As the title says, how often do you admit you’re wrong? Is it different when it’s a factual dispute versus something more subjective?
I make an effort to concede early if I’m in error. I think because my mother almost never admits fault. She’ll fall back to “that’s not what I meant” or similar deflections first, and that’s really annoying.
The last big factual error I made was about the distance of walking, and that’s where I learned about Taxicab Geometry ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry ).
I think some people believe admitting fault is a sign of weakness, but I find it’s more of a power move. It takes strength to do it, and people can tell when you’re sweating and desperate. Usually it leads to resolving the conflict faster and cheaper, too.
(I expect some people will feel the urge to reply they’re never wrong. I’ll file that under never admits fault.)
Early and often. I used to be one of those people who would just never admit if I’m wrong, grew up with them for sure. Learned it’s WAY less stressful to just admit the moment you realize you’re wrong.
That said, I use devils advocating to figure out what my actual opinions are, so I will argue positions I’m not 100% sure of pretty adamantly. Always seems to throw people when we debate for 20 minutes, me passionately defending my stance and then at the end I’m like “huh, yep. You right.” Most people think I’m fucking with them or something and keep trying to argue and I’m just like “yep, 100% agree”.
Quite often but I find that if I admit I’m wrong but the other person never does then I stop when im around them.
usually it takes me a while to contemplate what the other person just said and whether they’re actually right. sadly by then they’re mostly gone so i can’t tell them.
All the time. People tend not to take it well but that seems their problem.
Also it’s one of the things destroying politics.
Also it’s one of the things destroying politics.
That’s often the previous stop on this train of thought. There are maga people that in their secret heart know they’ve made a mistake, but they struggle to come to terms with that. Though that also carries the fear of losing all their social bonds and being rejected by the group.
Exactly, it’s two sided trained behavior. On one side, no guilt is admitted leading to all downsides of never learning and on the other side there’s a ruthless expectation. It can never work.
It doesn’t help that any time a politician changes their opinion on something, the other side jumps on them for it and accuses them of flip-flopping. In reality, changing a view when presented with a compelling argument or new information is a good thing but they use it as ammunition to attack each other, so of course everyone just sticks to their guns no matter what…
I try to express my wrongness in a casual way in front of my child or children in general. I aim for them to take away that it’s not a big deal and there is no big stakes in always being right. And if I am right I try to argue facts and attempt to leave personal stakes out of it.
I actually usually admit if I’m wrong, but I think I don’t if it’s a thing where it’s obvious I was wrong and the other party is holding it over my head. It’s a character flaw but also I don’t really know how to deal with that situation because admitting I’m wrong to a person doing that, in my mind, gives them permission to blame me for anything else adjacent to the situation, which is usually unfair.
I understand you, but try to see it from a different perspective: by admitting your error you are in fact taking their ammunition away! Continue on and if they try to bring it up again and again you can ask them why they can’t move on, do they have a problem?
I appreciate that suggestion. That is probably the exact way for me to think of it. Now if I can break this pattern…
It’s comments like yours that give me faith in Lemmy honestly. They do a lot to cancel out the judgy and angry ones.
My mother never admitted that she was wrong. I don’t want to be like that to my kids or any one else.
I can get defensive, but with some after thought I will admit I was wrong.
Every time someone is able to convince me I’m wrong, which is not hard to do, I tend to consider things logically, so empirical evidence that I’m wrong will make me flip immediately. Unfortunately most people use very flawed arguments like trying to appeal to emotions or strawmaning my point (or one of the many fallacious things we all have to deal online). And that will not convince me, in fact it only proves you have absolutely no argument. Which is very unfortunate because I’m wrong quite often, and it only takes one person pointing at actual evidence that I’m wrong to make me realize that, yet the majority of my disagreements online end up at an impasse with the person refusing to find common ground to build the debate up.
Unfortunately most people use very flawed arguments like trying to appeal to emotions or strawmaning my point (or one of the many fallacious things we all have to deal online). And that will not convince me, in fact it only proves you have absolutely no argument
One thing I struggle to remember sometimes is someone can make a bad argument, but what they’re arguing for can still be true.
I used to work with a guy that would argue with me, and sometimes at the end he’d be like “I actually agree with your point, but I wanted you to be right for solid reasons”
Of course, it’s also very common for people to be making bad arguments because they’re just feeling stuff, and they’re pulling together whatever words come close to capturing that right now.
Yes, bad arguments can be made about true statements, but people need to understand that you won’t convince anyone with bad arguments, and that discrediting an argument is not the same as discrediting the statement or attacking the person who made it.
For example, just the other day there was a thread about how pitbulls are supposedly more aggressive than other breeds, but the argument they used was “they’re a minority of the population, yet cause the majority of fatalities, therefore they’re aggressive”, which is a TERRIBLE argument that discards all other possible explanations for the observed statistics. It may be true that pitbulls are more aggressive than other dogs, but that argument will never convince me as it’s just plain wrong. And pointing out just how absurd the argument is brought up a bunch of angry people asserting pitbulls are aggressive and attacking me personally for discrediting the logic.
