as they say it wastes your time and annoys the pig

This is a bizarrely anti-democratic. "Winning" isn't the important part of discussing a topic with multiple points of view.

They never mention they could’ve been wrong. The author assumes they’re always right, but that trying to convince others and argue them to their right side is not valuable.

How about: maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t let their ideas influence me. How about: even when I think I’m right, it will be better to calmly kindly discuss, listening as much as talking, not debating or arguing or speaking over them, but attempting to see new perspectives.

I could well be wrong about this :)

I was about to start arguing why I don't agree but then I thought it was better not to :P

Correct someone else at work and get ready for endless politics

I don't argue hard because I could be wrong.

So: I state my point. They can take it or leave it. If passionate I'll follow up offline/async with more ideas.

You really wanna be working with good faith people who are reasonably smart or all bets are off. Put the effort into a better work circumstance if not.

One reason TO argue is to seek out opposite points of view, which you can then use to hone your own thinking, including doing a 180.

> When you argue with someone, you think you’re debating an idea. Often you’re not. You’re challenging their sense of self.

This seems more true for the author than everyone else.

They didn't discover anything new about others, nor did they learn to argue more effectively. They just discovered their own ego, finally realized how often it gets in the way, and gave up.

While I agree that the best course of action is often to "do nothing", sulking is not nothing. I'm convinced they're the type of person who still argues with people on reddit all the time, but decided to stop doing that at work and with family. That's still unhealthy.

>Slartibartfast: I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

>Arthur: And are you?

>Slartibartfast: No. That's where it all falls down of course.

>Arthur: Pity. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.

Adulthood, career, marriage, parenthood, nearly everything since I first read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a (pre?)teen has been slowly, stubbornly learning that this exchange is basically the key to everything.

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” ― George Bernard Shaw

Some of the best professional advice I ever received was "Half your job is being liked by those you work for and with, everything else you can learn."

Being right is important in the context of the work you're responsible for delivering on, but so is knowing when to be right, and knowing when not to care if they're wrong. If the decision is outside of your control, document extensively, establish and preserve a paper trail, and move on. "Thoughts, knowledge, and opinions, loosely held."

(i believe that is the point of author's piece; pick your battles, you will not win every one, nor should you try or think of it as winning)

One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.

On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.

The whole article is AI slop.

Everyone believes they are right until they are shown otherwise. What matters most is not just what you say, but how you say it.

Do we care that 100% of this writing was generated with AI?

LLM-generated slop. Please don't post wastes of our time like this

Another to put it, is how Dan Saks from C++ fame puts it.

> "If you remember one thing, it's this: if you are arguing, you are losing."

I stopped engaging in arguments once I realized there's very little to gain by trying to convince someone you're right (regardless of who's actually right).

If there's nothing major at stake (say, trying to convincing someone with cancer to seek treatment instead of ignoring it), it's not worth your (or their) time.

My human-written summary:

Most people are ego-driven and won't listen to your logical arguments. They will only get angry with you even if you're right. So don't argue with them. Give advice only if they ask.

If you really know something others don't realize, maybe that's a valuable edge for you to profit from. Use it.

And don't hesitate to ask others for advice when it might help you.

There is arguing, and then there is arguing. The whole post discusses whether to argue or not, without touching on the fairly important (imho) topic of how to argue and how not to argue.

Vast majority of people probably hate to argue with someone who's a jerk during said argument, regardless of their correctness.

I've also found myself arguing against someone whose point I actually support, but who is arguing in a non-sensical way, or with bad arguments for said point. Because I don't want that point to be dragged down by easy-to-defeat arguments, even if I then have to fight both sides.

But anyway: how you argue matters, put some effort into it, and don't assume that being right means you're doing a good job.

They say "arguing", but really this is about bickering. Arguments are constructive. Bickering is just engagement. I argue with people so I can construct my worldview, and maybe sometimes even construct the world around me. And, being honest, I occasionally find myself bickering, too; though I do tend to avoid it well.

What the author says about ego goes both ways. People often reject arguments because of ego. Arguments can imply that they way someone has been doing something is suboptimal or even flat out wrong, or at least that's how they may be perceived. Even if something you're arguing for can improve the situation, the other parties may refuse to give it a chance because they need to protect their egos.

At some point, people have to introduce ideas into a broader consciousness, even if they clash with other ideas. How else will anything actually get done? Putting forth an argument doesn't necessarily have to come from the ego. Even if one does come from the ego, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.

I've mostly stopped trying to argue or debate on any topic because the probability of being chronically misunderstood usually outweighs any benefit that would come from successfully persuading the other person. I'm never convinced that I'm 100% right on anything, and life is too short to spend it arguing with those who do; which describes a lot of people.

The other reason I rarely argue anymore is that, if I am correct on something, reality usually proves that I was. That doesn't mean everyone else is gonna say "Ravenstine was actually right", because they never do, but at least I get the satisfaction of having been able to trust myself.

