Ask HN: How do you deal with the human ability to never take responsibility | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with the human ability to never take responsibility

27 pointsjesuscript72 comments

I notice this in myself and many others. The mental gymnastics we play to deflect. Just about everyone plays this game. Elon just did this recently and wrecked havoc on the Twitter staff.

How do we deal with this? That it’s my fault, and I don’t want to contort it and take it out on someone else or even myself. Why do we humans lack an ability to let a person confess within reason?

Or do I need to show up with a sink somewhere?

What exactly is a mistake?

Religion had a confession booth. You say it and move on. The house of rationality requires you to play out your mistake.

I don’t know the answers. It is cruel and unusual punishment to oneself and anyone that cares for you to live out a confession. It is better just said, and smacked in the head. Move on.

View on HN

Plenty of people have this ability - the vast majority of people in my personal & professional life take responsibility for their mistakes, own up to them, and try to make them right. Even my four year old occasionally does it.

The problem is that we've created a system where political and corporate discourse does not allow these people to rise to the top, and selects for people who deflect and never admit wrongdoing. Given a large enough audience, there is always some vocal minority who will crucify you for any mistake. If you wish to lead an organization or institution with a large stakeholder base, you learn to never admit the mistake, because if you do you will soon not be leading that institution. This is why we can't have nice things.

I think there's a relatively simple fix, but it'll probably never happen because it's contrary to why we have leaders in the first place. If the masses crucified leaders for mistakes they made but didn't admit rather than mistakes they admitted, the incentive would be to avoid making mistakes, not avoid admitting them. But this would require that everyone "trust but verify", and that they do (or at least believe) independent research into the performance of their leaders. The whole reason we have leaders and specialization is so that the masses do not need to perform this time-consuming and intellectually-draining work. This is also why we can't have nice things.

Yes, I come from shitty parenting too.

how do you pronounce your alias? is it jesus-script, or jez-yew-script?

Hmm, I wonder if there are any religions based around the worship of a programming language

They could cite their lore as StringUtil.xjs:Slice:1-23

I can recite you, yes.

Got to admit, thought this was trolling at first… but then realized the absolute genius of your comment!

Had me rolling in the floor with stitches! Bravo

Quick on the uptake. I make dust out of people.

You can see me slip into it right?

It’s an exponential function.

That I know.

glad you enjoyed it. I wish I could have been there to witness your reacton.

+1. I think if we do ever get to a solution for "trust and verify", it would only then create a new problem as to how do you trust and verify this solution/system that allows us to do so in the first place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify

It effectively means "don't trust; verify."

Why not simply make the claims of the system itself subject to the very same epistemic methodologies it applies to claims from other parties?

The fact that almost no organizations outside of institutions of science (which are often far from perfect themselves) apply formal/strict epistemic methodologies may be something worth paying some attention to. Every long journey begins with a single step, but if humanity refuses to take that first step (or discuss it), the desired destination of the journey may not be reached.

> Plenty of people have this ability - the vast majority of people in my personal & professional life take responsibility for their mistakes, own up to them, and try to make them right. Even my four year old occasionally does it.

Most people are able to do it sometimes, but can the people you mention do it always, or even remotely close to that?

> But this would require that everyone "trust but verify", and that they do (or at least believe) independent research into the performance of their leaders.

This would require a trustworthy independent research body. I know of no such body that would reach my standards of trust. I can't think of an organization that even tries to do so in a serious manner.

How do you deal with the human ability to never take responsibility

I suppose it depends on the underlying causes and how extreme the end effect. There are psychological issues [1] that are more common in adolescence that most grow out of but some do not. One can not encourage others seek help especially if they are in denial so perhaps the only solution is to distance ones self from them or try to tune them out.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

Labels.

I read them too.

Understanding is a whole different thing.

Labels are un-fun but as someone who has a family member with the issue I can not dispute the definition. It is a real issue and quite challenging for everyone involved.

Did it have to be, is the question. Did you help make the label?

Did you help make the label?

No, a collection of psycho-analysts made the label and the description. The label is for the extreme condition of what was being described.

