
Be careful about what you dislike - JonoBB
http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2016/11/5/be-careful-about-what-you-dislike/
======
hellofunk
I have realized over the years that it is wise to be naturally skeptical of
any opinion that is strong, either positive or negative. People who have an
appreciation for gray areas, even if they ultimately do have a preference,
tend to be a lot more emotionally balanced than those who maintain a very
strong stance on something. I have noticed this so consistently over the last
15 years that I now consider it a fundamental benchmark by which I can gauge
my ability to work or socialize with someone in general, on any topic, over
the long term.

~~~
hiou
I find that people who sit in the greys tend to be very worried about their
public perception or have very little passion beyond maintaining personal
comfort.

The people I look for are those that take strong stands but are willing and
able to adjust and even quickly reverse those stances.

To me it's the difference between a leader and a worker bee.

~~~
twic
> The people I look for are those that take strong stands but are willing and
> able to adjust and even quickly reverse those stances.

Sometimes called "strong opinions, weakly held".

I find this principle to be incoherent - if you understand something well
enough to have a strong opinion, you understand it well enough to hold that
opinion strongly. Holding strong opinions on things you don't understand that
well seems unhelpful.

~~~
adrusi
You don't need to understand something well to be justified in having a strong
opinion about it. Your belief should be based on the evidence you have, even
if that means a small amount that leads you to an extreme conclusion.
Otherwise you will have a bias toward the median belief, and there's no reason
to expect, in general, that a median belief is any better than an extreme one.
The strength of your evidence should only affect the level of attachment that
you have to your belief.

~~~
ball_of_lint
If you don't understand something well, then any opinion you might claim to
have on it is not actually on it, but rather on what you currently understand
it to be. In that case, why not just say that you simply don't know enough to
have an informed opinion?

~~~
thwarted
_In that case, why not just say that you simply don 't know enough to have an
informed opinion?_

Up against a dishonest debater, this is exploitable to lessen your influence,
even if your position is relatively stronger, against (unsubstantiated) claims
of being an expert.

"ball_of_lint claims to be uninformed and doesn't have an opinion. That's
okay, listen to me, I'm an expert"

~~~
Too
So you'd rather win one debate at the cost of loosing reputation for years?

If someone strongly claims they know something and I later find out that they
were wrong, I simply can't trust that person ever again.

~~~
thwarted
_If someone strongly claims they know something and I later find out that they
were wrong, I simply can 't trust that person ever again._

I'm glad you're a critical enough thinker to do that (although it's
unfortunate that you don't account for honest conviction or that person
obtaining further understanding such that they change their position; after
all, not all strong claims revealed to be wrong are meant to deceive). Not
everyone is that kind of critical thinker, especially up against a savvy,
dishonest debater/character/charlatan. Some people just keep shouting "I know
the answer" or "Believe me!" to every question or issue and they end up with a
following.

------
andybak
I'm fascinated by the topic of English Prime:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime)

It introduced me to the idea that 'is' should be treated very carefully. Any
assertion outside of strict formal languages that use it are half-truths at
best. It also introduces heightens the emotional tone of a discussion. If you
say "John is foo" you tend to create the impression that John will always and
has always been foo. Foo-ness is a taint on his soul. Contrast that with
reformulations that make it explicit that John's foo-ness is a fleeting
association related to both his present situation, your current perception of
it and the current socially accepted meaning of foo along with all it's
implied baggage.

I realise I might be rather off-topic :-)

~~~
wolfgke
> If you say "John is foo" you tend to create the impression that John will
> always and has always been foo.

Interestingly in Spanish and Portuguese there are two verbs of "to be": "ser"
and "estar". These have different meanings: ser ist mostly used for persistent
states of being, while estar is mostly used for something that is only
temporarily as it is, but could be different the next time.

~~~
praseodym
Isn't that a bit like "is" vs. "is being"?

~~~
pedrocr
The "is being" construct also exists by using the two verbs ("estar a ser")
but it's not the same. Basically in order of permanence:

ser -> a mostly permanent characteristic

estar -> a current characteristic that could change in the future

estar a ser -> a characteristic of the specific interaction

~~~
wolfgke
In
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879933)
you gave an example of "estar a ser" for Portuguese. Since I currently try to
learn both Spanish and Portuguese: Does a form similar to "estar a ser" also
exist in Spanish or is it specific to Portuguese?

