If you're in a field where Things Have To Get Done, stopping every few words to make sure nobody's getting their feelings hurt is a cost with very little benefit, other than airy and nebulous principles like "inclusivity." Not to mention you will never--and I mean never--get people of a certain temperament to go along with an ever-changing set of rules designed to inflict zero emotional distress. And the people of that temperament are very likely to be in technical roles.
I mean, you can want it to be different, but you might as well want the sky to rain cheese.
And it's not really hard to be respectful:
>"That's a stupid idea"
versus
>"That idea simply will never work"
identical information transfer, same amount of time taken, simply subtracting the implicit disrespect.
As someone who works in academia (physics no less), IMO the problem is that some people are complete fucking arseholes because for some reason being a complete fucking arsehole in academia is accepted, and the problem is not that some people are sensitive. It's actually not hard to be nice. It's mostly just stuff you learned as a child. I don't accept that being a bit of a cunt makes you a better physicist or makes a team more productive. Having said that working in academia has certainly thickened my skin. I've worked with some legendarily awful wankers in my short time. I don't get phased any more, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
> versus
> >"That idea simply will never work"
The second seems much much worse than the first to me. Why would you say that an idea will simply never work? Maybe it will and you made a mistake? Makes you sound like an ass. With the first you make it clear that the idea is dumb, but you aren't saying that the idea will never work, so maybe it still will work? It gives the signal that maybe you should think it through again, but doesn't completely dismiss the value of your work like the second.
Stupid things still works from time to time. Why are you so dismissive here? Can't you try to be a bit more understanding of people and ideas and your own ability to sometimes fail to recognize potential things? Sometimes you are stupid in the moment like that. Sometimes the whole world is stupid and failed to recognize a great idea.
Being aware of that and saying it anyway, I would personally use it as a teaching moment. If they seemed to quietly accept my words as a truth handed down from an authority instead of as a challenge to a (potential) peer, I'd point out that as a scientist they should have asked me "why".
It mainly and generally comes down to relationships and communication. Anyone who doesn't understand what I mean when I say a thing, anything, can't be relied on to be my pupil. However, they can usually be taught. That doesn't excuse me from not ensuring I've been understood in the first place, but it's far less taxing to expect others to attempt to become accustomed to your meanings when your brain is needed for other things than it is to twist your view of reality so that RightSpeak is the only acceptable method of communication.
I've never understood why some people seem to hate it when I say this, there's an idiom where I'm from that "some people would rather coat the world in leather than wear moccasins". Communication veganism is such a destructive idea if you've ever actually taken the time to consider it, but it doesn't seem to stop people from trying.
> but it's far less taxing to expect others to attempt to become accustomed to your meanings when your brain is needed for other things than it is to twist your view of reality so that RightSpeak is the only acceptable method of communication
What you mean like the stuff your mum and dad taught you when you were 4 years old and requires zero conscious effort because you should be polite to people by default anyway? Good heavens... what a terrible burden! The cross you those RightSpeakers make you bare! Tyranny! Is shitting in a toilet and not in your pants also a great burden for you?
I think better communication us skip your general assesment of validity and form the objections you have to the idea as your questions about the idea.
Or just say "it's stupid" if you are in a hurry and don't care about offending the person but don't expect great interactions in the future.
Ah, I see what you did there.
How different is this from “it’s stupid”? Or is there an approved list of ideas one may call nonsense, stupid, or braindead?
If Things Have To Get Done, why waste time making an insulting judgement instead of simply getting to the point?
Why not? Because they'll throw tantrums, whining about how it's just so unfair that they can't call people stupid? Too bad. They can suck it up and do their jobs- a part of which is effective communication- or they can leave.
That being the key thing here. They won't throw tantrums--that's pretty much the exclusive domain of the sorts of people who want to control how people speak--but they will just go elsewhere. Or stop mentoring people, because it's more trouble than dealing with thin-skinned people.
Interestingly, I'm not suggesting that people have to be brusque or short. The sort of person who demands speech codes is the sort who will brook no personal interactions other than the perfectly harmless and anodyne, which seems pretty authoritarian to me. Quite a few of the technically minded do not care for authoritarianism, and they tend to be way out on the right tail of the Bell curve. You lose those at your risk.
The whole point of the article was a man's journey to understand Feynman's personal definitions of words, which were based on how he thought and understood problems. Knocking all the sharp corners from interpersonal communications means you value conformity over diversity of thought. That seems a poor tradeoff to me.
See what I mean?
> Not to mention you will never--and I mean never--get people of a certain temperament to go along with an ever-changing set of rules
In a community that embraced NPM, Gulp, Grunt, Webpack, and god knows what else in a span of 10 years?
> we teach children the "sticks and stones" bromide because it's true.
We tell them that because tackling bullying is too hard. And it makes us feel better when we verbally lash out at our children ("It's not like I'm really hurting them!").
