I would think so, at least for knowledge-based ones. Thinking about this out loud, it’s hard to feel I can claim certainty given anything seems to have the potential to remind me of the adage that one can never be certain of anything. However, there are a handful where this doubt is completely obsolete, typically because I’m talking to someone who doesn’t seem to know the answer is an obvious part of life for me. I have been wrong before and will mention so within reason (as in based on a battle of experience/testimony/proofs/contradictoriness in its equivalent to PEMDAS).
Old one for me, but as a kid walking home with friends from school, I realised there might be a better route that would significantly shorten my walk and make little difference to them. I mentioned it and was fobbed off. So later I pulled up the route online and actually measured it. Not only was my suggestion a better route for me, but it was actually shorter for everyone else too! I triumphantly took my findings to my friends who to my surprise and disappointment really could not care less, and a little part of me died because they were not my friends.
The shorter paths is not necessarily the best. Maybe they just like that path
What if they liked walking longer to spend time with each other or possibly some place they wanted to see on the way. Sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination
Thats what I thought too. I have definitly used longer paths before just to spend more time.
It’s the usual thing.
Many times. It’s never as rewarding as you’d like, because the other party is rarely objective, and thus rarely acknowledges their defeat.
It’s usually better to ease up when you get close to a total victory and allow the opponent to save face.
After all, no matter how objectively correct you are, if you don’t change the other person’s position even a little, you’re just wasting time.
IMO it’s even worse when the other party admits to their mistakes and apologizes.
Takes out all the wind of your sails
I am someone who does that because I’m objective enough to recognize my own fallibility and that if I’m presented with reasonable and logical evidence, i will accept it and change my perspective.
It also usually stops fighting and helps progress to a constructive discussion.
Yeah I like to acknowledge when I’m wrong, it makes me think carefully next time I think I’m right about something, and to challenge my assumptions about things.
I do that, too, and I regularly get the “you’re always right, I’m always wrong” commentary. I respond, no, I’m often wrong, I just don’t make a big deal out of it so you don’t notice. I’d be happy to move on without a fuss when you’re wrong, too, if you’ll allow it.
Because seriously, being wrong is not a big deal. Everybody is wrong at some point, and regularly. Just correct yourself and move on, it’s not a hit to your identity or person.
I agree wholeheartedly. Being wrong is a good thing sometimes, it means you are indeed living life and learning. There may subjectively be better things to be wrong about sometimes, but it’s usually only a big deal if you make it one.
I know someone that dismisses 95% of media as “Western media propaganda”. They include Al Jazeera in that list 🤦🏻♀️
Yes. It’s always a good question to ask yourself:
Would you rather be effective or be right?
What kind of question is this? 😆 I think everyone older than 6 regularly does that. Especially when planning things and disagreeing and then you get to learn who was right. And even the kids like to bet who is right and then they look it up, ask someone or try it and one of them will have this as an outcome…
I work in IT. More specifically I work in Networking. So every fucking day.
Best one was when I was working for an internet provider. Customer was complaining every other day their internet was not working to spec. They ordered a 100Mb service and could never get more than around 60Mb. Somehow they got it into their head that our on prem gear was the issue. But our on prem gear was gigabit capable.
But they never listened and eventually it got to the point where ceo to ceo calls were happening.
My ceo managed to make them agree to a call out where if no problem was found in our gear they would pay the $120 callout plus time for the 2 hour drive to the customer office but if I found a problem on their side we would compensate them for the services until it performs as ordered.I get there plug my laptop into their network and sure enough I get 60Mb speed tests. Moved my cable from their firewall to the spare port on our gear and get the full speed.
They wanted me to do the tests a few more times and I do and get the same result.
I looked up the spec sheet of their firewall and third line down of the throughput graph shows their setup only has a rated capacity of about 60Mb. Never heard a peep from them after that.I had a similar issue, except from the customer side. I had worked IT for 20 years in the US Air Force, and when I retired 2 years ago, I moved back in with my elderly dad in my old childhood home. I found out he was paying for 40Mb service (the best offered to our secluded countryside home), but we were lucky if we could get 15-20Mb at the best of times.
I spent several weeks troubleshooting over the phone with his ISP and they insisted it was a problem on our end. I rebooted our modem so many times, even configured it from scratch several times. I ensured the WiFi router I set up to extend the range across the house wasn’t slowing anything down along the way. I swore there was nothing out of place on our end and they needed to check the connection to our house. They didn’t believe me; thought I was just claiming to be an IT expert to skip steps and get someone out to our secluded neck of the woods (fair, but still…)
Eventually, I convinced them to send a technician out here, an hour away from their offices. The tech connected to the line outside the house and immediately packed up his tools and went back to his truck. He said he doesn’t even need to check my equipment; there’s definitely something wrong with the external line.
Turns out they have a service box at the end of my street. They don’t have a dedicated 40Mb line for my home, so they paired two 20Mb lines. One of the lines was completely disconnected; removed during maintenance and they forgot to reconnect it. The other was a shared line with my small neighborhood, which explains the drop in connection during high usage hours. The service tech connected the second line and we got twice the speed we used to.
