I’m currently enjoying the high, thin whistle of an impending deadline, so here are a couple of poll questions about infuriating behaviors to pass the time. The first is about people:
The second about presentations:
My answers to these are probably a big part of why I sometimes have trouble with the Internet and the people on it. I’m interested to know what other people think, though. And while the polls themselves are binary choices, feel free to leave comments telling me I’m an idiot for leaving out some category that drives you up the wall.
In that second poll, the two categories kind of blend together: you often get somebody presenting the flaws in other people’s solutions without volunteering any of their own, and then when pressed they come up with their own ideas which are pretty unworkable. And then proceed to persist in being wrong in a rather irritating fashion.
Tim, I agree that there is some overlap between the choices in the second poll, but it’s not a large overlap. The first category includes a large class of pontificators not represented in the second class: scam artists. People who say “disaster X is coming, but you can protect yourself via program Y (which involves giving me money)” are sometimes honest, but the overwhelming odds-on bet is that they are only telling you what they are telling you because it involves giving them money. That reduces the signal-to-noise ratio far more than people who acknowledge that complicated problems generally do not have solutions which are simultaneously simple, elegant, and correct.
With respect to the second poll, I chose the first option. I’d rather correct criticism be brought up over incorrect solutions.
Neither. for both polls.
The first choice in the first poll is more pathetic and thus laughable than infuriating, to me.
The second is just a case of someone with a problem in communication, which might be a cause for pity from some, but why should it invoke fury?
on the second poll it’s even less of a choice. The first case is simply yet another proof for the limitation of man. and unworkable solutions may actually turn out to be workable by some unexpected turn of events. if they try to get money diverted from what seem like more plausible solutions than their own it might get me worried, but certainly not infuriate me.
the second case is sometimes all you can do. map out the problem. say what’s wrong with the existing approaches and hope that some one smarter than you (or just luckier?) would find a better one. not every problem has an accessible solution, most real-world problems are highly nonlinear and involve many variables with often unexpected interactions.
None of the above. When I start encountering any of those, I take a step back and ask two questions:
1) Why am I reading/watching/listening to this?
2) Why is it invoking this response?
You would be surprised sometimes about the answers when you do that. Sometimes the problem is not with the author but with me the reader.
Expecting solutions all the time when someone presents a critique pretty much limits criticism especially of those in power. It maintains the status quo without challenging others to think outside the box. And how do you distinguish outside the box solutions from ones that are unworkable? You can’t do it a 100% of the time but a good bet is you have to sit back and really think about the problem, and not just rely on a knee-jerk response.
As for the first group. Why do you constantly go read/listen/watch someone who is wrong and being a jerk about it? Unless you like getting upset in which case that is on you. And as for unappealing manner, unappealing to you? Maybe it wasn’t meant to appeal to you. Taking a step back and realizing that can be helpful.