Especially with this age, knowledge becomes cheap but understanding becomes much more expensive. Arguing with other people with different understanding is just waste limited life minutes

Other than the obvious, self-reflective question that the author doesn't pose - "what if I'm the one who's wrong?" - I think it's worth arguing if the conditions are right.

Because I also like being correct, a debate to me has become something of a game where (ideally) we both win in both end scenarios: either my thinking was correct, and now I verified/validated it, and got you to think differently; or my thinking was incorrect, and you corrected it for me (or helped me get there).

However, I implicitly figured out that there are some qualifiers to actually getting the benefits:

- Can I be, and remain, polite and reflective? If not, my personality or knee-jerk responses will always get in the way of an argument's benefits.

- Is the subject sensitive to the person for whatever reason? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a signal of a person's worth.

- Are we in a competitive setting (e.g., corporate meeting, or larger social group)? If yes, any argument inadvertently becomes a social status competition.

- Do I know how to stick to the issue (instead of moving goalposts), and stop when the debate gets overwhelming (too long, too much difference)? If not, I'll overstep the boundary after which it isn't mutually beneficial anymore.

These are not easy to figure out, and sure, maybe stop arguing with most people if the conditions aren't right.

But unless you stop communicating altogether, I don't see how you can stop arguing with people in general.

Here's a simple idea: You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

And three interpretations to consider:

0: The default: That person is irrationally attached to being wrong. Best to walk away, argumentation will be futile, and I have a life to lead.

1: Whoa! Sometimes that person is me.

2: If they didn't reason themselves into it, how did they get into it? What if their position represents their values, not some perfectly architected strategy for maximizing some hypothetical measure of rightness? In that case, if I wish to discuss it with them, I should be talking about their values and my values and where they intersect, rather than arguing right and wrong?

I have personally found all three of the above useful at one point or anther.

> Help people when they explicitly ask for help.

And then you encounter the askhole.

I don't argue much any more, the only time i really really dig in is if i feel like someone in a more junior position (work, life, or otherwise) is being harmed by someone in a more senior position. I've fired Sr devs and managers for being assholes to new grads. I've threatened disownment to direct family members for filling my kids heads with toxic political opinions. When someone in a perceived position of authority is doing harm to someone subordinate to them then that's a battle i'll fight. Most other battles i just don't care enough about to spend the energy on .

I thought about writing some disagreement with the author, but as they have stopped arguing with people it would be pointless. /s

Instead I will simply say that an argument is /not/ about winners and loses, it's about communicating ideas and reaching consensus. The moment you bring your own ego into the argument, you've become the loser because you destroyed any opportunity to reach consensus, invalidating the entire point of sharing your thoughts or listening to others. If you aren't prepared to listen, understand, and reach consensus, why are you involved in the conversation at all, you're just wasting your time and the time of others and damaging relationships.

I am unsurprised that that author found themselves in multiple situations where they lost the room despite "proving themselves right". Humans are not computers, conversations are not programs, and they don't have deterministic outcomes based on the inputs. It matters how you conduct yourself, and it matters if you are trying to truly understand other people or just talking past them. An audience is never going to be swayed if you act like an asshole, even if you think you are right.

One of the most important things I had to learn in my life when I was younger was the value of listening and empathy, and how it deepens our own intellection. Logic and empathy are not opposing concepts, although it is often trendy to think so now. Logic requires empathy, reason requires empathy, because what are you reasoning about except for systems which interact with humans?

people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).

of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.

My new approach is mimicking AI in an obvious way with a fourth wall break to show self awareness about a behavior pattern I avoid

“You’re absolutely right! And you know what - Haha this is how girls want me to talk to them - you know what, thats brave!”

Good read and good breakdown. I feel like this is where I am in my journey is letting that roll off.

This article is sort of a self-advertised red flag that the writer is rationality-challenged.

1) many disagreements are not ultimately about facts but about intentionally different tradeoffs/prioritization.

2) if in fact one argues on facts/logic then losing the argument means you had your own logic or facts corrected, which should be a good thing, not a bad one.

Man, once you start picking up on the LLM style you can't stop seeing it everywhere.

> It's not just the foo, it's the bar. Short sentence. Every sentence attempting to be profound, but isn't. I quietly put adverbs in strategic locations, quietly, deftly, and always lists of threes. Your advantage is the ability to foo, not just bar.

=====

re: the content

You're missing the point of "arguing" in the workplace if you're arguing with individuals and you see it as your objective to destroy them with facts and logic.

> So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper.

This one points out the biggest miss and why this person finds their strategies impotent. The goal of "arguing" in the workplace, or more pr-friendly, "debating the merits" should never be to convince that guy to take your position. That's both ineffective and way harder. You should focus your energy instead on constructing the arguments towards the audience and bleeding support. Nothing of importance gets resolved in a singular meeting with a singular debate.

