Hacker News Reader

Comment by ergothus | Hacker News Reader

> I recall the moment’s emotion: I felt I was performing a good deed, being helpfully clear and honest,

I know this emotion well - it has led me to any number of problems. Some cases where in retrospect I was being a self-indulgent jerk ("What did you think of my performance/presentation/etc?") and some cases where I still feel I was not being harsh but was pointing out valid and relevant concerns, but from both I've learned to distrust this emotion. Perhaps saying what I think is good, perhaps not, but it should never feel _good_ to criticize.

View on HN

> it should never feel _good_ to criticize.

Why not? I feel good when I help someone. I feel good when I have made a great project. I feel good when I made a good decision.

I feel good when I did something good.

Your sentence is true only if we consider a critic as a bad thing, which I certainly don't.

Criticism can be good or bad. Which one it is depends in large part on how its presented.

This. Think code review:

- Voluntary and encouraged.

- If done at all competently, all involved learn something. The reviewers get familiar with some part of the system, and everybody learns from comments and their responses.

Model someone as in your ingroup. You associate actions happening to them as happening to yourself. Criticising them feels like criticizing yourself, ie admitting you've made some mistake. This could be: knowing you've made a mistake, but only just now discovering what it was (eg debugging) - but this isn't the critic, this is the correction. So the criticism must be informing someone they've made a mistake before telling them how to correct it. While correcting mistakes might feel good, finding out about them isn't.

Now model the person as in your outgroup. Same analysis but now you feel good when they feel bad. Pointing out flaws will feel good, independent of viability of correction. A real person will be somewhere in between ingroup and outgroup, how good you feel for criticising them should tell you where.

Finding out you've made a mistake doesn't always feel bad. If you've got a growth mindset, finding out you've made a mistake can often feel good, because you've uncovered an opportunity for growth. If you've got a fixed mindset, it feels bad because it's a judgment about your capabilities.

The trick is to hang around other people with the same sort of mindset. Growth-mindset people constantly make this error with fixed-mindset people, and alienate potential allies in the process. (Indeed, learning not to do this could be an important area for growth.) Fixed-mindset people tend not to make this particular error as much, because most people shy away from people who constantly make them feel bad. In the process they develop a sort of confirmation bias for their fixed mindset, though, because they don't come in contact with anyone who could point out where they might grow.

>Finding out you've made a mistake doesn't always feel bad.

Concur. Whenever a reader points out an error in my blog — whether of fact or attribution or spelling or grammar or syntax or punctuation — I take the time to thank them and ask for more of the same. Why? It only makes my blog better. I love being corrected.

I distinguish between recieving criticism and recieving correction. This is normally dichotomized as criticism and constructive criticism. I suppose when you write a blogpost, and many other tasks, you are implicitly assuming you've made some number of mistakes. Recieving correction then doesn't tell you new information regarding your mistakes, and furthermore makes your blog closer to being correct. This is particularly true given how easy a spelling or grammar error is to correct once you know it's exact nature. I think the situation changes when the criticism pertains to some dimension in which you didn't know you were failing, and worse still when the necessary correction will take a great deal of effort or is simply not apparent. I don't think most people would enjoy recieving such a criticism, even as it eventually makes them a better person.

> Criticising them feels like criticizing yourself.

Not everyone is uncomfortable with self criticism and making mistakes, so the Golden rule isn't universally applicable here.

Some people consider forthright language to be a sign of respect. It can show confidence in the rationality, empathy, and maturity of the audience.

> Some people consider forthright language to be a sign of respect.

The problem is that it's like saying "I'm not a pessimist or an optimist, I'm a realist" - everyone says that.

I really value when people are forthright with me. I know some, I respect them, and I really value what they say, even when it's hard. OTOH, the ones most likely to claim they are ("I just tell it like it is") are also the ones most often just using it as a license to not bear any responsibility for their words.

Which doesn't mean there aren't people out there that ARE honest and clear...just that you can't trust someone claiming to be one of them to be accurate.

> I feel good when I help someone. I feel good when I have made a great project. I feel good when I made a good decision.

Those are all good things to feel good about. You're feeling good about the results, not the criticism. If you feel good about those results and NOT about the criticism, you will try to use the criticism to get those results and no more.

If you assume you'll get those results from the criticism, you'll just criticize a lot, without concern.

And generally, to get those results you need to be judicious in the criticism, because bad results are also possible (and probable, if you aren't considering the criticism itself before offering it)

I think it's the other way around, it _should_ feel good to criticize _in good faith_, if you have the necessary qualifications and the person has asked for feedback. How else can the other person get better if not by absorbing the feedback? I don't know about you, but I've learned long ago that the way I perceive myself does not necessarily align with the way others perceive me.

The fact that the first reaction to any even remotely negative feedback is defensive is what's bad. I feel this is why some people don't like code reviews. What's also bad is that often feedback is given as a put-down rather than to help (i.e. not in good faith), or when negative feedback is given in front of others.

Good feelings are bad because they are a warning sign of bad faith criticism. While honest feedback is unquestionably important, there are a great many people who criticize more for their own self indulgence than for the sake of others. It's a seductive enough trap that even well meaning people might wind up giving bad feedback simply because it feels good to criticize, all the while justifying it as helping someone who is not, in fact, left any better off.

When criticizing, it helps to have a clear reason why. It may be a good faith attempt to help the other person, or because their actions affect some other thing they are contributing to, or because their actions have unintended consequences for someone else. Regardless, there should be some benefit beyond one's own gratification. If you catch yourself enjoying the act of criticizing others, it's probably a good idea to doublecheck your motivations and results to make sure that it's actually for someone else's benefit.

You must be one of those folks who don't like code reviews then. Good criticism is a lot of work, and it can be immensely helpful.

> Good criticism is a lot of work

Bingo - Good criticism is a matter of considering how it will be taken, because you aren't feeling good about the criticism itself, but rather the results you are trying to achieve. Bad criticism is enjoying the criticism itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com