Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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A subset of your (a) that I see here a lot is when I write a 500 word essay arguing some point, and the first reply comes in and says something to the effect of: "On word 348, you said 'all'. Here's a counter-example that proves that you should have said 'some' instead! I found the word that is wrong in your statement! See? Your entire argument is invalid!"

Nit-picking and pedantry is toxic in real life and on message boards, however it seems to be ever-present in communication with fellow software engineers. In software engineering, if you miss an = sign or misplace a { or use a single wrong keyword in a 100K line program, the program can fail spectacularly. Debugging a broken program often involves nit-picking syntax--it's an essential tool in a software engineer's arsenal.

This is not universally true for written argument or rhetoric. Being clear is good. Using correct grammar is good. The details count. But attacking a clear, articulate argument by nit-picking grammar or word usage is pointless and does not substantially add to the conversation. Despite this, this behavior seems to exist as a cancer everywhere on the Internet where you encounter written argument or persuasion, including here.

Great nuance and insight! That feels like part of it.

When I'm wearing the Software Engineer hat, yes, the entire world can fail if a single nit is imperfect. But when we wear the Human Conversing or Persuading hat I expect and indeed enjoy seeing and using a more fuzzy logic. I expect more buffer and assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks.

Compilers and CPUs are the world's most productive utter idiots. The best engineers adjust their thoughts to see them and emulate them, but sometimes this backfires when they forget to exit that mode.

Unfortunately, I don't think "aha!-you're-not-exactly-right" kind of people are going away anytime soon, they've been around on the net since I first laid mouse on it (the 90s, I'm not that old) and they've conquered the technical forums for a reason. Some people simply have that sort of mindset, one just needs to wear the "deal with it" hat and get over it.

In fact, those people are very useful and most of them have helped me from time to time, so I'm grateful for them.

Side note: >> assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks

Thank you for that, I'll use it sometime, not sure why or when, but it's so funny I must! :D

ha. your welcome!

maybe turn it into a C poem and wear as a T-shirt?

I once had the following printed on a T-shirt and wore to a Meetup.com event here in Colorado, and out of the crowd an early Bell Labs alumnus (C/UNIX era) emerged and tried to recruit me:

    while (!(success = try()));

perhaps:

    void whatever(params) {
        assert assume_im_not_an_idiot_kid_please_get_off_my_lawn_been_there_done_that_have_the_shirt_thanks(params);
        ...
    }

haha that's hilarious, I don't think I have enough rep to make my voting count, but I nevertheless upvoted you just in case.

And I should warn you! I WILL make a T-shirt and give you credit.

consider me forewarned. if in twenty years I'm retired living on a golden yacht sailing the icy seas of Europa I hope a non-trivial portion of my income is coming from the royalties on the sales of that T-shirt.

and/or from the earnings on my book series The Dread Space Pirate Richard. (srsly)

or... savings from my day job. a good strategy has several fallbacks. :-P

Oh hey, you wrote that? You might have mentioned it on another thread because I have it on my amazon wishlist already. xP

I've just promoted your book up in the long to-read list.

you have been both very kind and very constructive. email me at groglogic@gmail.com and I'll ensure you always have free copies of all the books and audio episodes. (I did not see your email in your profile otherwise I would have sent this privately.)

I agree with you 100%. They waste time and energy in a toxic way. Do you or anyone else on here have any ideas on how to fix it?

Gamify NVC.

I've found that the most healthy way to deal with people that dismiss your entire argument/point/opinion by nit-picking your grammar (or similar) is to dismiss them back, kindly.

The kindly part is so important; their attitude shows that they don't have an open mind at the moment; dismissing kindly leaves a moral door open so that in the infrequent (but not rare) event that they'll have an open mind later in the day (or later in a lifetime), they may remember your reasoning and revisit the logic in their minds and agree with you, sometimes they acknowledge you merit for it and sometimes they don't, but when they do, bingo, you just made an intellectual ally, but that works only if you were kind and treated them with respect.

Pick your battles; If you insist on proving yourself right and antagonize people (remember even trolls are people) you make gratuitous enemies and waste resources in general; time, energy, focus, etc.

Trust me, I've turned foes into allies several times in my short lifetime. And more importantly, I've saved myself from wasting time and headaches. Kindness works miracles and saves time.

Be kind, rewind (your mind?).

And don't forget to read the welcomming page and the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Those are all great points and I try to follow them myself when interacting online. I was actually looking for some kind of way to stop it from an algorithmic standpoint or some other fashion. Mainly because I don't like reading and wasting time on some minor nitpicks.

Not sure if I understood you correctly but as far as I know HN uses algorithms already for this sort of taks.

That's cool but I'd like to have better control, so I'm designing a custom HN curator myself. And I've noticed some other people have done the very same thing themselves.

Understand that we're generalising here, but a counter-example on your main argument would have, in fact, refuted your whole thesis. There's a massive gap between a short (in length) invalidation of an argument and useless nitpicking. There's also increased conflation of the two in online discussion channels.

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