Watch some Oxford style debate prep to understand this point more deeply, but some number of peers are going to agree with your position ahead of time and some are going to disagree with your position. Instead of trying to obliterate all the points one-by-one from the person on the other side of the issue, try to make just a few succinct points that will pluck off a few onlookers. That's all you need at the moment. Take the tiniest win, move the overton window a little further in your direction, and retain all the goodwill and camaraderie on the team or in the org.

Do this in *SMALL* and *INFREQUENT* ways and over time you end up becoming the person who tends to be right on the issues and onlookers become more sympathetic to your positions by default. This lets you make bigger pushes, or allows conversations to start off as already "in your camp" to begin with. This builds up social credit (reputation) which you can then spend on taking more risky bets/positions within the org.

----

The other thing it lets you do is open the door for others to debate merits of their ideas. By keeping the focus on just a singular point or two, keeping it low stakes, and then being willing to walk away amicably at the first sign of any emotions you implicitly grant permission to others (who may agree with you, or who might just need to practice their own abilities) to voice a dissenting opinion on something orthodox. Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't - but never shoot down a first timer's / shy guy's idea on it's first float.

Makes sense.

I’d just call direct confrontational argument an ineffective tactic. If I disagree with somebody in any real sense, we have a shared enemy: the disagreement. It’s easier to destroy it if we’re both working against it.

You get to see the other side's perspective and how their views shape their inner world.

You don't know what events they had experienced that caused them to shape those views.

Just smile, nod and agree :)

One can argue without being argumentative. The latter is poor form, but there are many benefits to the former.

Worth knowing which hills to die on and having a strategically chosen intention that is not rooted in ego. Ego is the enemy.

I am usually unemployable and unfit to the team because I believe in the existence of several correctness. Several truths. And consequently, not really putting 'enough' attention into technical details, not as much as the mainstream does, not as much as recruiters in the mainstream do. For most, it is a religion. To me, it is a tool, one of the many possible, that wears out and can be thrown away after no longer needed. Learned to be used to the level mandated by the task. Task by task. The arguing mentality (rooting in the knowing-of-THE-truth confidence) that permeates the profession just repels me. : /

I would question how effective this would be in any kind of professional engineering setting.

Oh your math is wrong? Well i guess i cant discuss this...

This feels like a very immature understanding of argument. The entire framing is wrong, even if it's both understandable and a very widely held viewpoint.

I credit my mom for teaching me very early on that the POINT of argument is to come to a decision or understanding, not to determine right or wrong or assign any credit or blame. She was insatiable in running down every technicality. I learned to ask her, "okay, so how does that help with what we're doing?", which she usually had no answer to. That might sound antagonistic, but it was really just a personality thing. She would say, just as matter-of-factly, that it didn't help, it just was true. She has no malice, and no intention of "being right". She just couldn't help but be pedantic. Something about the way her mind works. Luckily, she's working as a quality control supervisor for a warehouse, where the details are essential. Nice when things can work out like that.

The point crystallized for me when I met one of the best developers I've ever known. He would calmly and firmly insist on his absolute correctness until you were blue in the face. But the second you gave him even a hint that he could be wrong, he would run down your point to its conclusions and then adjust his stance without ever changing disposition. You were wrong without question until you gave him any reason to believe you weren't. At that point, he validated his argument against your new information and changed his position without any equivocation or excuses. Just "oh, okay, you mean this? Now I see what you mean. Yes, you're right, that will work.". Sometimes he would laugh at himself for not getting it, and he would always be upfront about being wrong if you insisted he acknowledge it. But he didn't offer up any humility because now we had an answer and could move forward. No reason to dwell on the wrong stuff. It's still my favorite working relationship. I get so tired of the effusive repiping of the whole argument to assign right and wrong that is so common in corporate spaces. Feels like such a waste of time, once you've experienced true absence of ego. I still think of him as a kind of compiler. Provide exactly the right info and get what you want. Provide the wrong info and there will be no way to move forward until that is reconciled. As a dev, it's a breath of fresh air from humans who are often so far from strict logic.

That leads to political disaster. Changing just myself has an almost unnoticeable effect on the collective life, while political organization, action and propaganda work much better, and those rely on arguments and persuasion.

Of course, the author seems to have a pretty individualistic mind, comparing the political nature of humans to startups and markets, and that will lead to disaster in my opinion. We cannot survive in the long-term like that.

The author put it very well (with a little ai writing help :-)

I have come to the same conclusion; I saw my own journey in the author’s story.

At work, one of the statements I make to mentees, if asked, and to colleagues, if they lament people not listening to their advice, is this:

You’re only an expert if you’re invited to be one.

This is a way of saying that unsolicited advice is always unwelcome no matter how correct it is.

Most of your arguments are not profitable . If another team wants you to implement something unreliable , you will be responsible for service . You will need to have an argument to prevent that from happening .

The 4 hour work week isn’t life

What's that old saying?

> "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

Due to my odd approach to life, I'm not competitive. Haven't been, for most of my life. It hasn't been a problem.

I always find it fascinating, that folks can't just be good at something; They have to be better than someone else.

