[adverbly]

> What if their position represents their values

One of my best professors often asked me:

"what are you trying to achieve here?"

Every time they asked this, it always put me into a deep thinking mode. In some cases it did trigger defensive mindsets, but I think having to actually engage by taking a step back and think deeply is for the best if you want to have any hope of changing your mind on something.

[pseudohadamard]

In some cases it's worth arguing even if you know you can't win in order to provide pushback against really dumb ideas. This doesn't happen nearly enough in standardisation work, where a small number of professional meeting-goers can railroad through unbelievably bad, broken standards because no-one pushes back.

Anyone who's ever worked on a standards body will be getting flashbacks at this point.

[JackFr]

“What can I do to resolve this?”

“Hmmm. I cannot go back in time, but if you’d like I can sit quietly with a contrite look while you spew abuse at me for 10 minutes. Does that work?”