What is extreme? And to who?

Who watches the label makers?

Who watches the label makers?

I've always been curious about this myself. This is a loaded topic but the DSM has had a history of revision based on societal and political feedback so it is not entirely clear to me who ensures that the content is strictly following rigorous scientific process. I rarely quote any of their content unless I have personally witnessed overwhelming anecdotal and observational evidence myself, mostly due to not believing anything I read.

I have my own theories as to the actual cause and potential treatments both in terms of bandaging the symptoms and curing the underlying root causes of O.D.D. but testing those theories have potential legal ramifications and going through proper channels are expensive.

I’ll give the answer.

The shrinks only came about in 19-somethng?

You’ve seen the James Webb telescope pics right?

Forget for a second.

Humans lived quite awhile. Not since 1900

What shrink would you send to anyone in 72 AD?

We all lived a long ass time. No, I think not, I think the DSM can go away. I think not.

The history of the world is madness, and some idiots that major in some bullshit cannot label such a thing.

Up to us I guess.

Edit:

I want them to label Cesear first, and his populous next

Then Lincoln

Then the dead in the Civil War

Label them first

Then label me.

To be honest I wouldn't use the fact the field of studying pathological psychology is relatively new to human history as a point against it. Germ theory is also quite new. Washing hands is also a 19th century innovation. We had mental illness diagnoses for a long time before the 19th century-- female hysteria, for example.

I just think you’re wrong.

We can agree to disagree.

History too wild to label it.

Modern psychology is an advent of Modern History, academically speaking, 1815-to, today.

They latched on, to an understanding of history.

Whatever, the economy needs seats filled I guess. I’ll talk, but Jesus, they dying out there, like always.

Edit:

How do you label death?

Glad you posted this. I didn't know there was an actual condition for it. Seems obvious there would be, but I'm no psychologist.

Individually this is hard. People grow up inside of families and cultures that are "blame and punish". This kind of culture ends up being self-destructive: people can't learn from their mistakes, and will do anything to avoid blame and the punishment (loss of status, money, etc...) that comes with it. In this culture, dishonesty, manipulation and politics are the norm. Incidentally, iteration and coordination is difficult because there is no incentive to do things where you may be blamed for others out of your span of influence.

On the other side, there is a "culture of learning", where we expect sometimes to fail, and we save blame and punishment for people who do not learn from their failures (in practice, this is a lot like repeating the same behavior and expecting a different outcome). Yes, sometimes a mistake is costly, but if the person making the mistake learns not to repeat it, we win. If we find a way to make that mistake impossible in the future, we win. In this environment, honesty can be expected (confessing within reason), and will be the norm. In a culture of learning, iteration becomes a way of life and cross organization coordination is much easier.

In my business life I much prefer a culture of learning or one of blame, and in hiring, especially mid a senior level people, I'm careful to hire people that value learning and like to put problems on trial instead of people.

“Culture of learning” got fetishized too.

Are you learning in NYU or some university?

Where are you learning?

No and starting six companies, raising five kids and going around the sun one too many times.

Are there explicit processes or interactions involved in learning as a culture that one can use to identify if you're in a culture of learning?

Where would you expect "blame and punish" to come from? From authority, or from peers?

1. Focus is on problems, and process not people.

2. It is safe to report failure.

3. Failure isn’t hidden. It’s treated as institutional knowledge.

4. Experiments do not require a career making / ending bet.

5. Junior people are often doing things (successfully) they would not get to even touch in a blame culture.

6. Training is company paid.

It has to do with how much you empathize with people. Responsibility follows from empathy. When you care about someone enough you also take responsibility for your actions toward this person. So we need to show care for each other, empathize with those closest to us as well as everyone else.

This is the truth. We should look out for each other, and try to build one another up. Instead of exploiting and taking from each other to achieve security, let’s understand and help one another so we can live in peace and balance with ourselves, each other, and laws of nature.

What are some self preservation strategies you've found useful to surviving in workplaces when you experience "exploiting and taking from each other to achieve security?"