I know that it happens, because I see it all the time, but I can't actually understand it.

adjacent take: seek out people who don't mind being wrong & see it as contribution when you can help them understand something better

I have taken almost the opposite opinion, but with an important caveat.

It applies to arguments in general, and increasingly there seems to be fewer and fewer 'pure' technical issues.

I have observed a proliferation of people believing things that are simply not true. Much of this comes from people stating unproven or undecided factors as absolute fact, and then building an argument on those foundations.

The caveat is that I think you have to remain civil, be meticulous at addressing the argument, and to never assume that you know the hidden state of another person's mind.

This isn't about winning arguments, it is about balancing them. This is well established on a court of law. A decision decided after a claim has been robustly challenged is held to be a more objective decision.

I don't feel like my part is to push a narrative forward, but to assist in stemming the tide of absolute ideology. I think the ideas themselves do have the capability to advance on merit, but not if they come under sustained attack.

I think a lot of people have given up on arguing, leading to the voices of only the most motivated becoming dominant, which in-turn, advances the more extreme positions that drive their motivations.

I think, perhaps in such an environment, Andrew Wakefield could have elevated his claims to be a majority opinion, he convinced a remarkable percentage as it was.

If unchallenged ideas becomes majority opinions it becomes very difficult to unseat them. The claim that most people believe a thing is enough to assert it's truth is pervasive.

The insideous thing is how many of these things have gotten through, what falsehoods do we believe that go unchallenged now because everyone believes them. You can't really tell yourself because you as part of the population likely believe it too.

I have tried my best to stop arguing period. I am not the poster boy you want for your cause. I spoiled more days thinking about an anonymous poster on reddit than I care to admit.

What I do now:

Explicitly state what should be obvious: "there is rarely a free lunch. everything has trade-offs." This also _always_ neutralizes the conversation, because it's no longer about winner-take-all existential threat to my ego, it's about preferences across a continuum.

For example:

I was at dinner with friends, I was talking about Roblox and the founders discussion on Conversations with Tyler. We were interrupted by the waiter to take an order. Afterwards, we resumed and I said "where was I?", my friend said: "you were telling us why Roblox is bad." and I said: "I am a poor communicator, there isn't a bad and good, it's that there are trade-offs..." This gave everyone an opportunity to keep their respect and dignity without feeling like there was a judgment.

---

Why did I spend so much time posting this to HackerNews when I should be working? Ego!! No one cares what you have to say, pricees, go back to work. Okay, I will!

I suggest you keep arguing - but make every effort to concede opposing valid points. If you disagree, you're an idiot and little different than Hitler.

孟子曰：「人之患在好爲人師。」

Mencius said: "The trouble with people is that they are too fond of being teachers to others."

仁者如射，射者正己而後發。發而不中，不怨勝己者，反求諸己而已矣。

The benevolent person is like an archer. The archer corrects their own posture before releasing the arrow. If they shoot and miss, they do not blame the one who surpasses them, but simply turn around and seek the cause within themselves.

孟子曰：「愛人不親，反其仁；治人不治，反其智；禮人不答，反其敬。行有不得者，皆反求諸己，其身正而天下歸之。《詩》云：『永言配命，自求多福。』」

Mencius said: "If you love others and they do not become close to you, reflect on your own benevolence. If you govern others and they are not well governed, reflect on your own wisdom. If you treat others with courtesy and they do not respond, reflect on your own respectfulness. When things do not go as you wish, always turn inward and seek the cause in yourself. When your own person is upright, the whole world will turn to you. The Book of Odes says: 'Always strive to align with your destiny, and seek your own blessings.'"

Since this is at the top of Hacker News: this article is not good advice generally. Here's what I do (and mentor people to do the same):

1. Don't start with the argument, start with the data. Debates/arguments/discussions etc. are what to do about the underlying data, but I've found very often the disagreement stems from people having different bits of data. Before you get into how to marshall an argument, you have to start with collecting what ground truth is. Many people don't practice this intentionally, so they get into a debate over some decision the team is making without having all the facts.

2. Form opinions easily, be ready to discard them quickly. I am quite happy to share my understanding of some technical matter, and I almost always provide that understanding with an invitation for people to tell me why I'm wrong.

3. Over the short term, yes, it's hard to change people's minds. Over the long term, you don't have to change people's minds, you can change the people you work with. You can vote with your feet or (if you're more senior) you can influence how your organization hires and promotes people. I actively seek out working with people who disagree with me in interesting ways. Not pedantically, and not over minutiae, but in ways that change how I see a problem. It turns out, when you seek out people who are good at productively disagreeing, you don't run into some of the problems OP writes about as often.

4. One of the ways to help sift out who the people are you want to work with is by offering feedback. Most people are terrible at giving feedback, so it's important to first get good at giving feedback. The author says that people don't learn from feedback, people learn from consequences. One of the effective ways of delivering feedback is to structure it as "Here was the situation, here are facts about what happened, here is the outcome." However, once you get decent at giving feedback, some of the benefit of giving the feedback is in the signal of how the person responds. The people I want to work with generally take this feedback well, and in turn offer me similar feedback.