~~~
schoen
I think that pedrocr is from Portugal so in case you're learning Brazilian
Portuguese you should consider that Brazilians usually use "estar + present
participle" where the Portuguese use "estar a + infinitive" (for example
"estou a falar" vs. "estou falando").

Brazilians thus have "estar sendo" which can be used in many cases where
English has "is being", but as a non-native speaker I'm not sure what I can
claim about its connotations or whether it's the same as "estar a ser". But my
initial guess is that the Portuguese say "estou a ser" just as they say "estou
a falar", while Brazilians say "estou sendo" just as they say "estou falando".

Spanish-speakers in turn have "estar siendo" with the Spanish present
participle of ser, like "estoy siendo". I suspect this is the standard form of
this construction in all kinds of Spanish.

~~~
wolfgke
Thank you for the explanation. This clarifies why I haven't (consciously) seen
the "estou a + infinitive" form yet - the Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
forms look more familiar to me. :-)

~~~
schoen
You might have an amusingly confused time in Portugal, as I did!

"O comboio está a chegar."

(plus different phonology)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> Then the entire thing spiraled out of control: people not only railed
> against TTIP but took their opposition and looked for similar contracts and
> found CETA. Since both are trade agreements there is naturally a lot of
> common ground between them. The subtleties where quickly lost. Where the
> initial arguments against TTIP were food standards, public services and
> intransparent ISDS courts many of the critics failed to realize that CETA
> fundamentally was a different beast.

CETA has ISDS as well, and if only on that point alone, CETA is objectionable.
This argument comes off as disingenuous, the similarities between the deals
are not imagined. ISDS isn't even the only similarity; CETA also contained
objectionable new copyright provisions (though apparently those are mostly
gone now), for example.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
> CETA has ISDS as well, and if only on that point alone, CETA is
> objectionable.

Author here: that is not disputed. However the ISDS in CETA is a permanent
tribunal where both Canada and Europe elect lawyers equally. The processes
also require transparency and there is an appeal process. None of that was in
the original draft of it and has been added over time as a response to
criticism.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Well, that might be a slight improvement, but it's still ISDS. The fundamental
problem with ISDS is not its lack of transparency, but that it allows
corporations to sue governments for domestic policy changes in the first
place.

~~~
friendlygrammar
Every single trade agreement has something like ISDS and the entire purpose of
these courts is to make sure people follow the agreement as it was written.
It's not like you will be invaded if you break the rules of the agreement and
ISDS rules against you, you will simply be kicked out if you don't follow the
rules. Why do morons spread fear about this shit?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> Every single trade agreement has something like ISDS and the entire purpose
> of these courts is to make sure people follow the agreement as it was
> written.

Huh? ISDS isn't about enforcing the trade deal (which might also go to
arbitration), it's a separate issue.

------
pimlottc
This brings to mind a fantastically lucid comic about the utility of questions
vs answers:

[http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-
park](http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park)

After all, the an opinion is just an answer to the question, "What do I think
of this?"

~~~
dredmorbius
Please submit this to HN. That's fabulous.

(It's also much better than a few similar conversations I've been having
myself.)

~~~
pimlottc
I took your suggestion and posted it, let's see if it gets any traction

~~~
dredmorbius
Not much, but if you check the HN guidelines, it's fair game to re-post after
a few days or so. Again, really good, and thanks for sharing this.

------
cyberpanther
A very common cognitive bias or logic pattern our brain follows is to
whitelist or blacklist things. When we trust something, we follow it without
question or we begin rationalizing it no matter what. And in the day of the
internet and Google we can confirm basically any bias we have on either side
of an issue.

You should scrutinize your own thoughts and opinions and others to see if they
are just believing something because it was true in the past.

In terms of Javascript, there is definitely a lot of hate out there for the
language and ecosystem which was entirely true. But I would argue JS has the
best trajectory right now of any language out there. So you better learn it if
you want to stay relevant in development.

Lastly, I've found it best to not be so opinionated about everything. Sure
having some opinions are great but you develop too many biases otherwise. So
what if something sucks, use it anyway. You might learn something new, or
maybe you can help improve it if it has potential.

~~~
eric_cc
> JS has the best trajectory right now of any language out there

> I've found it best to not be so opinionated about everything

Lol

~~~
jerf
To be fair, JS does have a pretty good trajectory. When you start from near
the absolute bottom, there's nowhere to go but up. I do _not_ mean that as a
crack against the language; it is an observation that even JS partisans ought
to agree with if they think for a moment. I'm looking back all the way to its
creation, when it was a language designed to handle onclick events that fit
into one attribute tag. There was a lot of up to go from there.

