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Comment by westoncb | Hacker News Reader

> They do, however, foster a prosecutorial attitude among academics and public intellectuals. As a colleague once told me: ‘I am always looking for the Freudian slip.’ He scours the writings of his peers to spot when they trip up and betray their problematic intellectual commitments. One poorly chosen phrase can sully an entire work.

Interesting how operating routinely in a certain 'mode' like this ends up spreading into other areas of your life.

I wonder how many programmers can relate who've found their tendency toward problem solving extending beyond the computer screen.

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> I wonder how many programmers can relate

The thing non-programmers commented on was tendency to spot and comment on special cases in social situations where it is unusual. When someone says generic statement, a programmer tends to bring up that one case where generic statement fails. A programmer can even agree with that generic statement in general and has no malicious intent, but has fun finding out those special cases.

Once I was told this, yeah, it is true. It is even sometimes like bonding among programmers, but non programmers can be unsure why are you derailing.

Thank you for this, I've been doing this since I was a child, it often ends up being taken badly and I have a lot of trouble with it. I'm still struggling decades later to rein in this habit.

I actually find it a relief to know this is a common trait in programmers and may have it's alternate side of making me better at my craft.

This tendency is has particularly glaring and tragic effects in discussions of how communities should handle reports of and design systems to prevent sexual assault.

Myself, when I want to take something seriously, it means I:

- Try to spot special cases so I can be explicit about whether or not they should be handled.

- Try to be precise in my language, to ensure I'm not (for example) conflating two issues with a subtle but meaningful difference.

- Try to check my understanding of things, even in cases where I'm 80% sure I've understood someone correctly. I want to get to 97%.

- Try to nail down unambiguously which things we are concluding as we go along.

If I don't do these things, it feels like I'm not taking the issue seriously. If someone says something and I spot an ambiguity in their words which seems relevant, I feel an urge to ask about it--both to convey that I'm Actively Listening and to ensure I really understand them. The less confident I am in a subject, the more likely I am to judge an ambiguity is worth asking about--maybe its minor, but I don't know if I don't ask! When I notice a special case, my intuition starts loudly blaring "Risk ahead! Risk ahead! If you're putting this risk out-of-scope, be explicit about it."

All of these habits, when applied to conversations about sexual assault, are generally interpreted as being pedantic. This arouses suspicion in other people: "why are you bringing this up?" "why are you trying to be so cut-and-dry?" "why are you trying to rules-lawyer consent?" The conclusion which normal people naturally answer that question with go: This person is trying to create social space for abusers to operate.

The lesson is: avoid conversations about sexual assault unless you know you are first aligned on broader conversational norms like like "How do we establish that we've agreed on something?" and "How do we talk about a nonzero probability of system failure?"

The lesson is actually not to be pedantic. It is okay for things to feel a certain way to you but it's not okay for you to not recognise that in some subjects you need to operate from a position of empathy and sympathy to the party you are conversing with. Social situations need you to be delicate sometimes, and that goes way beyond "conversations about sexual assault". It applies to every part of your life.

It sounds like your parent is explaining why their version of empathy looks like pedantry to others. I'm not sure "be empathetic, not pedantic" is helpful. S/he already has enough self-awareness to recognize that that is what others expect from him/her.

The parent's version of empathy is pedantry and solely focused on forcing the person they're talking to to explain themselves and their thought process. It's pretty off-putting when done in the wrong way and especially at the wrong time. Understanding someone's thoughts is but one part of empathy however. Another, arguably more important part of empathy (at least when talking about interpersonal relationships) is identifying how the other person feels, and in that, meticulously picking apart their opinions is probably not helping. In fact, it's probably hurting.

That the parent is highlighting sexual assault as where this line of questioning breaks down is indicative they haven't fully internalized the lesson: it applies everywhere, to everyone. There are times and places and people and topics for whom picking apart the argument is a good thing. There are also times and places and people and topics where that doesn't apply. It differs person to person and topic to topic.

It means we need to empathize with the people we're talking to and recognize the boundaries and when we're getting into non-productive territory.

I occasionally hang out with non-engineer hippies, and they don't get in these kinds of arguments (they get into different arguments). They're much more about feeling what the other person feels, and supporting them in their feelings, with maybe some edging around on solutions.

I still struggle with the need to pick apart the problem and try to solve it. Frequently, that is not what the other person is interested in at that time. Often enough, they've already attempted most of those lines of attack and they're just venting.

Sometimes we just need to be empathetic, sympathetic, and supportive.

