I think the biggest challenge is the format of internet dialog is conducive to argument that it leads people to forget or skip other modes of conversation.
If I asked for help with a problem and someone tried to argue with me, I would think they are toxic and look for help elsewhere. I didn't ask for help because I was looking for a fight.
The Socratic method and debate is good if you want to find the errors in your thinking. But I'm not trying to philosophically debug my thought processes and world view. I just want to fix a damn program.
(Disclaimer: I'm explicitly not thinking up circumstances, tone, gestures or anything else not included in that short snippet. Obviously. It's well possible same exact words spoken in different contexts or with different tone or body language may have quite opposite meanings.)
Yes, there are better responses. But it's definitely not a "well, that sucks and you're wrong, go try some more" either.
Many internet forum conversations take the form of arguing or debate. That is to say, the goal is getting to the bottom of a dispute showing someone that they are wrong (or learning that you are).
People who do this often fall into the habit of defaulting to this mindset and goal in conversations where this is not the purpose.
"no way, it must work" is a non-optimal but perfectly valid conversation starter. The problem is when there isnt follow up on the real point of the conversation (helping dad), because they treated the interaction as an argument to be won.
>My dad told me that he wants to dabble in programming, but MySQL isn’t compatible with his laptop. My response? "Yeah there’s no way that’s true. MySQL will work on anything." Instead of taking a look at this laptop and working on the problem with him, I just told him that he's wrong and he doesn't know what he's doing (basically).
The other example is even more telling:
>my ex-girlfriend once told me that hospitals can’t require their staff to wear N95 masks at all times -- only regular masks. I immediately said "I don’t believe that. They can probably do whatever they want." Instead of being empathetic toward a nurse after a 12-hour shift, I was more concerned over hospital policy.
The ex-girlfirend isnt looking for a spirited argument or debate after a long day. They dont care about who is right or wrong, or getting to the factual bottom of things. The author is dragging this mindset into a conversation where it is unwanted and doesn't belong.
Sure but there's way to say something that may hurt someone... even if you don't intend to.
I think it's something that happens more on the web as we forget there's someone on the other side.
> Also, it may turn out this is a weird corner-case and MySQL is somehow incompatible with his laptop.
You started with "There's no chance" though... You may be ready to change your stance, but your first sentence didn't have that possibility. What someone understands by your sentence is that "I am the problem" instead of "there may be a problem".
I don't think OP example was the best to illustrate the issue, but I don't have a better example either, still struggling with that myself too.
If I wasn't ready to argue, I wouldn't have said anything. Arguing in this case means to troubleshoot with him. Sometimes I think that other people think the purpose of argument is to hurt people. The purpose of argument (for me) is to make the people who are arguing smarter than they were before the argument. I don't get pleasure out of hurting my father or showing him up - I like my father. If anything, I want to make him feel smarter than he is, and I hope he feels the same about me.
edit: Also, it may turn out this is a weird corner-case and MySQL is somehow incompatible with his laptop. I'm not a MySQL scientist. After finding that out, though, I'm a tiny bit closer to being one.