Whatever tech you work on, I guarantee you it's filled with incomprehensible, arbitrary rules, and weird edge cases that make no sense to someone outside your field.
> And also not giving a shit — especially if it’s only verbal — deprives bullies of their get-offs, which is a good thing.
And we all know how children (and, indeed, all human beings on the face of the earth) are famed Zen masters, capable of controlling their emotional responses perfectly.
Also it's utter horseshit that ignoring a bully makes them go away. I don't know where you got that idea from. A bully escalates until they get a response or whatever else they want from you; a casual reading of history would teach you that. You either have to fight off a bully (or at least inflict enough damage to make it not worth their while), have an authority figure intervene, or the bully has to change from within.
> Or you propose to reeducate all bullies overnight, maybe in specialized facilities like, ehm, concentration camps?
Ah Godwin's law strikes again.
It definitely is. I resent every bit of it. Every time someone points at those edge cases and how they are unfixable here and how this other tech has fixed it and forgotten about it decades ago, I feel real bad, like my teeth are being pulled.
But there is one crucial bit of my tech I prefer: it usually doesn't put you onto a maintenance treadmill wherein if you fail to keep up with the ecosystem for a month, random bits of your application start falling off.
> And we all know how children (and, indeed, all human beings on the face of the earth) are famed Zen masters, capable of controlling their emotional responses perfectly.
How dare you replace my strawmen with strawmen of your own!
But then, I'm in favor of burning this candle from both ends: yes, you need to be able to stand up for yourself; also, bitter words shouldn't be things that incapacitate you and get you into depression. I guess none of us are born with this skill, but it sure can be learned.
Also, there are bullies and there are bullies, so some will fuck off once you show you're not that easy a target, so you only get to fight the few nastiest ones. Hopefully it's a duck the size of a horse problem vs two dozen duck-sized horses problem.
It's not the word count, it's the density of meaning.
Fortunately, nobody is saying to stop every few words to confirm the consent of your interlocutor, so that's just a stupid fucking straw man, isn't it?
> other than airy and nebulous principles like "inclusivity."
Ah, I see. You're one of those people on a perpetual crusade against "political correctness" (funnily enough, an airy and nebulous principle!)
> If you're in a field where Things Have To Get Done
Man I work in academia, so I assure you I've met a million guys of your type. Guys who are oh-so smart and oh-so intelligent (as per their own assessment of course) and have a planet-sized ego, who think they are so above the riffraff and their attention is oh-so important that they don't even owe their colleagues the courtesy of basic manners.
Nope, sorry, you're not so special that you can't say "I think that's a bad idea [because X]" instead of "That's stupid [because of X]".
Excuse me the brashness of my post, but hey, I'm trying to correspond to your desired level of discussion :)
I work in a field where Things Have TO Get Done. We pride ourselves on directness, honesty, and precision. NONE OF THOSE THINGS REQUIRE YOU TO BE A DICK. You don't use words like "stupid". You phrase your criticism surgically to be specific about the idea and not the person.
Too many people don't want to learn social graces and use the excuse that they are just efficient direct and honest to justify being a dick.
I'd rather be happy letting people go than chasing some elusive target in the name of political correctness. Sooner or later, I will either end up being miserably alone or with enough smart people who just get things done. I think this risk is worth taking.
Maybe some fragile snowflakes should just get over their hysterical emotional need to feel comfortable, and focus on doing real work and getting stuff done. But by the same token, maybe some assholes should get over their pathetic emotional need to belittle others, and stick to what contributes to the work.
There is a principle for robustly implementing computer communication protocols called Postel's law: be conservative in what you output, be liberal in what you accept. I think the principle applies equally well to human communication protocols.
Also, it's possible to have smart people and a failure culture and fail. If people are afraid of posing their ideas because they think they will be shot down as "stupid", that damages your culture.
I could probably work with you and not mind you calling my work stupid if you could also back it up. Learn something every day, you know.
How very 1940's of you, is it really that inconvenient for you to be considerate?
Andrew Neyman: But is there a line? You know, maybe you go too far and discourage the next Charlie Parker from ever becoming Charlie Parker?
Terence Fletcher: No, man, no. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.
I am convinced Fletcher's attitude is not only morally right, but factually correct. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire.
I’m all for throwing many kinds of words around when working with peers. Once there’s a significant power difference, ouch. Unless you know each other so well you can safely assume you’re both above it.
However, unless one is used to this frank style of communication, I'm sure it can be off-putting.
Moreover, context matters a lot with language style. One can't just lift Feynman's way of talking, transplant it somewhere else and expect it to be effective.
To say something is "stupid" is to say that's it's the product of unintelligent thinking. Somebody calling my idea "stupid" may not be saying that I'm universally stupid, but they're at least saying that I was momentarily stupid to suggest that idea. Same thing if you call my idea "retarded" or "idiotic", or conversely, "smart" or "clever".
