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How to disagree in a technical thread

Marker

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Technical threads are known for generating hot spots. Disagreements happen, as do train wrecks and explosions. Recently I ran across Paul Graham's "Disagreement Hierarchy." You can find his thoughts explained in detail here:

Graham has given names to different ways people disagree online and arranged those types of disagreement into an ascending order - from worst to best. Pyramids with his system are easy to find online; this hierarchy has found traction. What do you think of what he's put in each category?

Note: the top three ways of disagreeing address the content that is being disagreed with. The bottom four do not.

We Agree to Disagree – Compassionate Atheism

A quote from that link above by Graham:
"If moving up the disagreement hierarchy makes people less mean, that will make most of them happier."
Ass hat seems too demure as it implies coverage. My favorite new term is "ass pipe" as they really let the bullsh*t flow.
 
Thread Starter
TS
LiquidFeet

LiquidFeet

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Wow. I had no idea people would find Graham's thoughts so offensive or off-putting. New knowledge for me.
 

Disinterested

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There's a lot of reasons why people can't stop arguing about skiing, but I think there's some key elements.

One is that there's a lot of superficial agreement about how to ski well, but that masks greater differences in understanding. Most statements about good skiing are stated very broadly because the sport is extremely open-skilled, so 'direct pressure to the outside ski' seems like a statement with broad consensus, but in reality everyone nodding along has a slightly different idea of how to direct, what pressure is, how much pressure to direct, how to direct it, and why. In part that is because the sport of skiing is in reality quite poorly understood and described at a scientific and data-based level, and so the furthest ski federations have been able to get with skiing is very general and non-specific foundational statements of principle.

What's more, some of people who execute that or any other fundamental aspect of skiing quite well don't necessarily even understand that that's what they're doing, how, why, or when, etc. and there are many people who don't do it very well who feel it's very important. That is of course true visa-versa too. Everyone has an incomplete understanding of what they do that's based on highly subjective and individual feelings they have when they move that can't be easily universalised.

Compounding that is that very often things that seem like they are happening in skiing are not what is in actuality happening, or our image is incomplete. We can't see exactly what's happening in the boot, and sometimes it looks like the legs are actively turning the skis when the skis are turning the legs, or it looks like the ski is turning from the center when it's not. If you look at PSIA's IDP, which describes the way the skis and body will behave when skiing tasks are performed, what you're really seeing is a guide for examiners about how a task will look to them when performed correctly, not a guide for the skier of how to perform a movement. That wasn't how the document was designed, but it is increasingly being understood that that's what it is.

There's other problems too. For one, highly successful feedback that mentors give skiers often was only intended as a coaching cue, rather than a fully coherent technical description of behaviour. The most classic of these is 'get forward', but there are obviously many more. What's more, despite what seems to be consensus about how to ski well, very few people really do (for a given value of 'well'). It creates a huge amount of frustration amongst ski instructors and coaches. Despite how simple skiing can seem, they and their charges constantly fall in to the same typical sets of errors they know about and are actively trying to avoid. Some people channel that frustration in to making up strange divergent ideas about skiing works, and others become extreme exponents of the particular set of ideas they feel solved their individual problems.
 

Seldomski

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The technical threads seem to go off the rails primarily due to imprecise vocabulary and/or misunderstanding of individual words, which are then blown to mastodon proportions with assumptions made on the part of one or more parties. The mastodon continues to be drug uphill by teams of dogs driven by ego/emotion/saving face.
 

Steve

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There are at times some nasty comments, but it's rare. There also are some know-it-all comments, that's common.

The only reason either of those is a problem is if a reader is offended. The blame is as much on the one who takes something personally as it is on the one who makes the comment.

If we were all zen-like, tolerant, accepting and not driven by our ego and pride, there would be no problems.

The dialogue in and of itself can be difficult, frustrating, hard to understand, there can be dead ends in disagreements, but for the most part it's not that bad in my opinion. It's the nature of a bunch of very knowledgeable people sharing their ideas.
 

oldschoolskier

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My feeling is that often times technical discussions get way, way to complicated and as a result cause nit picking on details and verbiage.

“You say it this way not that way” type arguments.

Sometimes there are multiple equally correct answers with no definitive one best answer.

The “No my answers the right one” type arguments.

Before disagreeing, understand exactly what you are disagreeing about, in most cases it falls into one of the above.

So.......enough said, I’m sure most understand and why beat it to death.
 

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