Which behaviors have you found most common? How do you find/select organizations or communities that "look out for each other, and try to build one another up?"

How does this occur in workplaces?

In workplaces I'd say it happens if there's an empathetic culture, if leadership and employees see each other and care about more than the product, care about the team. This manifests in many ways, for example leaders asking for and appreciating critique, building on it, maybe instituting a shorter workweek instead of a pay raise (if that's what employees want).

I'm not saying that I do not understand the question, but let me give you another perspective on this. How have you dealt with this so far? The world has not changed. (Maybe our awareness of it has.) Immorality and deflection is and old problem in philosophy. The oldest Caesar's shameless propaganda in de Bello Gallico.

I think there are different ways to tackle this. The first one is to accept the inability of people to take responsibility as part of the worlds we live in. Accept the issue as human nature, just like we accept the rain, because nonacceptance really does not change the fact that it periodically occurs. Maybe in a Buddhist kind of way--although disclaimer I do not know a lot about Buddhism. And note that we still protect ourselves against the weather and try to reach safe land. We cannot control certain phenomena, but we can control how we feel about them and how they affect us.

Or you can set out to build a better world. There is no indication that irresponsibility and grift is becoming less prevalent in the world. But it is still a meaningful goal to pursue a world where actions have consequences. And speaking out at the right time can be quite rewarding. Though you will likely have to deal with the fact that on aggregate we still will not responsibility for what we do, other than local instances. And speaking out and holding people responsible will probably not lead to rewards in your career, business, etc.--rather the opposite. We all have to decide what our goals are and what world we want to work toward.

I hear you. There’s a war in Ukraine.

Did our understanding help?

Futile, is why I write.

The writers pen is always powerlessness.

Here, take it.

That resonates with me.

I’ll pick up the pen and give it a go.

I argue that lack of understanding and communication is why there is even a war. The war only benefits a small amount of people, the various authorities of NATO and Russian authorities depending who wins. NATO authorities stand to gain by threatening Russia leading up the war, which can be used as leverage in other negotiations to exploit Russia, and Russian authorities stand to gain for whatever spoils it gets, and reducing the threat of NATO presence in Ukraine. But what about all us individual people, and solders duped into fighting this war?

The war doesn’t help the common people in the rest of the world, people in Ukraine, or the common people in Russia, with the sanctions hurting the economics and people’s livelihood. The war doesn’t benefit the solders dying.

But because the communication is influenced/controlled by the various authorities, a mass lack of understanding of how we as individual people can work together exists. We think we have to kill each other, but do we? There is propaganda, and lies being spread to help make it happen, which is the opposite of understanding. We have thousands of people spending their time killing each other. Instead of helping out, understanding each other, finding the balance of meeting each others needs. We have people listening to the various authorities that tell us to go threaten and kill each other. If we don’t listen, we may be threatened by people who do, people that don’t understand that this is a waste of time that could be spent doing something beneficial.

In the end, way more people will be left suffering than those who benefited, including the ones on the ground actually pulling the trigger, making it happen. If we could come to this understanding together, as individuals, without the corruption of authorities trying to manipulate us into killing each other, would we still be fighting? I don’t think so. Even the authorities, will they achieve peace and happiness, since now they will have to constantly watch their back, fear losing their power, double down on their lies to stay in power, because they now created more enemies, suffering, and hate?

Allow failure 'with grace.' People deny as long as they can that which they fear above a threshold. If failure/etc can be viewed as just a part of a larger life then it can be easier to admit failure. "Fail early, fail often" and all that.

We're in a state of a maximum denialism though. It reminds me of working in a casino for several hours, walking outside, and only then realizing just how much second hand smoke I was immersed within the casino. Those first few breaths of 'fresher air' would have a tint of second hand smoke, still, and of course my clothes would stink. (I work a mask at the time and it helped, a little. I'd go home and take a very long shower.) Society is so immersed in denialism and "second-hand" denialism that it doesn't even realize how bad it is, yet.

