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Comment by wool_gather | Hacker News Reader

You're right, but it's not even really an "attitude", and it's not necessarily malicious or even stemming from a power relationship.

It's just a fundamental cognitive blind spot that humans have about assuming that what's obvious to ourselves is obvious to everyone else. Every one of us who's jumped into a question about something they're working on and had the other person say "I don't understand the context" has done this.

The opposite is what makes great teachers, authors, and other communicators great: they recognize what the other person doesn't understand.

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You can't just go around recognizing what people don't understand. That's what got Socrates killed. You've gotta make them understand what they don't understand without making them want to kill you. That's what makes a great teacher / leader / etc.

Requirements or the asks need to be clealy documented before someone goes for a solution. The problem usually is they discover more use case while reasearching the solution.

> You've gotta make them understand what they don't understand without making them want to kill you

That's a different problem. You need to tell them what you want, unless it's a mathematical, universal truth.

I have found the Socratic Method[0] brings out the best outcomes because it forces everyone to show what they think they know, have their assumptions tested and hear about things they might not have considered or even know about. From my experience, everyone is ultimately able to reach a higher level of understanding for the topic or problem which allows for better decision making. The more diverse the participants' backgrounds the larger the network of knowledge one is able to tap into.

Unfortunately, you are right that there are people who are extremely threatened by the Socratic Method. In Plato's Cave[1], Socrates talks about how some people strive to explore and learn while others have no desire to broaden their knowledge as "they know no better life."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

I find it sort of weird that your criteria here would mean that Socrates was not a great teacher.

I'm not saying that exactly. I'm just saying you're better off if you don't get killed by the people you're trying to persuade.

> Every one of us who's jumped into a question about something they're working on and had the other person say "I don't understand the context" has done this.

Sometimes. Not always. I think everybody holds ideas in a spectrum from "absolute truth" to "totally my biased opinion". The problem arises if I hold an opinion as an absolute truth and I ask other people to work for me. I won't bother about telling them absolute truths, won't I?

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