However, looking into the future and seeing where a language with Javascript's
technical foundation can end up, it's hard to see it ever exceeding Python 3
or Ruby, and both of those languages, while perhaps not in outright decline,
are certainly looking at having peaked and entering their "maturity" phase.
Confident declarations that it is the future are probably not warranted when
it is at most the present. I don't think WebAssembly will "kill" Javascript
any time soon, but once it really gets going it's going to start eating away
at all the really big uses of it, because WebAssembly will permit languages
that can fit into niches other than the 1990s-style dynamic language maxima.
It's a nice maxima (totally no sarcasm, I'm just barely old enough to have
tasted the paradigms it replaced and dynamic languages got as big as they did
for a reason) but it's now in 2016 also abundantly clear it's not the only
one.

------
crawfordcomeaux
Our realities are each a collection of stories we each tell ourselves.
Sometimes parts of the stories two people believe will overlap and we'll call
those opinions or facts depending on situation.

I'm finding it helpful to view every signal my body encounters as a chance to
choose how to process it, including what I do, taste, or hear.

Since adopting this view, I've effortlessly enjoyed eating foods I've hated my
entire life (tomatoes, olives, CILANTRO?!), listening to country music, and
doing things like chores that used to bore me to tears.

If anyone sees danger in learning to view the world that way by default, I'd
love to hear about it.

~~~
xg15
> _Sometimes parts of the stories two people believe will overlap and we 'll
> call those opinions or facts depending on situation._

I'd argue that happens slightly more often than "sometimes" \- this is the
basis which communication, and with it relationships and communities need to
function.

> _If anyone sees danger in learning to view the world that way by default, I
> 'd love to hear about it._

The main danger I see is not trusting your body. Your virw seems to treat all
reactions to signals as equal - but that ignores that some reactions might be
more justified than others. Some contain knowledhe by others, some
evolutionary development by your body. E.g., even if you could bring yourself
to like the taste of rotten meat, it would be a very bad idea to do so.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
True...now that I think about it, I can always choose to find some sort of
relationship between what I believe & what you believe, even if metaphorical.
That's fun :)

> _The main danger I see is not trusting your body. Your virw seems to treat
> all reactions to signals as equal_

I'd argue what I'm doing is learning to dampen the bias my mind introduces
when it processes signals from my tongue/nose/ears. It's trusting the signals
my body generates more than what my mind has to say about them. Rancid food is
still going to taste/smell/feel/look spoiled & if I do somehow enjoy it, my
body's still likely to react negatively in other ways to let me know it was a
bad decision.

------
kstenerud
It's unfortunate, but we have a tendency to take some beliefs so deeply that
they become a part of our core identity. Once this happens, validation of the
idea becomes validation of ourselves. Attacks upon the idea become attacks
upon ourselves.

Once someone has reached this point, logic simply cannot reach them.
Successfully defeating their arguments will only strengthen their resolve (the
backfire effect), because they're being driven by the amygdala, which only
understands threat response. They will grab onto any argument, no matter how
flimsy, and be completely unaware of how little sense it makes. Any further
argument with them will at best do nothing, at worst make you look as much a
fool as he.

The wise man learns to recognize this state and back off.

------
lazyjones
It's not the responsibility of the author to anticipate future changes that
might weaken his current arguments. The reader is responsible for taking into
account the time and context of the text they are reading.

It's why we like to have e.g. "(2013)" added to anchor texts on HN, for
example.

~~~
johncolanduoni
It is, when the author is writing them (or saying them) in 2016. I thought he
made it pretty clear that was what he was complaining about.

------
dorianm
For comparaison, Ruby 3 is gonna introduce a pretty big breaking change
(frozen string literals) but they already shipped a way to optional enable it
by-file (magic comment) and globally to the ruby interpreter (just a
parameter) so that all the libraries and projects can slowly fix it in a
compatible manner (often just calling .dup is enough).

So that's when it's time for Ruby 3 the transition will be pretty painless.

