The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge.
This isn’t a social media thing exclusively of course, I’ve met it in the real world too.
When I worked as a repair technician, members of the public would ask me for my diagnosis of faults and then debate them with me.
I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to understanding people and how they work, in this field it’s even worse because everyone has opinions on that topic!
And yet my friend who has a physics PhD doesn’t endure people explaining why his theories about battery tech are incorrect because of an article they read or an anecdote from someone’s past.
So I’m curious, do some fields experience this more than others?
If you have a field of expertise do you find people love to debate you without taking into account the gulf of awareness, skills and knowledge?
lmao. I worked at FDA for about a decade, was one of the main programmers for their system that tracks approval of biologics, as well as the system that tracks and handles approvals of individual biological lots. And then the MAGAts started making up bullshit conspiracy stuff about how biologics are developed and approved … :/
Those people turn everything they touch into shit.
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The Mierdas Touch
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PSA: anytime the music kicks in, you’re being emotionally manipulated.
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Because manipulation is a very sinister thing. You’re deliberately using music to influence and control how another person feels to get a response that benefits you.
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Would it be more fair to say: when the music kicks in, the story is being told?
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That’s fair, and I might have gone more neutral than intended. I was just curious if that fit what was in your head more.
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The most interesting documentary I’ve ever seen was about Sherman’s March. I stumbled upon it on some random satellite channel in the 90’s. Not only was it unbiased, I’m not even sure it had an objective. It was like 3 hours long, and the guy just followed the path Sherman took through the South and interviewed random people he met along the way. Half the time they weren’t even talking about Sherman. Idk what made it so interesting. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this since it doesn’t really reinforce or dispute any of your points. Your response just made me think of it for the first time in ten years and I wanted to share.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: I found it!
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0091943/
Here’s an example of some of the dialogue:
Ross McElwee: I filmed, um, Dee Dee washing her dog, and I filmed, um, Steve going to the music company where he used to work.
Ross’s father: There, now. How is that going to be useful?
Ross McElwee: In this film?
Ross’s father: Just in any film.
It’s actually a very famous work! He went through a divorce and basically didn’t make the movie he said he would when it got funded lol
Haha, that’s kind of awesome. What he did make, ended up being really entertaining.
That whole production is kind of amazing when you get down to it. Basically the opening minute or so with that animation was the only thing he promised to make that he actually did lol
That’s really interesting! In the UK we have an excellent tradition of making both really excellent and really abhorrent documentaries, so clearly they’re not all made equal.
Appreciate hearing an expert opinion on what this means in reality.
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Well now I just want a recommendation on some documentaries to watch. Got any favorites you’d share?
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Sweet, thanks for the recs and response, gonna go add a bunch to my watch list!
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This makes me think about people (scientists and non scientists alike) who argue that science is unbiased.
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Yes. I work in the aerospace industry. I’m a woman. When Space Karen first appeared on the scene, he immediately had millions of young, impressionable fanboys. Fanboys who would passionately disagree with you when you explained how something Space Karen spouted into the ether one day didn’t will it into existence. And Space Karen said a lot of dumb shit.
Nevertheless, he said it, you disagree, you are wrong because you disagree with something he said, and your education, skills, experience, and qualifications over many years are meaningless.
That went on for years before he finally showed himself to be the narcissistic manchild many of us saw in the beginning. It’s a double-edged sword…on one hand you feel vindicated, but on the other you wish it didn’t have to come to this to make it happen.
Lol space Karen, nicely put!
Who the hell is space karen?
The African-American guy who won’t shut up and also killed Twitter.
African-American guy
Never thought about him this way, but true!
I read an article about a (white) guy born in - maybe - Zimbabwe but definitely Africa. He moved to the US and his school had a scholarship / fund for African-Americans. He was the only pupil that qualified so applied for a laugh. Can’t remember how it ended.
I’d like to think that “Spaceship Karen” doesn’t find the phrase funny - but being such a glorious champion of free speech he’ll just have to suck it up.
Ohhhhhh. I should’ve guessed that. Sorry can be a bit dense sometimes.
Tbh my brain immediately gave me a fifty-fifty. Say what you want about Bezos but, in my head, he’s more of a Cruella than a Karen. I then guessed the lady in the post was talking about the other space guy. I don’t blame you drawing a temporary blank, new names and all that.
