[ra7]

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384:

> I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?"

This is my favorite because it’s simple, but so powerful. I’ve tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I think it has made me kinder and much more willing to empathize with others and give chances.

Every time I find myself judging or criticizing others, I keep reminding myself of this comment and almost always end up with a different perspective.

[orky56]

We've all become critics and no longer appreciate the world around us. Becoming aware of the social fabric and the associated norms can be daunting initially but also strangely fulfilling once we learn to recognize them. I've used similar logic as a designer to first understand why things are designed the way they are before impulsively recommending how things could be done better. It's a fine balance between recognizing chaos and channeling it for sustainable benefit.

[giantg2]

That question doesn't get asked enough. I'm tired of getting downvoted with no comments. I'm tired of people not understanding the subtleties of my positions and arguing against me just based on a communication issue.

[Bakary]

Why not ask "Why do people misinterpret my comments" as per the concept in the quote and start from that to improve the way you communicate?

If people frequently misinterpret you, it's logically sound to look at the common denominator

[giantg2]

It's not that frequent. It seems it's just a subset if the readers who misapply what I say. If it were a large part of the group, then I would be looking at myself more closely. I would guess that everyone has been misunderstood at some point on here.

[veddox]

Just yesterday I was about to downvote somebody for what I thought was a ludicrous suggestion. But when I started writing a reply, I realized that a), he may actually have had a point, and b), though I was still sceptical, I didn‘t actually understand the issue well enough to refute him.

[The_rationalist]

I would even say that if you're not frequently getting downvoted with no comments, then your comments are harmfully not enough contrarian. If only there could be a webextension that would act as a meta recommender-system for HN comments that would highlight such sufficiently contrarian authors then I could quickly, heuristically read those more than average, valuable comments.

[giantg2]

You can just scroll to the bottom. That's where all the downvoted comments go.

[The_rationalist]

Being on the bottom is an aggregate that factor in the recency of the comment, isn't it? Moreover ideally only a subset of comments would be highlighted (e.g not the ones downvoted too much) and would benefit from making stats from the user comments history in order to increase the signal to noise ratio

[giantg2]

True, in the absence of downvoted comments, it would just be the older ones on the bottom.

[Bakary]

As a corollary to that person's insight, I've noticed that the reflex to judge and criticize is very strong. Avoiding unnecessary criticism and judgment and focusing on your own life takes constant conscious effort, even though it's probably one of the most logical choices you can make. This is particularly true when the people whom you criticize are manifestly doing quite well in general compared to you.

Commenting online can be an exception of course. Let's not rid ourselves of every sin...

[murm]

> This is particularly true when the people whom you criticize are manifestly doing quite well in general compared to you.

In these cases someone might be doing hundred things right in their life and the one mistake is what catches all the attention and provokes criticism. I feel like if only humans could view themselves with the same ruthless no-excuses mentality as they do view others they would immediately realize how much there is in their own life to fix and fixing all that would probably keep them too busy to unnecessarily point fingers at others.

(I'm not saying that criticism is always unnecessary, but that there's probably all kinds of low-hanging fruit in people's own lives that they're not just able to perceive. This blind spot of course applies to me too which I find frustrating at times).

[vulcan01]

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1170/