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.
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.