I misspoke above, the conversation was much broader, encompassing not just fundamental attribution errors, but ~all errors and imperfections.
> FWIW, I think there's a good chance banning the fundamental attribution error would have no good effects.
It's possible, but it's also possible that it could have good effects - or, sometimes good effects, sometimes none, like most any other of the guidelines.
> And the human tendency to defensiveness probably means that if someone else tells us "you're doing this," we'll come up with all sorts of plausible reasons why we're not.
No doubt about it - once again, you could say the same thing about the other guidelines. My thinking is: just as the existing guidelines can be used as justification for punishment when broken, and set ~aspirations for behavior, is it possible that the list may not be perfect? Might certain other guidelines (or functionality) make HN even better? Dang's claim is that it is not possible, but this is a prediction of the future, and the future is unknown (or so people say, but only sometimes).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27581414
I misspoke above, the conversation was much broader, encompassing not just fundamental attribution errors, but ~all errors and imperfections.
> FWIW, I think there's a good chance banning the fundamental attribution error would have no good effects.
It's possible, but it's also possible that it could have good effects - or, sometimes good effects, sometimes none, like most any other of the guidelines.
> And the human tendency to defensiveness probably means that if someone else tells us "you're doing this," we'll come up with all sorts of plausible reasons why we're not.
No doubt about it - once again, you could say the same thing about the other guidelines. My thinking is: just as the existing guidelines can be used as justification for punishment when broken, and set ~aspirations for behavior, is it possible that the list may not be perfect? Might certain other guidelines (or functionality) make HN even better? Dang's claim is that it is not possible, but this is a prediction of the future, and the future is unknown (or so people say, but only sometimes).