> I still struggle with the need to pick apart the problem and try to solve it. ... Often enough, they've already attempted most of those lines of attack

Yeah, I could see how that might be rather annoying - "dude, I've already tried those things you're telling me about - why the f--k would you assume I didn't? Now you've hurt my feelings, too! Please, just go away."

> This tendency is has particularly glaring and tragic effects in discussions of how communities should handle reports of and design systems to prevent sexual assault.

These effects are not "glaring and tragic", they're actually quite beneficial. Sexual assault is something that's very often perpetrated by narcissists and sociopaths, and the best way of holding such folks accountable and keeping them on the tight leash they need to be kept on (for the sake of everyone else's safety) is precisely to carefully and methodically ask questions like yours. "Social space for abusers to operate" is the natural outcome when people don't ask these questions.

You should be very suspicious when you see someone taking offense at e.g. a request to be precise in their language, or confirm your understanding of something like consent - that's a narcissist's M.O. Keep these people at a distance, and you'll avert a lot of problems for you and those around you. Sometimes including sexual misconduct.

This is one of the reasons I recommend that when reviewing any body of work -- code reviews, reviewing a resume, etc. -- you make it a point to highlight the bad and the good.

Constructive criticism may help us improve, but compliments help us keep going.

Yes. I also need to remember when sharing projects with programmers to ask for similar: I appreciate your help spotting the many flaws—but I'd be curious to hear about any bits you liked, too!

This also helps a person have more confidence in the things they should do. This greater confidence will motivate them to do them in the face of distraction and difficulty.

>> I wonder how many programmers can relate who've found their tendency toward problem solving extending beyond the computer screen.

Just this summer I was told I'm thinking too logically. Of course I wanted to protest and also to take it as a compliment, but the person who said this, what they really meant was that I was being, well, a square.

It's important to remember that most of the time people don't start a conversation because they want to get to the bottom of things. They're doing it because they want to say a couple of things without really thinking about them, just to have a nice time and to bond with their interlocutors.

So sometimes you have to forget about communicating accurately and focus on communicating productively. For another example, I had a big fight about the Deluge, last summer (I go see my family in the summer). An older relative was very vague about what he meant by "deluge" (did he mean just a flood? The Flood? A big flood? A small flood? A local flood? A global flood?). I was determined to be confused with his inexact terminology and in the end we had a fight. What was achieved? Nothing. I mean, I still don't know what he was talking about and I don't want to ask him because we'd just have another fight again.

So sometimes you just gotta let go. Most people don't like conversing like this, like we're all computers. And you don't want to sour your relations with friends and family. That's what I learned.

IME the persistence of "problem-solving mode" for engineers outside of work certainly exists, but pales in comparison to lawyers' tendencies toward argument outside the courtroom. Actually, this pattern exists everywhere (teachers -> instruction mode, politicians -> schmoozing...)

Seems as much about personality type being drawn to career path in the first place, as it is about bringing work habits home.

/$.02

Haha, are you kidding me? When I'm in programmer mode and diehard in a code base, I can't even function at a birthday party. With any joke I'm hearing, I hear too many incorrect things.

When I'm in social mode (aka not programming for more than 2 weeks), I become less precise and can definitely enjoy those type of jokes.

Not programming is impossible. I have practically integrated my routine with the command line. e.g diary is a command that will directly lead to editing today’s diary.

Yeah... when I've had to be extra critical and picky about proposals and implementation at work for a prolonged period, it tends to wash over into my attitude to a lot of stuff in life. I know that sometime when I'm like this I can be a little ... difficult, because I shoot down ideas and pick holes all over the place.

Also, though, my debugging mentality helped me figure out what was wrong with my dad's pool heating setup with zero expertise, where he and the engineers he'd called out were failing.

(It was a domestic boiler with two circuits, one for heating the other for on-demand hot water. They'd been adjusting the wrong one)

> I wonder how many programmers can relate who've found their tendency toward problem solving extending beyond the computer screen.

Thinking back to my childhood, many of my parents' arguments were really caused because my dad was a programmer, and that mindset takes over your way of thinking.

I sympathise. My dad is a lawyer. It's like, his job is to wittle down peoples' objections with tedious arguments.

I had a difficult childhood :P

yeah i had a lawyer for an intimate partner.. as a habit, she would argue stuff she didn't even care about. so when she lost, i would be exhausted and she would just blow it off bc she wasn't invested.

I tried to not get sucked in, but in addition to approaching things logically, their trade is to get emotional hooks into people- a trait programmers eschew.

Only because computers don't have emotions though :)

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