
Essay: Too much 'niceness' is bad for critical thinking - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-may-12-2019-1.5130771/too-much-niceness-is-bad-for-critical-thinking-michael-s-essay-1.5130792
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cafard
It is unfortunate that the editor could not have taught Mr. Enright to make
paragraphs of more than two sentences. Does that show the weakness of the
approach? The editor might also have taught Mr. Enright to spell "Hardwick"
correctly. That might have been more useful than giving him grief for going to
lunch.

The problem with citing Edmund Wilson is that Wilson a) did not think his job
done when he came up with the title, but rather made a cogent case in the
essay, and b) did not focus on Agatha Christie, but wrote about what he saw
lacking in mystery novels generally. Reducing this to the headline is the sort
of thing that leads young programmers to remember Dijkstra for his zingers,
and think of him as an insult comic. Wilson could be caustic enough, but he
gave reasons for his criticisms.

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danShumway
Half of this essay is spent memorializing a toxic editor with examples of
behavior that were completely counterproductive. Yelling at an editor because
they went to lunch is bold criticism, it's being a jerk for no reason or
benefit to anyone.

Beyond that, there's nothing of substance here to persuade me that caring
about people's feelings is an actual problem. The author takes a commonly
understood, generally accepted, uncontroversial point -- that being nice is
not an excuse to be wrong or to tolerate bad behavior -- and then makes a
vague case that something is wrong with present-day emphasis on empathy in
communication.

Then they go on to conflate a lot of criticisms together that doesn't really
relate in any way. We jump from talking about how criticism should be pointed,
to talking about how "nice" is applied too generally as an adjective, back to
criticism of reviewer standards. It's all over the place, I suspect because
there _is_ no focused point to make. It's just a vague rant that people aren't
allowed to be rude any more.

And to that point, holy heck is this author living in a bubble if they think
that people are too focused on being nice today. Our political discourse is
more tribalized and militarized than ever before. Has the author looked at
Twitter recently? Where is this wonderful, fictitious society I can join where
everyone dulls their criticism out of concern over what its effects might be?

This is an unfocused, pointless criticism of a problem that doesn't exist,
supported by nothing more than poorly written, vague anecdotes, smothered in
good old-fashioned 'in my day it was better' irritability, and I have no idea
how it managed to make the front page of HN.

Aside from those complaints, it's very nice.

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IfOnlyYouKnew
This is just some guy’s opinion, and it reeks of having started from the
rather common conservative everything-used-to-be-better narrative. The exact
genealogy is unclear, but it could be a close relative of Aristotle’s famous
kids-were-better-when-we-still-hit-them speech.

In my experience, people quickly adapt to any leader’s style. If they tend to
start with ad hominem (I. e. Torvalds) it uses any power except to make people
hate working for you.

Conversely, a silent voice can be the loudest. Alan Greenspan comes to mind,
although it’s a somewhat different context.

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Nuzzerino
I think you are missing the point of the piece. This is an appeal to
"everything in moderation". What does conservative even have anything to do
with it?

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gowld
One of the many meanings of "conservative" is a preference for the way things
were over the way things are becoming.

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podnami
I feel that people who feedback in a harsh way are often at blame. Harsh
feedback is caused by something or someone not living up to your expectations,
and lashing out is often caused by not having communicated those expectations
upfront.

They also constitute terrible leadership where the only way to get by is
tolerating being berated at random. Needless to say it’s widespread in
industries such as investment banking and theatre, where fear trumps
appreciation in schooling people on their way up.

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yoz
I'm having a hard time identifying the author's primary motivation in this
vague cloud of worries and demands. If it's the fear that incisive criticism
is dying in contemporary commentary, he does at least provide supporting
evidence by getting this piece published at all.

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JohnFen
"Nice" is not essential, and can often get in the way of effecting real
positive change.

"Respect", however, is absolutely critical. I would not have tolerated working
for the editor mentioned in the article -- not because he wasn't nice, but
because he wasn't respectful.

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fenwick67
There's a type of personality (who I have basically never been able to get
along with) that can only give criticism in this flippant manner. I think
maybe they missed some emotional development or something. It's like they're
afraid of being sincere.

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hirundo
I got straight A grades on high school essays. It turns out my teachers were
just being nice. My first college essay came back with more words in red ink
than there were words in the essay, all well justified. Niceness lowered the
slope of the learning curve and I left high school incompetent and unprepared.
Sometimes you've got to be cruel to be kind in the right measure. It's a very
good sign.