More info: [https://wyeworks.com/blog/2015/12/1/immutable-strings-in-
rub...](https://wyeworks.com/blog/2015/12/1/immutable-strings-in-ruby-2-dot-3)

(Frozen string literals allows strings to be in memory only once and not
having to reallocate each time, so a pretty big memory and cpu optimization)

(Also for instance rubocop already recommends adding the magic comment to all
ruby files)

~~~
uiri
_(Frozen string literals allows strings to be in memory only once and not
having to reallocate each time, so a pretty big memory and cpu optimization)_

Isn't this the purpose of symbols in the language? This seems like a pretty
basic optimization, surely there were good reasons not to introduce it in
earlier versions.

~~~
dorianm
e.g. 1000.times { "hello" } creates strings 1000 times but: 1000.times {
"hello".freeze } only one time.

The thing about frozen strings is they can't be changed "inline":

e.g. : "Hello".freeze << " world" doesn't work but "Hello".freeze + " world"
does because it creates a new string.

(It's funny because << is often recommended as an optimization)

------
carsongross
I naturally see both sides of almost any argument, and my personality is such
that I would rather synthesize the arguments of both sides into a final
position via dialectic.

I have lost almost every major argument I've had in a corporate environment.

~~~
ahartman00
compromise is often wise, but beware design by committee

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee)

------
danso
As a relative newcomer to Python, I had no real interest in working with 2.x.
But I appreciated Armin's critiques of 3.x -- it was really difficult finding
thorough, thoughtful critiques that were focused on 3.x's flaws, not on the
pain of porting/division of the community, which is of less concern to recent
bandwagon jumpers like me. Most of all, I appreciate that his libraries --
Flask, flask-sqlalchemy, Lektor -- are 3.x compatible.

------
michaelsbradley
Hear! hear! I also recommend, more generally, reviewing logical fallacies,
cognitive biases, and misconceptions as part of a regular self-review. It's
important to keep a flexible mind, though achieving greater degrees of
interior freedom is hard work.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions)

------
dorfsmay
Part of the issue is efficiency, we have to make choices and cannot reevaluate
everything constantly. Also, we can't be specialists in everything.

So programming languages, we have to pick a few and become good at them. It's
one thing to take another hard look when applying for a new job for example,
but we cannot keep track of all programming languages and their evolutions.

------
simonhamp
I think a sideline point here is to not appropriate other people's opinions
from a specific point in time just because they happen to align with yours
(opinion/bias) at the current time.

And of course, try to have as wide and deep an understanding of the subject as
possible before forming strong publicised opinion in the first place.

------
Unman
Hmmm... while agreeing with the sentiment I am unimpressed by the lack of
evidence for one of his supporting examples. What stood out for me was this
bald assertion with no reference to falsifiable specifics:

"_Not_only_was_it_already_a_much_improved_agreement_from_ the_start_,but it
kept being modified from the initial public version of it to the one that was
finally sent to national parliaments."

Either the writer of this is an expert on the topic, well-known in the field
and the weight of this judgement on its own is a valuable primary source; or,
the writer is referring to such an analysis conducted by other experts but has
not bothered to include a citation/link; or, the writer has their own critique
but instead of presenting _that_ has just stated an opinion which they know to
be controversial.

All of the above possibilities contribute substantially to the noise around
any discussion.

~~~
zanny
Same thing with this line:

> TTIP was negotiated in secrecy (as all trade agreements are)

That seems like a really steep assumption to try to start a conversation about
_changing_ perspectives with time. He opens with a purported tautology about
how you _must_ do trade deals, which I feel hurts the argument against moving
goalposts - because that seems like the exact kind of sentiment that leads to
the behavior in the first place. This has always happened, thus it must always
continue to happen is rarely a way to start productive dialog about something.

~~~
Unman
That's another good example. The original post is actually nearly an example
of "How to start a flamewar."

You can even see the discussion of CETA spawning a long, subsidiary thread
which distracts from the central thesis which we should be arguing about. (I
am not offering an opinion on the content of that discussion.)

~~~
zanny
The real takeaway should be that if you want to make a point about the topic
of _discussion_ you really cannot use real world examples. Nothing is black
and white, everything is nuanced, and online _someone_ will argue anything
(including the connotations associated with the word "is" in this very
thread).