I used to work with a guy that would argue with me, and sometimes at the end he’d be like “I actually agree with your point, but I wanted you to be right for solid reasons”
Yeah, I do that as well, I call it playing devil’s advocate, it’s helpful to be sure the decisions you’re reaching are actually the best ones.
What about for more squishy arguments that are entirely about emotions and feelings etc? I remember getting tilted by reading “my culture is not a costume” on a zine, and the emotional appeal is what got me to change my tune
An argument about emotions can be good or bad like any other, a simple “just because it offends me” is a bad argument because I can be offended by censorship and find your attempt to censor offensive. However a “Currently that word has been embraced by people with a certain mindset, thus by using it you’re giving those people more validation on their beliefs as they think you’re one of them” is a very clear argument as to why certain words can be hurtful socially.
My culture is not a costume to me is sorta a weak argument, think about what people dress as for custome parties: Pirates, Ninjas, Vikings, Nuns, Nurses, etc… Most costumes are either of something that doesn’t exist or a culture (and sometimes both). However diminishing someone’s culture to just the clothes is offensive regardless of culture, and exalting a problem in that culture as part of your costume is also offensive. For example, as someone born in Argentina I wouldn’t be offended by someone dressing as a Gaucho, if a friend of mine wanted to dress like that for a costume party I would even lend him my mate. But I can see people getting offended by someone dressed as a soccer player with white powder under their nose (although me personally would just laugh it off, I can see that as being something someone takes offense with).
One of the best interview questions rarely asked. I hate working with people who have to always be right.
When I’m wrong … I admit I’m wrong. No shame in being wrong about something.
Whenever I’m wrong 😀
Yeah, I scream it from the rooftops (figuratively).
As often as I am actually wrong.
Tap for spoiler
Which of course is NEVER!
I can’t think of a single time someone has admitted to having been wrong about something and me thinking less of them because it. It’s always the opposite yet it’s still so painful being in that spot yourself.
I was talking about this with someone a while ago and they suggested that some people’s lived experiences have been more… abusive. Like as a child if they made a mistake their parents treated them like shit. Now they have that untreated trauma deep in their personality. When they make a mistake like making a reservation at the wrong time, they subconsciously think it’s going to be like when their dad screamed at them, smacked them, and sent them to bed without dinner. So they lie and prevaricate to avoid that.
I don’t know how often that kind of early childhood trauma is the root of the behavior, but if that is happening that’s really sad.
I have my suspicions that my ex is like this because of bad parenting.
When my baby nephew tries to stack his stacking rings, my family praises him even if he has the order wrong. It’s how babies learn.
I suspect that people who can’t admit when they’re wrong had parents who told them not to do a task unless they could do it right the first time
Never had someone with a martyr complex “admit to being wrong” about something completely inconsequential or stupid? If so, I envy you.
All the time…
Being wrong is the pre-requiest to learning something.
If you live your whole life only running into shit you already know, what the fuck is the point?
What makes it confusing is someone that lived a life like that, is gonna accumulate a shit ton of random knowledge. To the point people think of them as a “know it all” when it’s just the normal result of an inquisitive life.
Basically, the people that can’t admit they’re wrong never learn anything except how to keep arguing longer than the person trying to help them. There’s people walking around everyday that think they understand things, because everyone who knows better also knows explaining ain’t worth the time.
I’d like to believe I do it every time I recognize that I am wrong. Equally as important, I think, it to constantly admit, to yourself, and to others where appropriate, that you could be wrong.
The fallibility of human memory and reasoning is enormous, even for very smart people. I think few people properly appreciate this. If you develop that appreciation it is really trivial to admit you are wrong, it’s like admitting that you ate.
Especially intelligent people all eventually end up taking real IQ tests like a Weschler’s. Which breaks it down into a dozen or so categories.
What you’re talking about is crystalized knowledge which is just a tiny slice of the pie and incredibly hard to measure. Making it the least important
On the Weschler it’s just trivia questions and you keep going till you miss 3. Or spend ~2 hours (just for this subtest) answering every question even if you’re wrong 66% of the time. Like, it’s literally the hardest to measure because of that, and because it’s the one (obviously) most likely to be effected by education.
Like, one of the questions was/is “who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird”. Every American was exposed to that information as a kid, so a younger test taker has a better shot at remembering, but wouldn’t have been exposed to other knowledge yet due to their age.
But that’s probably the biggest difference for especially intelligent people: everyone else still thinks of IQ as a single number. Two people can have the same sub score and drastically different overalls, or the same overall but a completely different spread on the sub scores.
If you’re looking for the most important sub score, you’re gonna want something like working memory or processing speed, but even those conflict. If your brain is running at 120mph, keeping something in your head for 2 minutes while doing something else is harder than someone’s brain running 30mph due to difference in perception of time.
Tldr:
Intelligent people realize overall IQ just isn’t that important for intelligent people.
The vast majority who get “too high to measure” never take the more specific test that could give them a more accurate score. 3+ standard deviations above 100 and it just doesn’t matter anymore.
I’m not sure how I was specifically talking about crystalized knowledge. People can be flawed in applying any mental skill. And various forms of intelligence come into play in various ways in navigating the nuances or reality, or failing to.
Knowing or not knowing a fact is the simplest to see and talk about, so it probably dominates conversations about intelligence, sure.
