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.)
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…
This is something I need to work on, and its more apparent to me after having a conversation with my mother recently.
She said something quite unpleasant to my bf, and when I said how hurtful it was to both of us I was met with her denial, her refusal to see how hurtful it was and it was my fault for being upset, and also that I should just move on and forget about it
If she’d said that it came out wrong, or was sorry to have said something that had landed in a hurtful way etc that’s all I/we would have needed
Unfortunately i can see this attitude in myself, in the fact I find it near impossible to apologise for anything
I think my mother has a lot of her own issues around this, and I have my own ‘version’ because of my issues (my autism, and the fact that she’s my mum)
So I’m now going to do my best to rethink my behaviour and do some self reflection…
I really don’t want to be like my mother at all
I really don’t want to be like my mother at all
I think this is a big motivator for me. I’ve seen how aggravating it is when someone refuses to admit fault, continuously reaches for excuses and justifications and lies, rather than just shrug and say “Oh. Seems like you were right.” Hell, you don’t even have to explicitly say “I was wrong” most of the time.
We’ll find out if I am ever wrong. 😤
I think that it’s natural for people to think they admit when they’re wrong, but it’s also natural to not admit it. As humans we don’t make decisions based on logic, we do it based on emotions. We then instead explain our decisions with logic. I think the usual way people’s minds change is that they’ll effectively be convinced of something but won’t really admit or accept it (or even be consciously aware of it), but then the next time the topic comes up they’ll have the new opinion.
I read an article once about how people change their minds. It cited a long term study that found people who changed their stance on big issues (eg: abortion) often didn’t remember they had ever held the opposite opinion. Not only do people not like to admit changing their minds, sometimes they can’t even consciously realize.
You may like this VSauce video about this topic called The Future of Reasoning. I spent a lot of time in 2020 and 2021 arguing with people online about covid and election fraud. I was under the impression that if someone just calmly, gently, respectfully laid out why they were wrong they’d accept it. I mean, for goodness’s sake, one of the claims I responded to was someone saying something about X number of people voted in some county but there aren’t that many people registered there. I told them it’s easy to debunk and that I just searched Google for the county’s official website and voter registration numbers and, as expected, they were different and higher than the number of people who voted. You wanna know what their response was? “Google is biased.” Even though the information wasn’t from Google, that’s just how I found the site. (And I probably even used duckduckgo but didn’t want to explain that lmao, point still stands.)
This video came to me after I’d already made the conscious decision to just stop doing it for my own mental health. It was really impactful.
Perhaps the most ironic (or unironic) thing is that had I seen this before I had that experience, I may have disagreed with the video.
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.
Never (I rarely speak)
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).
All the fucking time. “I don’t know” are the three most-important words. It’s pretty much the key to everything, you can’t improve without it.
There have definitely been times in my life I refused to admit it. It’s more common if people arguing against me are inflammatory: “LOL, you absolute moron! Take a look at this: (well-researched study)”
I think most recent was doubt towards the accusation Chet Faliszek opposed SKG. I still think it’s not quite as clear cut as being an industry shill, but the guy clearly expects more good faith from major publishers than the rest of us do (having worked for the best one).
It’s more common if people arguing against me are inflammatory: “LOL, you absolute moron! Take a look at this: (well-researched study)”
I try to remember that “The worst person you know just made an excellent point” onion post for times like that.
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On the Internet? Almost never, I like arguing.
With people I actually know? All the time.
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.