I ended up dropping that company for Starlink shortly after, since they had no higher speeds in my area. Which was a significant improvement (200Mbps), but not quite the speeds I had hoped for. Now, thanks to Biden’s high speed Internet initiative, I’m getting Gb speeds to my neighborhood this summer. Can’t wait for that; as much of an improvement as Starlink has been over my old connection, it’s still slow compared to what I’m used to from my military service.
thanks to Biden’s high speed Internet initiative, I’m getting Gb speeds to my neighborhood this summer.
That’s actually happening this time? I’ll admit I haven’t payed any attention to this, but I kind of figured the isps would just pocket the money again.
My hometown had to request a local ISP submit a grant request to the federal government in order to fund the expansion of high speed Internet in our area. My town and 2 others were approved; a 4th town in my area was denied and needed to re-accomplish and resubmit their grant request.
I don’t know all the fine legal details of the grant, but I know that the ISP is required to put the funds toward development in the areas outlined in the grant request.
The last time our president attempted a high speed Internet initiative (I think it was Bush Jr?), they just gave money to ISPs and told them to spend it on upgrading their networks. There was no accountability, so most companies just pocketed the money.
Yeah Verizon did this shit so hard in West Virginia. Sure they pulled fiber all over the state, but they stopped at the cities. They made so much money, but hardly anyone could access the network.
I got fiber to my home 15 years later from a different company.
I do disaster planning for counties,hospitals,big companies,etc.
I had a presentation for a hospital and basically showed them very very detailed how they need to prepare for flash flooding. And I was absolutely shot down and basically booed out of the room. “We never can get flash flooding here, it is impossible, you have no idea what you are talking about!”
Exactly two weeks later you could see them on national news, they had 120cm(around 4 feet) on their ground floor, including their ED.
Even if they had signed us it wouldn’t have changed a thing (our recommendations take years to show effects) and people died (it is actually part of one of the worst flash flooding disasters in history,over 220 people died). So I can’t be happy about it at all.
But my team and I were very very very much proven right. (And meanwhile even multiple court ordered experts have agreed on our assessment)
Did those dbags get any repercussions or are they still on their yachts?
In college I used to study a class ahead to be ready with questions. A professor said that something couldn’t be done analytically, but I just hours before had learned the proof of the analytical solution so I told them it could be done, he said it couldn’t, I said I can prove it. He gave me the chalk I went to the board and prove the analytical solution. He was like wow, I didn’t knew that. He gave me extra credits on the final for that.
didn’t knew that
Stay in school, kids.
This person is probably Brazilian given the domain of the instance they’re in. Given that you didn’t assume that they speak another language, I’ll assume that means they know probably twice as many languages as you, and tenses are really hard to master.
Don’t be a prick to people for no reason.
Their post history indicates a clinical obsession with… being an asshole about shit that doesn’t matter.
But that’s what most people spend most of their time on the internet doing!
In reality yes, but normally who I’m arguing with it’s based on pure emotion and no logical aspects anywhere.
And the fact that there’s almost never a clear answer anyway. There are very few instances where blanket statements are true.
Also, how often do you have the scientific or journalistic background to prove your point?
Once when I was little my mom was yelling at me about something or other. In the heat of the moment she called me a son of a bitch, and I went “Oh?” with a single eyebrow raised over a smirk. She laughed, and that stopped the yelling.
Wait, does being funny enough to distract someone equal winning an argument? In my universe it does
One time my dad and I were in Mexico looking for some glue to fix a chair. So walking into town, I said we need to look for Kola Loka—spelled with Ks. My dad said “Nonsense! It would be spelled with Cs.” Neither of us had seen how Krazy Glue is marketed in Spanish, but I could’ve put money on that spelling. I should’ve, because I was right dammit! And dad, who is a linguist, grudgingly admitted, “All right, I suppose you may have some linguistic talent too.” It was the only time I ever won an argument with him over anything having to do with language.
I don’t argue unless I am correct. So alot of the time I am able to successfully prove it in the moment, other times they find out on their own later. If I didn’t know for sure, why would I argue? That just seems like pointless behaviour.
I mean, there are so many questions without a correct answer. That’s usually why you get into an argument in the first place.
Many moons ago I was in a very heated argument that you could write a fully functional program in notepad.
I was trying to explain what COM files were, they just didn’t understand enough about it.
That seems like an odd thing to argue against. Did they mean that it wasn’t possible? Or wasn’t a good idea? Or was this before scripting languages and the point was you needed a compiler? So many questions
I mean, in any instance if you can write code with ed, i don’t know why you couldn’t with notepad.
Yeah to clarify their point they didn’t believe me that it was possible to write executable code outside of an ordinary scripting language.
Plenty of times. But that’s not the same as the other party accepting the fact :o) I’ve also been proven wrong many times. The way the question is posed implies that this is a rare occurance?
Yeah, that’s what happens most times.
But also, I have had the rare person accept the fact and pull a complete 180 due to a fact I’ve shown. It’s very rare, but not impossible.
I believe the three hardest words for most people to be “I was wrong”
Interesting article related to this:
https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
Yes, and in my experience it rarely if ever has the “gotcha” moment of victory that one fantasizes about. Either it was something with low stakes and the response is just “oh okay”, or it’s something more emotionally charged and the opposing side will deflect, change the subject, pretend that you’re agreeing with them or that they believed what was correct the whole time. It never seems to matter.
