I like this and agree that usually or at
least often the people making these “I
don’t understand how anyone could …”
statements aren’t interested in actually
understanding the people they disagree
with. But I also liked Ozy’s
comment:
I dunno. I feel like “I don’t
understand how anyone could believe X”
is a much, much better position to
take on issues than “I know exactly
why my opponents disagree with me! It
is because they are stupid and evil!”
The former at least opens the
possibility that your opponents
believe things for good reasons that
you don’t understand—which is often
true!
In general, I believe it is a good
thing to admit ignorance when one is
actually ignorant, and I am willing to
put up with a certain number of
dumbass signalling games if it
furthers this goal.
Hacker School has a set of “social rules
[...] designed to curtail specific
behavior we’ve found to be destructive
to a supportive, productive, and fun
learning environment.” One of them is
“no feigning
surprise”:
The first rule means you shouldn’t act
surprised when people say they don’t
know something. This applies to both
technical things (“What?! I can’t
believe you don’t know what the stack
is!”) and non-technical things (“You
don’t know who RMS is?!”). Feigning
surprise has absolutely no social or
educational benefit: When people feign
surprise, it’s usually to make them
feel better about themselves and
others feel worse. And even when
that’s not the intention, it’s almost
always the effect. As you’ve probably
already guessed, this rule is tightly
coupled to our belief in the
importance of people feeling
comfortable saying “I don’t know” and
“I don’t understand.”
I think this is a good rule and when I
find out someone doesn’t know something
that I think they “should” already know, I
instead try to react as in xkcd
1053
(or by chalking it up to a momentary
maladaptive brain activity
change
on their part,
or by admitting that it’s probably not
that important that they know this
thing).
But I think “feigning surprise” is a bad
name, because when I’m in this
situation, I’m never pretending to be
surprised in order to demonstrate how
smart I am, I am always genuinely
surprised.
(Surprise means my model of the world is
about to get better. Yay!)
I dunno. I feel like “I don’t understand how anyone could believe X” is a much, much better position to take on issues than “I know exactly why my opponents disagree with me! It is because they are stupid and evil!” The former at least opens the possibility that your opponents believe things for good reasons that you don’t understand—which is often true!
I am imagining the following exchange:
“I don’t understand how anyone could believe X!”
“Great, the first step to understanding is noticing that you don’t understand. Now, let me show you why X is true...”
I suspect that most people saying the first line would not take well to hearing the second.
I suspect the same, but still think
“I can’t understand why anyone would
believe X”
is probably better than
“people who believe X or say they
believe X only do so because they hate
[children
/ freedom
/ poor people
/ rich people
/ black people
/ white people
/ this great country of ours
/ etc.]”
We could charitably translate “I don’t understand how anyone could X” as “I notice that my model of people who X is so bad, that if I tried to explain it, I would probably generate a strawman”.
I like this and agree that usually or at least often the people making these “I don’t understand how anyone could …” statements aren’t interested in actually understanding the people they disagree with. But I also liked Ozy’s comment:
Hacker School has a set of “social rules [...] designed to curtail specific behavior we’ve found to be destructive to a supportive, productive, and fun learning environment.” One of them is “no feigning surprise”:
I think this is a good rule and when I find out someone doesn’t know something that I think they “should” already know, I instead try to react as in xkcd 1053 (or by chalking it up to a momentary maladaptive brain activity change on their part, or by admitting that it’s probably not that important that they know this thing). But I think “feigning surprise” is a bad name, because when I’m in this situation, I’m never pretending to be surprised in order to demonstrate how smart I am, I am always genuinely surprised. (Surprise means my model of the world is about to get better. Yay!)
I don’t think that sort of surprise is necessarily feigned. However, I do think it’s usually better if that surprise isn’t mentioned.
I am imagining the following exchange:
“I don’t understand how anyone could believe X!”
“Great, the first step to understanding is noticing that you don’t understand. Now, let me show you why X is true...”
I suspect that most people saying the first line would not take well to hearing the second.
I suspect the same, but still think “I can’t understand why anyone would believe X” is probably better than “people who believe X or say they believe X only do so because they hate [children / freedom / poor people / rich people / black people / white people / this great country of ours / etc.]”
We could charitably translate “I don’t understand how anyone could X” as “I notice that my model of people who X is so bad, that if I tried to explain it, I would probably generate a strawman”.