It should be no surprise that if you make a post trying to talk about the meta
of controversial topics, that if you start directly citing said topics the
discussion ends up being a debate about the controversy rather than the
original intent.

------
rdslw
Paul Graham in one of his best text explained similar concepts writing "I
finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless
discussions"

Highly worth read:
[http://paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://paulgraham.com/identity.html)

------
sitkack
I have to reference an Arthur C Clarke essay, "Hazards of Prophecy" with this
quote

    
    
      > When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that
      > something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When
      > he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
    

I have found that the wisest, smartest, most mature folks will re-evaluate
their opinions in light of new information, and often change their mind.

------
mooreds
Try not to move the goalposts. If someone compromises, acknowledge that and
thank them for it, rather than saying "I am glad you finally saw the light,
but now we need to take it a step further".

Brinkmanship rarely serves to get anything done, and burns bridges when it
does actually accomplish something.

------
madsbuch
We need to establish that all communication is the senders responsibility. In
the case of CETA, bot parts are not senders. Only one part is. They have a
clear obligations to let people know about updates and imprecision about their
communications.

------
9mit3t2m9h9a
I think the effect described in the text has another side: imagine that at
some point using XYZ was obviously a bad idea for multiple reasons for a
specific person in specific circumstances. Obviously, keeping track of the
changes in XYZ will have a lower priority for a person who is not going to use
XYZ anyway, even if one of the multiple show-stoppers gets
fixed/changed/redesigned. This means that the person's opinion about XYZ
slowly gets stale.

------
slavik81
The bit on CETA was interesting. I was very disappointed when I heard CETA was
signed last week because I strongly opposed the copyright term extension and
anticircumvention clauses from the 2009 leaked draft. However, as far as I can
tell, those are not in the final agreement. Opps.

------
agumonkey
This is a broader topic, it touches on how to deal with communication, debate,
idea exchange, solution finding, society. I've seen the postures recently from
supposedly right wings partisans that were mostly stuck up on old negative
facts that don't apply today.

------
z3t4
Web URL's are seriously underrated ... You can not go back in time and change
what you told someone ... But if you have a blog that has an _URL_ , you _can_
actually update the content.

------
datashovel
It may be less the responsibility of the "consumer" of the information and
more the responsibility of the "producer" of the information.

If the argument is presented as if something is and will always be a certain
way (or even if the argument is presented without admitting that something may
change) it can probably lead a lot faster to groups of people assuming the
argument will be valid forever.

EDIT: Or can be misinterpreted that someone presenting an argument believes
the argument will remain valid forever.

btw. never saw the talks the author cites, and have not followed the trade
agreements very closely so I'm only speaking generally here.

------
minusf
for me personally it is news the_mitsuhiko is "not vocally against python3
anymore". i cannot find any other recent blog posts besides this one, where
python3 is praised or encouraged fully. so why be surprised if people still
think he is a big python3 critic?

as i see it, the issue is less about parroting other's outdated technical
opinions, it's about not being vocal enough about the change of heart.

~~~
Veen
> i cannot find any other recent blog posts besides this one, where python3 is
> praised or encouraged fully. So why be surprised if people think he's a big
> python critic.

I think this attitude is exactly what the article argues against.

If (1) you read his earlier posts about python 3 and (2) understood the
specific objections and (3) are aware the current state of python 3 is such
that those objections don't apply, then you have no good reason to suppose he
still considers them to be valid objections.

If (3) isn't the case, you still don't have a good reason to assume his
opinions haven't changed, because the world moves on and that has to be
accounted for.

------
xtiansimon
Headline: Engineer cries Political Arguments are not 'valid'; Forks off own
nation.

------
profalseidol
Two words:

Socrates, Marx

------
msinclair
Except Internet Explorer... that will always be the same. :)

------
ak39
Good article.

List of some of the things I don't like for which I have to occasionally take
another peak to see if I'm finally wrong:

1\. (In languages) Garbage collection and the idea of "safe code". I didn't
like it then and still don't.

2\. ORMs

3\. (Relational) Data models with compound keys flying around as FKs
everywhere.

4\. The idea of self service BI (like PowerBI etc in the hands of a business
user)

5\. Regexp

~~~
allendoerfer
It is your lucky day, I can solve 4 of your problems (I don't even know what
4. is). The answer is: They are neither bad nor good. They are just tools,
whose usefulness depends on the job.