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AcerbicZero
The price of interpersonal conflict has gone up dramatically over the past
~10+ years. I don't know if that's good or bad, and while I certainly learned
a great deal from some very "mean" folks, the more important part was learning
how I myself needed to take criticism and avoid reacting to perceived
"meanness".

Learning how to get along with "mean" people is more about learning how to not
take things personally....although by the same token, you also need to learn
how to stand up for yourself when you're right and they're wrong. One persons
"mean" comment is another persons normal feedback, just like being nice can
come off as condescending or patronizing in certain circumstances.

In the end most workplaces are a mixture of all types of communicators, and
being able to handle those different types of people is far more useful than
worrying about people being too nice or too mean.

~~~
threatofrain
The article reads like this person worked for a fictitious Steve Jobs, and if
real at all, this editor does sound gratuitously cruel. Why does a person
spend their energy delivering workplace critique with maximum twang?

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hirundo
> Why does a person spend their energy delivering workplace critique with
> maximum twang?

Maybe because an editor with a long career in journalism has found a strong
correlation between twang and readership? And attention paid in general. We
may not like J. Jonah Jameson, but the son of a bitch can sell newspapers and
Peter Parker listens when he speaks.

~~~
threatofrain
I'm not sure why that means you need to insult the people you work with. It's
a symptom of power more than correctness, because you wouldn't address board
members or investors that way, and presumably one wouldn't treat clients this
way either. Some workplace expressions emerge with the cover of power.

So sure, if you're working for Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds, identify that
fact and know the tradeoff you're making. But then they better deliver like
so.

~~~
hirundo
I agree in the case of a gratuitous insult, but look at the lead sample from
this article:

"My job compelled me to read the lede on your story; nothing can get me to
read the rest of it."

To me this is a good insult, because it gets to the exact business reason that
the editor has with the story in an admirably concise way. If a reader doesn't
like the lede, they stop. The paper is less compelling so people by fewer of
them. So this is a case of a boss being unkind, but direct and informative.
He's making his point in a memorable way that has a good chance of improving
the reporter's value. So it's kind in the long run.

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methodover
I’ve told this story before on these forums:

I had a junior engineer once, a few years back, who could not take criticism.

He would get flustered, angry, sarcastic. His work wasn’t good. I did my best
to help him — and even though I was polite, he always seemed to take a kind of
deep, personal offense at whatever criticism I had for him.

There were many problems I had with his work — he wasn’t great at testing his
code (at a surface level, sure, but rarely thought deeply about the
implications of his changes. E.g., once he got a ticket to clean up some code
throwing lots of warnings, and solved it by making the code _not work at all_.
He tested that it wasn’t throwing warnings, but didn’t realize that it had an
early escape condition that was being triggered inappropriately every time.)

He surprised me with his lack of basic knowledge that I would’ve expected from
a CS graduate who’d also made an app or two outside of school. He didn’t know
what a database index was, for example, among other issues.

He was also not great at communicating. When talking about his work, he’d use
technical jargon incorrectly. His emails to outside vendors were meandering
and difficult to parse. I coached him on these points extensively.

In the end, after 6 months or so of trying to help him, I asked our CEO to
fire him. We gave him a month’s severance.

A couple months later, his lawyer got in touch with his, alleging racial
discrimination. The allegation was that we fired him because of his accent. He
interpreted my problems with his communication as being a problem with his
(slight, barely noticeable) accent.

Our CEO told me to work on how I levy criticism of others. I mean, he’s right
I’m sure. I thought I was being precise and polite, but perhaps I did give the
wrong idea.

Or, maybe this hire just wasn’t used to criticism. He didn’t understand how to
take advice. He didn’t know how to internalize it and act on those
suggestions. When fired, he blamed an immutable quality about himself rather
than something he could change.

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watwut
I mean, this is story of management incompetence basically. This has much less
to do with person nit accepting criticism or being outright
sociopath/psychopath. This has to do with management not knowing how to fire
people, keep paperwork and getting scared when the word layer is used.

It is hard to prove racism or sexist discrimination. It is just not easy at
all and you need more then assertion.

~~~
methodover
I left out a great deal of detail. We had documentation. We closely work with
an HR lawyer, and consulted with her extensively about this individual long
before firing him.

We didn’t get “scared” of his lawyer. Lawsuits are distracting and expensive
for both sides even if the allegations are baseless, and we avoided one in
this case by just offering a bit of a larger severance than we originally
offered.

