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Comment by pavelludiq | Hacker News Reader

True, i have a real problem with sloppy thinking the same way a musician has a problem with noise. I don't mind being corrected, i have no emotional attachment to my positions or believes, if they are wrong, but for some reason proving someone wrong is seen as a personal attack, which confuses me. Why would anyone have such an emotional attachment to a bad idea? And they call me strange... :D

What i fear most is not that i might upset someone with my correction, but that someone might not correct me out of politeness if im talking bullshit(i tend to do that often). Thankfully i tend to avoid people pleasers and most of my friends would not hesitate to state my mistakes, even at the risk of insulting me.

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I was like that for a while until I lived with 4 other people who would often accuse me of caring too much about semantics (although semantics often had nothing to do with it... had to let that slide too). I started doing the following:

1) Hear something incorrect.

2) Can I immediately tell that this incorrect fact will change the conclusion. If so, correct the fact.

3) Else, let the conversation continue but remember the incorrect fact. Keep looking out to see if it changes any conclusions.

I started doing this consciously and eventually its become fairly automatic.

It's an issue of authority. If someone says that something is true, and you prove them wrong, you've made them look like a weak thinker or out of touch with reality. This can actually damage their relationships with the people around them. If the issue is actually important, you should go to them privately and give them the information in a manner that makes it clear that you are looking to help them instead of just calling them out. If the issue is not important, often (in context) their posturing of "I know better" is more important than actually being correct, so just let it slide.

Sometimes, it can also be a issue of identity (left/right politician, Java/Lisp programmer…)[1]. If you attack an idea that someone attached to his identity, it will be like you attack his very being. Common reactions can be dismay, denial, or even violence.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Most people aren't like you. A common joke is: Q: How can I tell if someone is smart? A: If they are smart, they agree with me.

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