5. Debate what matters. A lot of technical debates engineers engage in are either not important to the end product are easy to change later. Don't waste your time on those.

And do others care more now? Who gives a shit?

It is not always a good idea not to argue, even given all the points that the author has made. If you have a meeting, and someone proposes something: if you don't speak up, it means you agreed to it.

Let's say you're discussing the next release and someone brings up some disastrous idea. You know he won't listen so you decide to keep quiet. The release comes, things blow up as expected.

Don't be surprised if you find your manager at your desk a bit later asking you to work late shifts to fix it. After all you are all in the same team, and you didn't speak up when the plan was discussed.

So in a meeting, speak up and don't give in if you are sure you are right. I have learned this lesson the hard way.

There are some good points here, but I think the take away is incorrect. Don't stop arguing with people... change your strategy away from winning. Much of the advice given still holds.

A well-conducted argument serves important purposes.

- It flushes out good counter arguments to consider, or at least valuable historical context to help build empathy.

- You can set a better example for others to follow, as we all have this nearly irresistible urge.

- You're quite unlikely to change the mind of the debaters (yours included, hat tip to Dumblydorr's comment!) BUT you might sway someone on the fence who is a witness.

- Finally, I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's nearly impossible to change our mind in the moment, and only by taking a public (even if with just one other person) stance and holding it seriously (even if... ESPECIALLY if it's a ridiculous stance) can we move past it. If the idea perpetuates itself forward only in your head, you'll never dislodge it.

Don't stop arguing, but argue with humility, style and respect.

i would like to point out the irony that people are arguing about this in the comments.

my life has gotten so much better when i actively don't engage in arguments. especially when i know i'm right.

of course it's easier said than done but growth is a long road.

Most people don't care enough to argue at all. But no team ever created anything great without a lot of arguing. It's the only way to get to a "best idea wins" culture. It has to be productive arguing to be useful though, and it has to stay non-toxic to be sustainable.

Even on the best teams you should expect arguments to go off the rails sometimes. It takes real experience to learn how to argue well across a bunch of different personalities. When you get it right, arguing is genuinely fun and productive for everyone involved, and that's how you know you're doing it well.

Good for the guy. Whatever he was doing before - it was probably too much, too soon or with the wrong people (e.g - arguing with a senior architect who's been in the company for a decade is not the same as with a junior colleague).

Thinking human is rational is a highly irrational belief.

> The market rewards being right in a way that no argument ever will.

But it doesn’t. We don’t live in a meritocracy. You could have the best product in its category while selling very little, while your competitor which is a multinational corporation with an inferior product beats you on marketing and price to a level you could never match.

There’s a reason “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” is a popular saying.

The whole article would’ve been better without that whole “Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference” section. Its inclusion muddies the point and shifts the perception of the author’s motivations. Most ideas in the world which are worth debating don’t immediately translate to money.

> In this world, there is no one you can change. Not your spouses, not your friends, not your kids, and of course not strangers on the internet.

Myself and a long time friend would be the first to tell you that we were profoundly changed by each other. We are very different people from when we met, and have each other to thank for a lot of that.

Almost none of the discussion here accounts for time and growth. Almost all of us have had that moment where someone "argued" with us over something we were wrong about and unwilling to change at the time. Then later we have that aha! moment where we've let the ego go, changed, or simply realized the poor outcome they were trying to warn us of. Being right doesn't mean right now. Checking your ego means stating your cade, making the truth, or rightness visible, and then moving on to allow that person to find their way back to what you e given them. And, as many have pointed out if the ego is checked then you're also already primed to be wrong, and learn something yourself. Even if it means later when you've had time to digest it.

Arguably attributed to Keanu Reeves (I choose to believe it is):

“I’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.”

This smells like a humble brag, driven by strong ego; count the number of 'I's in the post. I reckon the author is just as rigid in conversation as they always were, but now they can add "ego free" to their self satisfaction.

Reeks of AI prose past the first paragraph or two. I don't need to know a bot's opinion on how to convince others.

I came up an academic philosopher, before I switched careers. When you're surrounded by academic philosophers, you become very used to argument as a default form of interaction. People expect that they'll be asked to give reasons for their assertions, and that those reasons will be scrutinized and challenged.

And it's great! You can learn a ton from having these arguments with smart, engaged interlocutors. It's not that ego doesn't come into it at all. Often, the "loser" of the argument -- and there isn't always one! -- won't admit they're wrong, and at some point will just bow out and live to fight another day. But the point is that everyone agrees they need reasons for their beliefs, and rebuttals to strong objections, and if they lack those they need to go find them. So the arguments serve to help you find those gaps. People argue because they want to be right, but being right is hard. So you work at it. You aren't just trying to assert dominance, you're trying to prove -- to yourself, first and foremost -- that you have the right beliefs! And if you can't, you might even change your mind.