Also, at some point, it's categorically imperative to accept or conclude that someone will simply never tell the truth or own up to the faults/failures. Their continued denialism is more about their internal mental health than reality. Treat them with care and preferably distance. If you must interact with them then document absolutely everything important with photos/screenshots, emails to yourself, and whatever supportive documentation you can wrap around yourself. Denialism turns into gaslighting which is abuse and must be handled properly, carefully.

Did you just reply to your own fucking message? Lol

over 20 minutes had gone by - way too long for an edit.

You just make me laugh. Thanks for that, it’s a big ass universe, and you at least gave me that.

Starting a startup did wonders for me in terms of taking responsibility for my own state of being, regardless of who else was involved or what they did. I’m not entirely sure where I got it from. I had started thinking that way somewhat, but I also started reading some ‘how to be a founder’ type material at the time that suggests leveling up your responsibility. Either way, I adopted a stance that when bad things happen, even if someone intentionally does something to harm me, it’s still my fault because I put myself in the situation. I decided I would take full responsibility for the state of the company no matter what. The helpful part of that isn’t so much that I accept blame, the most helpful part is that it empowers me to always do something about it. Accepting blame is tangibly helpful though in confrontations and communications.

I don’t know if “we” deal with this, it might be something where you can only practice yourself, and model such behavior for others. At some level, deflection and blame is part of the human nature of fear, but you can reject that within your own sphere at least. The key to getting it to catch on might be to demonstrate the value and personal benefits of this mentality to others, and also to reject blame narratives with a very compassionate and forgiving touch. Being aggressive about telling someone what not to do, e.g. smacking someone else in the head, rarely ever works. The head smack that works is the one that comes from within, and might only stick when surrounded by people you trust.

The basic reason this happens is fear, which is natural. Fear that by revealing a weakness, something bad can happen, or we may need to change in a way we are not sure is possible, both of which may or may not be the case. However, you should not fear discovering a weakness in yourself, because that is now something that you can learn from. You can learn how to live with it, or improve upon it. If you discover a problem, or someone else discovers one, that is a good thing, it is something that you can work on fixing, even fix it together.

Don’t lie to yourself, even if you think you need to lie to others to avoid something bad. Avoid lying to others: it can erode trust, make it difficult to openly be yourself, and you may accidentally lie to yourself in the process.

So what to do? You can start by trying to never lie to yourself, with the knowledge that it will only hold you back. Try to accept things for how they are, and how they may play out. Notice that we are not perfect, but at least we can improve and find ways to mitigate our weaknesses (and each others). Don’t dwell on the past, thinking you’re no good, that’s not healthy either.

It’s okay to be who you are, with your strengths, weaknesses, set backs, problems, desires, irritations, blessings, mistakes, failures and successes. If we live in balance with them, we will find our way to get through life. Understanding is key to finding balance. Honest, quality communication helps to achieve understanding, and ultimately balance with ourselves, each other, and the natural world.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

You’ll find a lot of power in ownership and effort. If you can assert that you have done everything in your power to accomplish something, nobody can criticize you.

I suppose you are an alien and haven’t lived on this earth. We can criticize you for how you breath.

>I notice this in myself and many others.

Everyone. This is literally the first chapter of 'how to win friends and influence people.'

The fundamental rule being taught is to never criticism or condemn someone. How do you deal with it? By not. When someone does something good, you reward and acknowledge.

>The mental gymnastics we play to deflect.

Only in a defensive state. When you criticise you get here but if you never experience criticism, you are actually able to grow.

>Just about everyone plays this game. Elon just did this recently and wrecked havoc on the Twitter staff.

Twitter made some serious mistakes which led into Elon buying. The blame does NOT lay at the feet of Elon. The political activist who banned the ny post and the hunter biden laptop story is the one who ought to be condemned. But there's no point, they know what they did. They'll never learn anything and will do it again.

The nypost sat on the story for some time to release it at the most damaging time. Twitter's political activists had their hands revealed. The story wasn't even a big deal, biden himself doesn't get to pick his family. The real story was twitter's political activism. After their hand was revealed, they obviously started doing it in public.

>How do we deal with this?

