[a4isms]

Tearing down Chesterton’s Fence:

"Don’t demand that people stop doing a thing until you fully understand why they think it was worth doing.

Only when you fully understand their perspective should you then argue with their specific reasoning."

Closing Chesterton’s Gate:

“Don’t ask rhetorically why people don’t simply do a thing, until you fully understand why they considered but rejected that thing.

Only when you fully understand their perspective should you then argue with their specific reasoning."

[mncharity]

> Don’t ask rhetorically why people don’t simply do a thing [emphasis mine]

Though asking with curiosity, humility and joy, can convert an "argument from failure of imagination" into a "It seems my understanding of the world isn't matching the world! Yay! Learning opportunity! Help me leverage this, let it not slip by unexploited, please?". Those can be wonderfully Aha! fruitful. First step of a bugfix is finding a failure case.

[mdiesel]

"Was it X that meant you couldn't do Y?" is the best way to phrase it if possible. It demonstrates an attempt, even if it's just a simple one, to understand it, and implies you have faith the other party haven't missed something obvious. Thinking of an X often answers the question for you, stops you looking stupid.

Every now and then, the reply is "that would have been a good idea actually" in which case you still get to look smart. So it's a win+win really.