[sololipsist]

Motivated reasoning. He prefers imperative programming (or something other than functional programming), so he hears the "criticism" without hearing the solution. I mean, of course he physically hears both, but one is prominent in his consciousness. It doesn't matter that there is a solution, he heard what he needed to hear to get the evidence he needs to maintain his bias, and shuts off his frontal lobe.

To be clear: Everyone does this. I just think it's interesting.

[scott_s]

I think you misunderstand Carmack's position. As of this talk, he had not yet solved this problem, but he is optimistic that it can be solved, and ece mentioned the solutions he outlines. He goes on to say such a system would be beneficial to all game developers.

[sololipsist]

He says it's a problem that can be tackled, it just hasn't been yet. Like you look at a square block, and you need to get it in a square hole, you just haven't gotten to it.

It's not the language of someone that isn't confident that there isn't a perfectly fine solution. I mean, it's likely that other people have already figured this out, just not him.

[RUG3Y]

You can train yourself to recognize this pattern in your own behavior.

[sololipsist]

Mhm. I try to. Why?

Are you implying I prefer functional programming? I don't. I don't have a horse in this race.

[RUG3Y]

No, I was commenting on statement, "everyone does this". What I was trying to say is that with effort, you can begin to identify times when you are biased toward a certain thing (in this case, different programming styles), and consciously choose to leave your emotions out of the equation.

[sololipsist]

Okay. Sorry, I'm used to reddit were everything is a veiled accusation.

Yeah, you can train yourself, but everyone does it nonetheless. Everyone does it by default, and I don't think it's reasonable to claim that anyone has completely or effectively rid themselves of motivated reasoning.

I try to do this as much as possible, though. It usually ends up with me just having no opinions, rather than an "unbiased" one.

Though I'm not sure how effective training yourself in this way is. There have been studies that show it's difficult to induce this in people, but that statistical, of course. Some people likely take to it much better than others - some people may even take to it very well. I like to think I've had some success, but, you know, that might be motivated, so I don't really have a strong opinion.