You stay positive. Never criticise or condemn. The big problem of political polarization as we saw during the yellow journalism days; since we have had a return to yellow journalism; it's important to bridge the gap. Dont criticize your political opponents but acknowledge when they have done something good.

The republicans learnt this lesson the hard way. You have democrats like tulsi gabbard who regularly talks at conservative conventions. They acknowledge she's right on point and ultimately there are many democrats who are quite reasonable people. This has shifted MANY independents and democrats into the republican camp.

The red wave was a certainty because they dropped the condemnation. Gavin Newsome even said it was a red wave. It's because republicans opened up the conversation with the democrats. This is what politics should be and by doing this will be decisive.

I leave it to you to explain how the red wave didn't occur. The answer is very bad.

I heard a whole lot, but what’s the solution?

I answered this question twice. You simply don't do anything. Never criticise, never condemn. You can let people spin their stories in their head and leave it such.

You started off on topic then completely derailed into US political crap. Find something else to care about! Anything! Like the cool kids say on the internet - go outside and touch grass.

>You started off on topic then completely derailed into US political crap.

I'm not allowed to respond to OP's points? I'm not allowed to decide what I care about?

Oh God. What a joy you must be to be around. You can care about whatever you want. I wonder if the people around you all the time have a running tally of what you turn political. Is it everything in your life? I bet it is.

>Oh God. What a joy you must be to be around.

I responded to OP, I feel it was a reasonable response. Hopefully I was polite in my response. Sure US politics came up but such is the reason for why Elon purchased Twitter.

I see many similar fights with people you perceive as 'right-wing' in your previous comments. How come you are so concerned with the 'right-wing' of US politics?

I just finished cooking/eating a delicious meal. Chicken breast fried in a white wine sauce. spiced rice and a sour dough bread. Finished off with a hard root beer.

Give me a break - you went through my comments and came away with the completely wrong political impression! I’m a Republican but not a brain dead MAGA or Q. In fact, I’m hoping for DeSantis in 2024. The only thing I like about Biden is Ukraine support - although I’d like to be more aggressive with aid there.

I’m glad you ate some chicken. I also had chicken last night. The star of the meal wasn’t that though it was actually the black bean salad by Guy Fieri. Only issue it takes a little while to cut and slice all the stuff.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guy-fieri/black-bean-sal...

Can you explain how the red wave didn't occur? I have a good answer, but I'm very curious as to your bad one.

It occurred, it’s just a tight fight.

I’ve always tried to teach my child to be honest and admit to guilt. More importantly, to recognize the differences between right and wrong, and to make good decisions particularly when it’s a nuanced situation and not completely clear what’s right.

It’s been a tough slog. We have caught her with vapes, with a bottle of vodka, and likely has used pot though we have no proof. We have explained the risks and legalities of these various activities, how we recognize she’s on the cusp of adulthood but we are still responsible for her wellbeing and we deeply care about her safety and happiness.

Mostly, we try to set a good example by being honest and fessing up about our own many mistakes and shortcomings. She knows people in high school whose parents are split up, whose dads are in prison for heinous crimes, who have suffered abuse, and she admits that she’s fortunate.

I believe humans have an innate sense of justice, but it’s also a muscle that must be exercised and trained. Temptation to take shortcuts will always exist, so the key thing is to give our children the tools to handle every situation as they stumble along the bumpy path of life.

>> How do you deal with the human ability to never take responsibility

It's not my problem.

What if I make it your problem?

You are here responding to me right? What if I take your time?

Industry wide, we've shifted toward "blameless" operations. People fail, they make mistakes, they break things. That's part of existing. Building a culture that doesn't penalize people for mistakes (with exception, obviously) is, in my opinion, crucial to enabling people to accept responsibility. If you think your mistakes will cost you, how can you be expected to own up to them? If you can't up to them, how can you be honest about what happened? If you can't be honest, how can we improve things going forward?

This is a core concept for good incident management and really it should extend to our personal lives as well. I fail the deflection test sometimes but it's always reactionary and I've learned to be able to correct for it, on reflection. I'm still working on not failing on the first pass but I've improved over time because I practice what I preach. Because I focus less on blaming others, I find myself able to be more honest about my mistakes.

