I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, our son who posts ‘how-to-record-music’ instructional videos on YouTube has stopped checking viewer comments. People leave hurtful, derogatory, and often unfounded remarks. What could be so controversial about the music recording industry!?
My husband reports on tech innovation for a national news organization. He spends hours researching, interviewing, and writing about interesting and new products, services, trends, and industries related to technology.
The other day he held a two-way radio conversation with one of the program hosts bringing her and listeners up to date on thorium, a chemical element that can efficiently and safely power a nuclear reactor. The 8-10 minute segment was a follow-up to one that aired two years ago in which he interviewed a former NASA engineer about thorium reactors.
Within 6-8 hours of the most recent radio program, a listener had fired off a feedback email. Invective and name-calling combined to shame the program and the tech reporter.
However, the dissatisfied letter-writer offered nothing of substance. The editor of the news program responded to the email politely asking for specifics and initially getting no response. Eventually, he did write a detailed rebuttal with some reasons for his sharp reaction.
When my husband analyzed each point, he saw clearly that the listener had misinterpreted much of the report.
How can that happen?
Actually, it’s not all that unusual. Have you ever heard of confirmation bias?
Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:
Confirmation bias…… is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.
As logical Joes and Janes, we must give people the benefit of the doubt before we jump to a conclusion. I admit that I have leapt to hasty judgments because I have wanted to think the WORST about someone and their viewpoint. Not only is that unfair, it is unkind.
So, dear friends, let us be generous and ask questions before we leap to conclusions and criticize. And never is there an appropriate occasion to unload a putdown on someone. Take issue with the point, not the person.
Logical Gal stumbles, and then remembers!
29 AprI felt intimidated!
A comment to one of these Logical Gal blog posts tripped me up. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what my reader wrote in his ‘logical’ pushback. First of all, it was:
Thus, I felt stupid. At first.
Then I reread his words, and realized that it was also incomprehensible!
With that insight, my logical training kicked in and I felt empowered.
When someone responds to you and you don’t understand what they mean, the ONLY logical course of action is to ask them TWO clarifying questions:
When I replied to his lengthy comment with those questions, he DID try to clarify. And it was the same genre, to wit: scientific-sounding, smart-sounding BUT still incomprehensible. So I took it home to my resident scientific expert, my husband. And HE couldn’t make any sense out of what the guy was writing. I felt a bit better.
In all honesty, I did dialogue back and forth with this gentleman because I appreciated that he had READ my blog and also that he had taken the time to write a comment and share his thinking. In the end he and I both stopped because neither one of us was making headway toward mutual understanding.
But I learned a lot! When you don’t know WHAT to say, just ask some questions. This is wise AND easy and the pay off is three-fold:
Tags: Assertions, Claims, Clarity, Comments, Questions, Rational Thinking, Reasons