The argument could be made that we should all be rational beings of pure logic, incapable of taking personal offense or being emotionally slighted or discouraged by such judgements. But we're not. And if we were, we would also be capable of limiting our output to objective conclusions such as "that won't work" rather than subjective judgements such as "it was foolish to suggest that it could".
Which is exactly why it is fine to call an idea stupid. Everyone knows that people are fallible, so they know that your idea can be stupid without you being stupid. You taking that personally is stupid though, as it implies you think it is possible to be infallible.
Not necessarily. There are social environments where things aren't said directly, but rather communicated through choice of words, body language and actions. People can make their thoughts abundantly clear without saying them directly, and some would expect you to understand even if they don't communicate it directly.
Figuring out if a person/group says things directly or indirectly is part of the code. It's not necessarily about insecurity. Even a person secure in their own abilities can benefit from understanding when people communicate heavily between the lines.
"That's stupid" is referring to something being stupid, not someone. You need to invent additional context to interpret this differently.
What I meant is that people don't only ever say you're stupid by super-directly saying "you're stupid". "That's stupid" is not a big leap. Yes, context is key to interpretation.
- That's stupid
It's clearly talking about the idea. No one says "That's X" when referring to someone. When someone shows me a painting and I say "That's beautiful", I'm obviously referring to the painting, right?
Similarly, if you come up with an idea and someone tells you it's stupid, you might conclude (especially if it's a recurring pattern) that they don't think you are very smart. If that is not the conclusion they wanted you to come to, it is on them for not communicating better
Saying that a particular painting is bad does not imply that everything that person has painted is bad.
No, but I think the choice of adjective is important. Suppose instead of saying "That's a beautiful painting" I said "That's a masterful painting".
The sentence structure is the same. The adjective is still modifying "painting". I'm still saying the painting is good. But the word I chose more directly implies a judgement of the artist: I am describing the painting as the product of a master painter.
I get the same impression from hearing "stupid idea". Stupid is a description of intelligence, thinking ability, aptitude: attributes which lie with the idea's originator, not with the idea itself.
Nobody is grinding away at anything, perhaps other than yourself. It seems many people here are mystified by your unyielding interpretation of a two word sentence and nobody can seem to get a straight answer out of you, other than repeating the truism that "it's not obvious".
Or is a bad pass, like a the bad idea thrown out there, just that?
blitzar: what the fuck is wrong with you, smcl, that's two goals you've cost us because you lost your man
and
blitzar: for fuck's sake, smcl, focus, watch #11 he's killing us with those runs. we're not out of the game but you need to step it up
are two ways you as a teammate could probably admonish me for costing our team a couple of goals. Both involve swearing, both are blunt and establish some fault. One is useless ranting, and will probably heap misery on the teammate and make them wish for the final whistle. The other is relatively productive and could possibly help (depending on how useless or hungover I am). So it depends, if by "called out" you mean something like #1 then I strongly disagree. If it's #2 then cool, I'd like you as a teammate :)
But on that original topic, I think that when someone says they think "that's a stupid idea" is unconstructive or damaging, it doesn't mean they want to be coddled, given a treat and told they're special. It just means that's a needlessly confrontational approach. If that person at the top of this thread is really on the same wavelength with some people that they can openly talk like that, more power to them. But I suspect what's actually happening is a handful of students were talking that way, and most people secretly resented it and didn't enjoy being around them because of how they acted.
Then again, if it's coming from Feynmann I imagine there's something in the tone, delivery or context that would soften the blow :)
What prevented the author taking this to heart? "In the next breath, he would always be encouraging me to try a different approach and inviting me to return when I made progress."
The appropriate takeaway is that when you call someone's ideas stupid, that does make them feel stupid unless you counteract it with positive feedback in the same conversation.
I’ve read both his biographic books multiple times, read into the Feynman Lectures and watched many an interview and other stuff with and about him.
If I’d ever gotten to meet him (he’s a top candidate on my “if you could have dinner with any person, living or dead” list) and he’d have called an idea of mine stupid, I’m pretty sure that my reaction wouldn’t have been to be hurt. I would have hoped for him to explain to me why it’s stupid or give me a hint on where to look to find out for myself. Context matters. Character matters.
Don’t call people stupid. Don’t call things (or ideas) stupid unless you can explain what’s stupid about the thing or idea and why.
If you’re passionate about something, try to appreciate when someone tells you, without euphemism, why it won’t work.
If anyone has an idea on how one could get to travel back and meet him, we can find out together why it’s stupid. Or “impossible” :)
If someone doesn't know "stupid" is code for "that idea is stupid" and not "you are stupid", it isn't a very effective communication mechanism.
People are complex, and it is not helpful to assume everyone should just go about their day to day as an emotionless robot. I mean, you can assume that, but unless you're a CEO or a famous Professor, you'll just be thought of as an asshole to be avoided.