Every time I try to reply to this, it turns into something massive. In a nutshell, I reckon it’s probably safe to apply a roughly symmetrist policy to making requests, provided the requests are in an area you’re familiar with, and you understand exactly what it is you’re asking the requestee to do.
I draw this conclusion from an area I’m sure a lot of LWers can empathise with: being asked for advice about computer-related problems from technically illiterate friends and family. I’ve come up with about half a dozen ‘failure modes’ for these requests, and they all seem to boil down to the person making the request not knowing the enormity of what they’re asking for.
I’m reminded of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, specifically how the skills required to know how difficult a task is are the same skills required to actually do it. In the absence of the skill in question, (provided you recognise you don’t have it), it’s probably a good policy to simply ask someone how much of a pain the request would be before asking them if they’ll do it.
That’s a good point—being aware that, the less you know about the topic, the less equipped you are to judge the difficulty of the change or the value of the favor.
Luckily, I know just little enough about computers that when my famliy asks me for help (which isn’t too often—my parents have been using computers longer than I have), I can often just honestly say “I don’t know, look it up.” ;) (This worked even better when I was using Linux as a desktop OS and was way out of date with Windows and its common programs.)
A particular favourite of mine was when the mother of an ex-girlfriend rang me up while I was at work to ask for advice in syncing a wii-mote. That was all kinds of wrong.
Every time I try to reply to this, it turns into something massive. In a nutshell, I reckon it’s probably safe to apply a roughly symmetrist policy to making requests, provided the requests are in an area you’re familiar with, and you understand exactly what it is you’re asking the requestee to do.
I draw this conclusion from an area I’m sure a lot of LWers can empathise with: being asked for advice about computer-related problems from technically illiterate friends and family. I’ve come up with about half a dozen ‘failure modes’ for these requests, and they all seem to boil down to the person making the request not knowing the enormity of what they’re asking for.
I’m reminded of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, specifically how the skills required to know how difficult a task is are the same skills required to actually do it. In the absence of the skill in question, (provided you recognise you don’t have it), it’s probably a good policy to simply ask someone how much of a pain the request would be before asking them if they’ll do it.
That’s a good point—being aware that, the less you know about the topic, the less equipped you are to judge the difficulty of the change or the value of the favor.
Luckily, I know just little enough about computers that when my famliy asks me for help (which isn’t too often—my parents have been using computers longer than I have), I can often just honestly say “I don’t know, look it up.” ;) (This worked even better when I was using Linux as a desktop OS and was way out of date with Windows and its common programs.)
A particular favourite of mine was when the mother of an ex-girlfriend rang me up while I was at work to ask for advice in syncing a wii-mote. That was all kinds of wrong.