Stop depending on humans, or particular humans that don't take responsibility.

I suspect you really mean "guilt" when you say responsibility. I don't have too much of a problem with guilt because:

- I am willing to change perspectives/actions based on new information. So I might hate something at moment X, but stop when I discover new information in moment X+1. That's OK, you've only failed if you fail to adapt to new information.

- Adults can and should take care of themselves for the most part, so if someone is trying to trap me in codependency, I have to remind myself (and them) that I am not their parent and it is not my job to take care of them.

- You can't save the world, it's too big and you didn't make it in the first place. For any suffering you see, a thousand times more is happening that you don't. But you are not the owner of the world, just yourself. Let the creator of this world run it--who is not asking for your opinion anyway--and you take care of yourself.

Just give somebody chance to take responsibility and look.

Sometimes humans make mistakes, but mostly all divide to who want and take responsibility, and who don't want and don't take.

Sometimes people fake responsibility, because got something valuable for them, like possibility to use power to abuse others. After some time you will see.

"[...] let a person confess within reason"

That evidently is where everything gets messy. We don't have a way (yet) to determine if it is "within reason".

Transcending this tendency of deflection requires transcending the notion of the self -- the deflection is after all for the sake of the self and for those experts at deflection it may have been an especially crucial ingredient for their success.

The good news is that we already do transcend the self, or at least seek to do so, in many ways. But I think we (meaning modern Western society and allies) aren't able to digest the full implications of this -- something the Buddhists understood very well, which is that you can only get there with total renunciation and not a wishful combination of self-transcendence with tons of material prosperity sustained over long periods of time.

It seems to me that most people can transcend the self when discussing abstract ideas (say, the topic of conversation is cognitive bias), but during certain object level conversations (say, political matters) the ability seems to essentially vanish. People can realize they are subject to bias when considering that abstract idea directly, but not when they are contemplating object level matters.

I think the phenomenon is fairly decently explained by Mike Tyson: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face".

There’s rarely an upside to apologizing. It’s way easier to make someone else look worse than to do better. So blowing tiny mistakes out of proportion to take others down a peg is an effective strategy.

Most mistakes don’t matter. They cost so little, and the alternative to small mistakes is so much worse, that a mistake is the best outcome systematically if you consider the all-in costs.

You can make “no mistakes” but take forever to get anything done, and that is more costly all in, but you didn’t make a “mistake” that anyone can pin on you. But if your organization can’t account for those costs, or even comprehend them, “no mistakes” becomes the target.

”No mistakes” turns out to be ruinous, because nobody was allowed to make small errors, move fast, and learn along the way.

On dealing with others: Don’t spend time around these people if you can help it. It will likely not be healthy for you in the long run. These types of people rarely meaningfully change and when they do it’s very slow and they must truly want to. If you cannot do that then make sure you have a social group you can spend time with who does take responsibility for their actions.

If you have been in that sort of environment too long make sure you are measuring your worth and happiness on internal rather than external markers of success or value. Mindfulness meditation can help here as well.

It needs to come from higher up. Most Politicians(at least Indian) never take responsibility and the people who follow them behave the same way. They feel like if they agree that it is their fault, they will be punished or career-suicide. If you are in a company environment, if we see our leaders/managers acknowledge it is their mistake, we also acknowledge when it is our mistake. otherwise it will be blame game. And in family settings too

> Religion had a confession booth. You say it and move on. The house of rationality requires you to play out your mistake.

What's this? One repents, ponders the true course, and corrects course like an errant ship.

There may be attendant apologies, restitution, and relationships to heal.

This is only mysterious if one's rejected that spiritual truth.

You don’t win anything by taking responsibility but you can lose a lot.

This is a story I don’t like. The World Cup is soon, and to say the losers aren’t brilliant, is a mistake.

I commend the effort.

> You don’t win anything by taking responsibility but you can lose a lot.

Only in a culture of fault and blame.

You can win by taking responsibility if the organization you're in is healthy and not cruel and dysfunctional.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com