I’ll still go in to see what’s happening but don’t forget where you are and don’t take it too seriously
Discernment and seeing the forest for the trees is part of being an expert, too.
~~Just out of curiosity what did pyon really say? I couldn't find the comment any longer (assuming they'd be attached to https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows). If we're gonna throw stones at anonymous cowards, as it were, let us evaluate what they said perhaps. Did Ned feel embarrassed and scrubbed the comment section?~~
EDIT: Ned fixed the comments. Thank you, Ned!
There are two points in a connection, and one way to sever it is to follow author's advice to "ignore them". Or you could try to learn and maybe even engage.
(also, the "non-coward" way would be to actually link to the comment so that we could try to understand how toxic / irrelevant expert peons are)
I will now adopt 'Toxic Experts' in to my teaching mantras.
A problem that is encountered frequently among people with exceptionally low social intelligence is the inability to separate agreeability from social intelligence. Those concepts are completely unrelated.
Agreeability is the need to please others and to a lesser extent seek reciprocity for kindness. Kindness lives here. This is completely and utterly unrelated to social intelligence and when signals are confused acts in opposition to social intelligence.
Social intelligence is a perceptual skill. It is the ability to both introspect and perceive the motivations of others. You can have exceptionally high social intelligence and still be a cold asshole.
For people with exceptionally low social intelligence they lack the perceptual skills required to both introspect and discern the emotional communication of others. So... they may confuse that with something else, like kindness, where they strive to fill an unfillable gap.
It is fun talking about this with my wife. I am a software developer and software is staffed with males with low social intelligence at a much higher rate than the population at large. My wife works in education and its the same thing there for females.
Female teachers are disproportionately unable to perceive the emotional communication of others?
Pyon indeed seems like a complete asshat.
BTW, there is a common assumption about the correlation between autism and low social intelligence. While that may or may not be true more often than not it is not universally correlated.
I will still stand by my opinion though that this whole thing was remarkably light on technical substance.
Toxic experts are not interested in getting things done, or actually making any real world difference. In fact they'd _rather_ nothing happens at all. They were the kids who were bullied in the playground, and this is their little bit of power.
It reads like a character assassination piece superficially presented as nuanced philosophy, and we don't even have the actual exchange, only this person's account of it, which we are meant to trust in terms of both wording and demonstrated intent.
"If you have nothing kind to say" as the quote goes ...
When someone rags on me or my work in a way I interpret as aggressive or dismissive, I make a point to go look at what they're up to. More often than not: nothing, or, something that screams "oh, your problem with me is despite you knowing things I don't, I also know things that you don't."
I agree with the general sentiment here, but it helps to mentally filter the passive aggression and condescension from the point they're making. More often than not they're correct, you just have to cut through the weeds to get to it. I'd say that's an occupational hazard as a programmer.
Good? No. But a reality (on the personality level) you have to deal with in this business. It sucks, but it is what it is.
And implicitly supported people like Gregory P. Smith who proudly stated that any person who was banned deserved to have difficulties finding a job (because of course the Steering Council, which is unable to summarize a simple conversation and just lies, is always right).
That was some years before Tim Peters incident, and when it had happened, I was sad but not surprised at all.
That is always what happens when you get rid of the experts. Ruthless mediocrity takes over!
Who cares? We have a clear term for this and it is called "point scoring".
Just give the rest of the group further reading material if they want to study it in their own time and to not talk over minute details.
So just dismiss them with a "Great point" remark and tell everyone else to read the reading list later.
Job done.
Maybe someone was having a bad day. Maybe this is an argument they had with a peer and it triggered a peeve. Whatever.
Tangential, but if I had to rank toxicity, someone going overboard at being a pedant in the easily censored comments under a blog post ranks far below overreacting and clutching pearls to try to pillorize and rile a torch mob, hoping to put them on blast and make them pay for their transgression. The latter is significantly more toxic, and it is what absolutely destroys communities.
on the one hand it's a nasty thing to say he should be "ashamed" for not mentioning it. on the other, it is a little strange he hadn't come across the "amortized O(whatever)" concept before. esp if doing a talk about it..
neither of them come across well here.
I am reminded of the most common reading at wedding masses, 1 Cor 13 [0].
The only reason I bring this up is because I think it is counterproductive to view these people as experts when they are likely not.
I am a trust fund baby, and I think trust fund baby’s are the hardest working most deserving class of people.
Get on the blocked list for not being part of the herd from those places then let me know how nice they are.