Andrew Gelman: Learning from mistakes

[@dangernoodle2868]

On the topic of being an asshole when giving criticism. It's like Gelman says, you're best positioned to try and see through the delivery to the content but on the other hand as someone giving feedback it's important to be clear so that the other party doesn't have to do that work. It means that it's on everybody to try and communicate clearly but also for us to acknowledge that the rough delivery comes not from bad people but from people who are feeling something which motivated them to say something in the first place but that can pollute the message. Being shocking is useful to catch people's attention but especially once the dialogue is going you need to cut it out ASAP. But if we need to rely on shock to cut through noise then ideally you don't rely on that but rather find a way to make the environment less noisy so that consensus is enough to make the right conversation happen.