The worse is that you didn’t even had to be that well studied to know he was full of bullshit from the start, I remember even before he was Space Karen when he tried to be Train Karen, and their fanboys wouldn’t understand that vacuum tubes Km long for transporting people were a BAD idea for several reasons.
Software engineers, supposed “experts”, can’t even agree among each other how to structure and build software, let alone agree with project managers, users and other laypeople.
Source: Am software engineer.
Structure and build? Look at the guy using Waterfall instead of Agile development.
Source: Am also software engineer.
I’d call it healthy debate but I’ve never met a software engineer who had a healthy anything
In my experience there are two types of software engineers. Those who are narcissistic and believe their own bullshit and those who suffer from crippling imposter syndrome. Few can agree on what is the best way to do things but most will agree to do things the wrong way for money.
Crazy thing is that doing it the wrong way is the best way to have job security. Fire me? Yea, well, you’ll never find anyone else that knows this spaghetti as well as I do.
I was brought in to a place where the guy had pulled out all the comments and replaced all the variable names with random strings. Saved himself on his personal USB stick the real code.
That’s because whatever system you’ve got now feels old and tired, but that new system that just came out looks so new and useful. I mean, it can’t hurt to change the entire thing half way through development again, right?
Dude I’ve had people on Lemmy tell me that I am wrong about the contents of my own mind.
I tell them, this is what I believe and why (and my arguments citations whatever)
And they say, no, obviously you’re lying and you believe this other thing instead. And then they start digging through my history and constructing arguments and debating me on it.
Some instances I don’t go on that much anymore
I don’t believe you. Why are you making up this kind of shit?
Seriously, though, sounds like you’ve had the average lemmygrad or hexbear encounter.
So after your first sentence, I was all ready to dig back through my comments to try to find it. It was absolutely baffling.
(Probably it would be sour grapes for me to dig up some old argument with somebody just so I can break it back out here, and say “THE MAN WAS WRONG, I TELL YOU, HE WAS WRONG, LOOK AT HIM AND HIS WRONG PLEASE EVERYBODY AGREE ABOUT IT”)
Yeah, I’ve found that the best thing to do when you (accidentally or intentionally) kick the tankie-hive is to block the ones who don’t realize that not everything needs to be debunked or even commented, and then move on and forget about it.
That’s more than a lack of respect for expertise, that’s a lack of basic human respect.
I furiously dislike people explaining me to me.
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Oh I love that. It happens a lot in political discussions when you don’t 100% agree with someone’s point.
“I don’t think defunding the police will solve the issues we’re facing” means getting called a boot licker and that every comment you’ve ever made that doesn’t scream “I hate cops” is about to be linked to for proof that you’re a Trump loving Nazi.
LMAO. No. You can’t convince an overconfident idiot with facts and experience.
I was once accused on Reddit of being a bot after spending half an hour crafting a reply to a question with detail and examples. It’s a great way to discourage people from trying to be helpful 🫠
My guess is interactions like that are probably going to get more frequent as LLM use and possible backlash against them increases, since people who aren’t particularly good at spotting LLM text just think long = bot.
That story sounds fake, probably written by a bot.
(/s)
As a large language learning model, I resent the implication. 😂
Do you think those people represent the community view, or at least a significant portion of it? Or is it more like one unpleasant person who loves to argue the toss?
I’m replying with a sample size of N=1 so don’t take too much from it, but I suspect it’s not the typical response (at least, not yet anyway).
People do often seem to complain about bot accounts but I don’t know how much of those are in the space of stirring up hot topics to generate content, vs informational (or dis-informational) bot accounts posting on requests for help or explanations.
I guess if people are seeking answers for something, having a bot feed responses to suit some kind of agenda is entirely a possibility, so I wouldn’t write it off as something that could happen. To that end, being wary of posts that look like they might be generated due to the tone/content is probably fair enough.
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Yeah, already jumped ship when they started the api and mod nonsense. This was a bit before all that.
“This is AI-generated content” seems to be the new slur seeking to shame people into silence. Better than “Incel”, I suppose, but certainly more insidious and less dismissively hyperbolic.
Well, the thing is, sometimes I don’t even believe me, despite the better part of two decades of experience.
Impostor syndrome kinda sucks.
But at the same time, I’ve come to be suspicious of any engineer who doesn’t have at least a dash of impostor syndrome. It’s always a good reflex to check your assumptions, imo.