Leaving that world was eye-opening, because I still expected people to feel a powerful need to justify their beliefs. But most people don't, and they take the mere act of asking for justification to be a personal attack. This cost me relationships with people until I really learned the lesson.

> Don’t Win the Argument, Profit From the Difference

Best section for me. Many times I have taken the contrarian view. It doesn't always work, I do get it wrong (fail fast) but when it goes right you earn virtual credit against the person whom you took the opposing view. Its not something tangible but its there and the next time you lock horns they remember.

> It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth, and only speaks when he is questioned.

Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness

> The author assumes they’re always right

You are not doing this, but I always laugh when people trot this one out accusatorially in an argument or discussion. Like, if you disagree with somebody to the point of frustration then what exactly do you think you're doing by saying that? It always gets me when people pick verbal fights then take a detour to this non-existent high road that ends in a giant ad hominem road block. It isn't the gotcha that they think it is.

On topic: the whole of this post is sage advice. Having found myself on the opposite side of a belief that I've previously had enough times I now try and treat everything like a truth-seeking discussion rather than an attempt to inflict my worldview on somebody. If they don't match my energy then I constructively admit "defeat" ("Wow, I'll have to check that out!") and change the subject.

...unless they say something patently ridiculous like "vanilla is better than chocolate" (or even a real flavor as opposed to the bland absence thereof) or "Black Sabbath invented heavy metal". Then I give them a piece of my mind!

The article reminds me on smart and competent people, that in addition to being smart lack the feeling for social norms and empathy. Yes, they tend to unnecessarily run into arguments and fights. Not because they are right, but because they are really insisting on being right. They are pushing the "enemy" into a corner where they would have to declare defeat in public and take the shame. Like animals, their opponents get very uneasy and aggressive in such a situation. People who watch this hate the "clever" person for not handling this more gracefully, and are afraid of being themselves caught in the corner the next time. You lost. Without knowing the author personally its hard to tell, so this is just my hypothesis/thought.

I disagree on one point though: You don't have to stop arguing, you just should do it differently. You will really "win" when the other person thinks it was actually their own idea, or that you came to this conclusion together. You can do so by staying kind, humble and polite and guide the other person towards this revelation, and offer small thoughts and hints. If you have charisma you can be more direct, but such people are in a different league anyways.

The most important thing is staying friendly and kind. You will never convince or win people with an offensive "YOU ARE WRONG!" attitude.

Do you know that feeling you feel when you are correct?

Well, it's the exact same feeling as when you are wrong.

This is something that has always stuck with me, and handy to keep in mind when arguing.

— Lao Tzu said this too, 2,500 years ago. In chapter 81 of the Tao Te Ching:

True words are not fine-sounding; Fine-sounding words are not true.

The good man does not prove by argument; The he who proves by argument is not good.

This ASCII character '|' is a bar.

There are two tools I usually employ in "technical arguments":

* The socratic method. I ask questions. Why did you do it this way? What are the tradeoffs? Get them to explain their reasoning. And not in an accusative way, I'm genuinely interested in how they arrived at the decision. Sometimes I just need more context; sometimes they rethink; sometimes we figure out something new together. It is a voyage of discovery, no egos involved.

* Be tolerant. Sometimes design issues are bikesheddy, and my rule is to err on the side of "let the person doing the work decide". Even if it isn't the way I would do it. I will usually phrase it something along the lines of "this is how I would do it, but if you strongly prefer this other way, it's fine". Pick battles that are important; help engineers develop "good taste"; but try to empower, not disempower, them.

I have some hard lines but they're easy and everyone knows them. Immutable data structures, use the typechecker, constructor injection, don't use null, etc etc. I wrote up a doc that all new employees read and it's distilled into a CLAUDE.md file. AI review usually takes care of these.

The only place I find that I still have to push a little is applying the YAGNI rule. Folks aren't particularly resistant, they often don't realize when they're violating it. Over-engineering is habitual. But people eventually get it.

This is some high level hard earned wisdom.

Mythical place to argue with people:

1. Your anonymous or whatever you say can't be used by another party against you.

2. There is a code of conduct that is strictly held (no interrupting, no ad hominem etc)

3. You can ask for time-outs and think before answering.

4. There is a bank of known knowledge that is considered true, very strict standards, as unbiased as possible, including confidence scales.

5. You are face to face.

"We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."

Well said.

well said

This whole honesty based approach stopped working a decade ago latest online and in politics, there is no accountability anymore and who is the most persistent wins an argument in the public sphere, those actors exactly bank on that most people will give up eventually.

I stopped arguing with people, so I started arguing with the whole internet instead :)

You can be correct, but on different axis.

You can be correct that your method makes code more DRY, and miss the point that the other person believes that things are going to diverge significantly over time and doesn’t value DRY.

You can be correct that your method is more resilient to failure, and miss that the other person believes that some level of failure is OK and wants an option that is less technically complex.

