need to prove I'm right -- has probably helped my programming career immensely.
The burning desire to be right can be completely orthogonal to giving a shit about whether others think you're right or not, or giving a shit about others when they're wrong and it doesn't adversely affect you.
> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.
This seems more true for the author than everyone else.
They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.
While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.
The whole article is AI slop.
I don't know, arguing gives me kind of a high, even when my position is weak. I don't go out of my way to argue (especially about politics) but if you bring up a point I oppose, I don't stay quiet.
The next level up is the payoff, the incentives like taleb tripe
I don't argue hard because I could be wrong.
So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.
You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.
Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics
That sounds like an endlessly toxic workplace. Or maybe you're the toxic one if that's your experience everywhere you go.
Not much about being correct or incorrect, but I recalled myself in a meeting looking at the issue on the screen suggesting "at least leave a typo so it doesn't look auto generated right off the bat". I got laid off that year.
Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics
Three things you never discuss at work: Religion, politics, and The Great Pumpkin.
I interpret all posts online to be micro-essays intended to sway the multitude of anonymous readers in some way. When I argue with a post, I am not in dialogue with the poster, not really; I am working to counteract the first micro-essay's sway with my own ideas.
Kantian ethics indicate that it would be unethical for me to allow posts I consider harmful in sway to remain unargued. I am fighting for truth or what I think should be truth.
Do we care that 100% of this writing was generated with AI?
Your comment is also potentially being downvoted with AI. Crazy times we live in.
everything being ai is the only reason i stopped arguing hard. because as somebody else today put it, there are notable signs of widespread coordinated activity intended to skew the noise to signal ratio. i see it everywhere on the net nowadays, bots hammering hard on the most minor percievable conflict. this behaviour is technically a simulacrum of real human activity - it closely mimics the training set of reddit comments. but what im seeing is insane amounts of toxicity more than ive ever seen on the net. not worth giving an inch anymore.
> Sometimes I won on points and lost the person. More often I won nothing at all: I’d watch someone grow more certain of the very thing I had just disproven, while the room quietly drifted to their side. I would walk away technically right and completely alone.
This is why debating is taught in school in the Netherlands (and I'm sure other countries, too). Winning an argument is not the same as convincing someone they were wrong: that's something you need to learn how to do and then something you need to actively practice with others.
Just having good arguments makes you a dick. Having good arguments and being able to empathize with the opposition's and conceding their position on any merit, while showing there's a solution that'd they'd prefer even if they don't know that yet, makes you someone helpful and trustworthy.
How do I pass this to coworkers without coming off as passive aggressive? Because this article pretty much sums up what adds a lot of stress for me currently.
I would rather sit alone in truth than with a million friends in fiction.
I don't think we need to disengage in debate with everyone. That said, you have to know if you're talking to someone who's willing to reason, and you have to be open to their reasoning as well. There is absolutely no sense in contradicting the opinion of an irrational person who has made their beliefs part of their core identity. That person will hate you for showing them the truth, no matter how clear.
He did not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQlyUjp3vM
Because we only paid for the 5 minute argument, and our time is up?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQlyUjp3vM
More like why people stopped engaging with someone who could never admit that they might be wrong.
I used to think, when I disagreed with someone, we were on a journey together to find out what the truth is. Maybe my understandng was wrong, maybe theirs, maybe it's something neither of us thought of.
But then I realized that most people don't think that way. It's more important to not be alone than to know the truth, and people tie their individual identity to their group identity - if a fact contradicts their group identity's approved list of observances, they'll take it as a personal attack. So I just say 'ok' now.
I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.
Been there, done that. Found it quite relatable. It was a great read.
Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .
The 4 hour work week isn’t life
I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /
the author is 100% correct. this is why i find it pointless to debate politics and social issues with most people. far too often people are not arguing for an idea, they are arguing to defend something that has become their identity and it is fused with their ego.
I like to think that I change my mind based on evidence, but the more I battle test my ideas in a specific thesis, the less reluctant I am to give it up, and prefer to see a synthesis incorporating the new arguments.
Often though, I find the arguments are things I have already heard before and either incorporated or debunked - either way they do not affect my positions.
https://magarshak.com/blog/why-im-confident-in-my-views/
As for strawmen like “well that’s not true of ALL cases” (I never said it was) or “that’s whataboutism”, those are just bad argumentation:
https://magarshak.com/blog/whataboutism-considered-harmful/
Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.
> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.
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re: the content
You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.
> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.
This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.
Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.
Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.
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The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.
well said
My new approach is mimicking AI in an obvious way with a fourth wall break to show self awareness about a behavior pattern I avoid
“You’re absolutely right! And you know what - Haha this is how girls want me to talk to them - you know what, thats brave!”
I removed myself from Facebook years ago because of all the toxic arguments about politics - almost entirely whataboutism and name calling. I've recently rediscovered Facebook and came up with a little game: sit back, watch all the political arguments, and take a drink every time someone concedes a point (not the whole argument, just a single point), as in, "Shit, you're right. I didn't realize that." I'm probably gonna quit soon because it's been around 2 months and I haven't taken a single drink.
> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.
But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.
There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.
The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.
> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.
Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.
And do others care more now? Who gives a shit?
lol so humble he writes a humble brag blog post.
I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s
Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.
I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.
One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?
This is a bizarrely anti-democratic. "Winning" isn't the important part of discussing a topic with multiple points of view.
Do you believe all points of view are equally valuable?
democracy demands that a drooling idiot gets to have equal say as any genius with his vote. since there are far more drooling idiots than geniuses we can easily see why democracy has typically been so dystopian, and only seems to get worse over time.
maybe you should educate us as to why democracy like this belongs in professional settings where efficiency and correctness determine outcome and profit/ job security.