Was chatting with my manager about this last week. A fabricator of mine gave me a bit of back talk about how I wanted them to build something. He asked me why I don’t just put my foot down. Told him that I never want to be in the position where someone knows that I am wrong but is afraid to say something to me. He agreed.
Being approachable is not win-win. You deal with people undermining you but hopefully one of them has a bright idea that makes it worth it.
What you’re describing feels like the Dunning–Kruger effect. When you don’t know you know very little, you have more confidence than you’re likely to have after spending decades on a subject.
When you start asking questions in response you’re likely to pull someone further into realizing what they actually don’t know, killing their confidence. Of course this doesn’t work when they’re being zealots (or otherwise protecting their own sanity)…
Heh, yeah. Spotting DK tendencies is also an important skill, especially when you get to the point where you’re screening candidates for your team. A surprising amount of people think they can just bull through an interview without going into real detail. I have caught more than a few people blatantly misrepresenting their resumes.
Don’t get me wrong - by all means, use a bit of spin to get shit past the HR idiots. When I, as a knowledgeable and experienced engineer, ask you a pointed question about something in particular, I won’t particularly mind if you straight up tell me that you spun that on the res a bit and point out the areas of the domain you’re stronger or weaker. Depending on the context, it might actually work in your favor, because I genuinely appreciate when someone tells me the limits of their knowledge. But if you try to bullshit me, and I catch you, that’s a black mark on your candidacy. And if you keep lying, or try that more than once, I’m going to quickly end the call and remove you from consideration.
I can cite an example for each of the above situations.
Yes. Because if they don’t believe me the internet breaks.
Source: I am a network engineer
There was a time when I wanted to do that.
Given that I know enough to run my home network feel free to ask me anything about your job. 🤔😈
internet breaks anyway, debugging why its not working is nothing but painful
It’s DNS. Always DNS.
I work in IT and security, where everyone is an expert. Couple that with my inability to tell half-thruths about complex subjects I have incomplete info about, and I come out as incompetent. Yay.
Are you one of the people I depend on who write useful information on the internet sharing their expertise?
I strive to be. Not enough time for everything.
That’s my experience too. There’s always a “bigger expert”.
They tell you you’re expertise is irrelevant. They’re the real expert.
What a joke
Lulz
“Here’s a complete analysis of your situation and how to resolve it.”
“I don’t agree with these issues you’ve pointed out.”
“Ok, here’s the proof that you’re wrong but thanks for pointing these things out as you helped me find more issues, so cost just went up, wanna do that again?”
😐
Nice, sounds like you have a lot of clarity in an analytical mind!
I do so love proof in a professional environment.
One of the things that irated me most from Reddit was the fact that if someone’s response came quickly enough, upvotes will ensure everyone believe it and downvoting it was like peeing on a wildfire.
I like that kbin shows both upvotes and downvotes which tells me when something is controversial enough to give it some thought rather than believe it blindly.
I know it’s a massive cliché talking about the hive mind on Reddit, but it was a cliché for a reason!
I worked in politics and have a degree in international affairs so people definitely argue about that. But I got good enough at coding and Linux that it became my career and people tend to trust me on that stuff.
There’s certain fields where everyone thinks they’d be good at it and they’re wrong. Voice acting is probably one. Seems easy but it’s really fucking not. And most people who think they understand politics don’t know basics about how legislative committees work, much less negotiated rulemaking.
If anyone is curious, it’s an American thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiated_rulemaking
Most bills are vague and give regulatory agencies leeway on how to interpret them. It’s like Congress passes a law that says, “No cookies after 8pm.” and a regulatory agency has to decide what is a cookie and which time zone and how to enforce it. A lot of actual policy happens during the rule making progress (called “reg neg”).
Hey! There was just an example of that on Lemmy. Some judge ruled that tacos are sandwiches.
Edit: here it is
https://www.wishtv.com/news/indiana-news/indiana-judge-rules-tacos-burritos-are-sandwiches/
Buddy, I don’t even believe me.
As a therapist I can probably help with that 😏
Regarding my field of expertise, not usually. I have a very technical expertise (frontend software engineering, backend Node.js, JavaScript in general), so most people I talk to about it are asking me for help or are similarly experienced.
But regarding my experience working in big tech, yes. I get pushback for the strangest things. Like, I’ll be explaining the architecture of some system I worked on at Facebook or something, and someone will tell me that’s not how it works, because they read an article that described it differently. Like, ok sure buddy, I only worked on it for a year. I’ve always found that kind of exchange pretty funny.