I’ve seen people get upset that they were correct and yet the room shifted against them. Most times, it seems like they are correct. But they are correct on a narrow axis, that misses the motivations of the other people in the room.

This is part of the reason high level account reps focus on the mix and viewpoints of people in the room over technical specs. Get the lay of the land first, and then you can tailor your pitch to be correct in the way that the audience will be receptive to.

I mostly agree, and I try not to argue on things that are either not that important or ok either way, or what I call "religious grounds" - things people will defend outside of logic or truth, only because it's to them tied to their identity/faith/being. The only time I would present an opposite case is if I know for a fact that the "other way" might not end well.

This is one of the core principles of How To Win Friends And Influence People (Dale Carnegie). Since Ive read I tried to apply this rule. It works.

In family and friend relationships, this all resonates completely.

Where I struggle and find my ego self defensively screaming “But…!” is in work relationships. Product managers, where their wrongness makes my downstream life more miserable. Basically any relationship where I have a (self perceived) need for the outcome to be a certain way to protect/enhance my well being. Asymmetric relationships.

This is epic: "People Are Not Rational We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It’s the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think."

Thanks for sharing

"There’s a clean exception to all of this, and it flips the entire logic."

AI Slop

I really love the art of a good argument, but likewise I’ve come to realize that most people don’t form their opinions from deep rational analysis on an issue, and therefore aren’t going to change that opinion from a new rational analysis. They form opinions from their life experiences, culture, and so on.

This applies to myself, too – the supposedly deep rational analysis I have on an issue oftentimes is just as prone to the same perspective problems as anything else. This kind of attitude is really common amongst logical/technical people, unfortunately.

This why Socrates was considered the wisest man in Athens: he knew that he didn’t know everything, unlike the people he talked to, who were confident in their answers.

I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.

I find this far too black and white. There's a lot to gain from conversations where you can't change the other person's mind. If you see making them agree with you as the only positive outcome, I can see why you'd give up arguing with people, but you're losing out on a lot of potential benefit.

I also think it's too adversarial. The author's claim, "If you genuinely believe something others don’t, that’s not a debate to win. That’s an edge," is not very persuasive, because you communicate far more with teammates, bosses, and subordinates than with enemies and competitors. Most of the people you communicate with on a day-to-day basis are people who can be dealt with more profitably through cooperation.

"You Can Only Change Yourself" is another far too absolute conclusion. You change and are changed by everybody you come in contact with. Every conversation is a chance to influence someone. If you can't make them see your point right away, you can sow the seeds for a future insight. Or you can clarify why you disagree. You can change their mind from "this person doesn't understand the problem" to "this person cares about an aspect of the problem that I don't think is primary."

I think the author should broaden their idea of what can be achieved in talking with someone they disagree with. It won't help them win arguments, but it will help them reap more benefit over time.

Hmm, there's a difference between unnecessary arguments about every tiny detail, and productive arguments.

I've seen many healthy technical disagreements; often leading to new insights coming to light, assumptions being made explicit, everyone leaving with a better understanding, sometimes resulting in one party conceding, sometimes resulting in a compromise. Guess it requires a certain level of maturity / people arguing in good faith.

I am, too, like the author, very rational and almost always correct, and like the author, I find it hard to understand why irrational ego-driven people who are clearly wrong cannot take my wisdom in stride, or why the room often sides with them.

It's such a burden to be always intellectually superior. If only ideas triumphed over base human emotions!

I'll apply my vast intellect to solving this riddle.

This is very correct.

However, occasionally you’ll see code so bad you need to leave.

You need to lie in your next interview. Your co workers, who are doing such a poor job it’s borderline fraud, are fantastic smart people.

You have a great relationship with your manager who knows the code pretends to do things it actually doesn’t, and tells you the KPIs come first.

But some mean ole man who you’ve never met is trying to lay everyone off.

That’s the only reason to ever quit a job. Pending blameless layoffs.

Some reasons I still argue over the internet

- To convince myself. Sometimes I start writing and convince myself I’m wrong. Other times I just move to a more specific opinion or find a stronger justification

- Because sometimes a responder does convince me to change my opinion. Or they provide some interesting related information I didn't know before

- To be a voice of reason in comments mostly by people dumb enough to feel their surface-level opinion is still worth posting. Although obviously I’m only a voice of reason to those who share my opinions, sometimes even I recognize I’m again restating an obvious observation

- To get better at writing and arguing in case one day it does really matter

- Because I’m bored and have nothing better to do. At least it’s more productive than YouTube

Sometimes, the point of argument is not to convince the ego-driven person you're arguing with, but the others who are watching.

I think that there are times as a leader\supervisor\co-worker\parent\coach where you might argue despite knowing you won't change the outcome simply to show that you are willing to fight for those you represent.

Being correct is overvalued. What matters is having an idea or approach that is directionally plausible, then having enough execution follow-through to make that idea or approach succeed. You can be "more correct" and fail because you didn't execute well. You can be "less correct" and succeed because you did execute well. Beyond that, correctness in the real world is almost always a very subtle function of context. You may be fully correct right now, yet increasingly wrong over a relatively short period of time as context around you changes. Successful execution involves constant pivots, some small, some large, based on changing dynamics.

If you understand this, it gives you a pretty good blueprint for deciding whether something is worth an argument. For me, it makes it abundantly clear that harming a relationship or a team dynamic just to force through some mild degree of greater momentary correctness is often not worth it. It's far more important to find or create an environment where you can trust that your teammates are good executors who won't do dumb things than it is to force everyone to constantly be totally "correct" about everything all the time.

The greatest skill to develop is not knowing when and how to argue. It's knowing how not to. It's learning to sit with the mild discomfort of not completely agreeing with someone, controlling your own behavior, remaining calm and respectful, and trusting others, not just yourself.

I used to think, when I disagreed with someone, we were on a journey together to find out what the truth is. Maybe my understandng was wrong, maybe theirs, maybe it's something neither of us thought of.

But then I realized that most people don't think that way. It's more important to not be alone than to know the truth, and people tie their individual identity to their group identity - if a fact contradicts their group identity's approved list of observances, they'll take it as a personal attack. So I just say 'ok' now.

I added this post to my HN favorites.

I experienced myself at least two of those points. In different words:

Never teach to people that did not ask you to teach them. They will not listen to you. They will forget. They will not thank you. Time wasted. As a corollary, I'm sorry for most teachers at school and even at universities.

You can change your mental state. A friend of mine told me about 3 years ago "When X happens I can't change the way I react" and she was not necessarily reacting in a good way. My answer was "Your mental state is the only thing you can control." She stopped talking and started thinking. I don't know if it had an effect. Changing the way one reacts to a stimulus takes time and effort but it can be done.

More like why people stopped engaging with someone who could never admit that they might be wrong.

Because we only paid for the 5 minute argument, and our time is up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQlyUjp3vM

I also stopped arguing, I don't waste energy or my focus on random stuff, did happen with the age I think... unless... unless it's my wife or my mum who is wrong. If I think I'm right and they wrong, I will argue with al my energy. Of course!

This is still about being right or wrong. About people and not ideas, otherwise there would be no issue in the first place, there would just be the duty and the acceptance.

That blog post is technically correct but not very human. To be curious human to me means questioning other people why they believe what they believe and trying to understand their thinking about it. Of course not always there's good place to have such open minded discussion. If one side, or both sides are only talking and not listening to each other it's pointless monologue and waste of time. It's not helpful to state bunch of facts and let the other person "deal with it". As it's pointed out, often people want to just share something and aren't interested to be lectures or have their opinion changed, that can come later with some introspection, when ready. Personally I wouldn't want to talk to someone who thinks they know it all already and are looking only for arguments.

I like this post as it landed at a really good time for me. But, I had a remaining question based on one of the lines:

>So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones.

So uh... anyone have any tips on _identifying_ each of these people? I guess I'm left to presume it would mean those people _would_ explicitly ask, but if not how would you determine what kind of person you are dealing with? Sure, I can brainstorm and reason through, but looking for feedback from folks who have been successful in doing this professionally.

A good puzzle for political philosophers: how do you build a decent system of government in a world where people to not listen to reasoned arguments?

I read “how to win friends and influence others” many times but didn’t realize the main lesson is not to argue. That is until I reached 40. So, some lessons will take certain age to understand. I bet the OP is not in their 20s or 30s even.

This is cynical, even with the whole self-development coating.

The author's argument is immediately unsound because we've been doing something for thousands of years: teaching.

And it works, to some degree.

And how do teachers teach? They don't start by trying to argue or by trying to prove students wrong. They teach by showing what's fascinating.

Taking the time to show people what's fascinating, what's perplexing, where the tension lies, and how it's resolved, is teaching.

Argument construction in social contexts is ironically ego-driven. Demonstrating something interesting, on the other hand, means asking yourself what what they would find interesting about what you want to tell them.

I adopted a behaviour at work that if I am fairly convinced about X ending up being wrong, and I see that trying X is not too costly (esp compared to arguing about it), then I just let X eventually fail, and take it from there, already knowing why this happened.

People seem to learn better this way, and there is no better argument than reality itself. Of course it cannot be used everywhere, eg if trying X until it fails takes too long, if it involves buying an expensive machine that we will not be able to change etc, but there is a good portion of stuff it can actually reduce interpersonal friction on. And the process of changing from X to Z happens organically that sometimes I don't even have to explicitly say that "I knew all along" (though I must admit I derive an internal satisfaction that I knew all along).

It was a time when at work there was a widespread interpersonal tension between everyone, and reducing interpersonal friction was more important than spending more or less time on sth that would not work. I dont think arguing and discussing things are to be avoided per se, but in certain circumstances, if one knows that a team will eventually go down on path Z anyway due to necessity, it may not be worth arguing about at all.

He did not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpQlyUjp3vM