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in reply to What is "aggressive" argument?
Which of those deceptively similar, but disparately perceived, definitions am I being accused of?
The former definition puts "aggressiveness" in a rather positive light, something to which to aspire, and of which to be proud .... so they're presumably seeing something along the lines of the latter definition. I don't think they'd be fearing any sort of physical attack, so it's probably more the "belligerent" angle.
(Incidentally, the 2 definitions you provided are not necessarily mutually exclusive.)
post was made 'against' a perceived outsider, and 'in defence of' an site treasure
Yep, you can get away with more under those circumstances :-)
Cheers,
Rob |
Re^2: What is "aggressive" argument?
by Gavin (Archbishop) on Oct 30, 2010 at 10:15 UTC
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Depending on which side of the discussion the reader feels is most compelling the term "agressive argument" could equally well be replaced by "passionate argument" "One man's passion is another man's aggression" At the moment it would appear from the tally that the camps are equally divided.
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I think you have made a valid point. One thing I have noticed about programmers over the years is that there is rarely a lack of passion in their opinions and very few I have known are exactly timid or lack self confidence. Sometimes this gets expressed rather more energetically in the course of a discussion than we mean or realize.
Speaking solely from my own experience there are 2 things i really have to remind myself about when I get passionate
1. All parties of the discussion are not aware of all of the assumptions, viewpoints, knowledge or history of the others, so it can be easy to make assumptions
2) correction It takes 2 people to there to be an offense. The quote from Rufo in Robert Heinlein's Glory road comes to mind “An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. ... for clarification we always have the choice to refuse to be offended ...
And yes I am too often prone to accept the drink ... even when it wasn't meant to be offered.
I like to try to take the tack that if I do not understand what some one says (or think I do and find it somehow unacceptable) to say 'I do not understand. can you explain?' rather 'You are wrong!' However this is still very much a work in progress in my case.
only my 2 kopeks and as always YMMV
Misha/Michael - Russian student, grognard, bemused observer of humanity and self professed programmer with delusions of relevance
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In programming, as in certain other fields, it sometimes pays to be rash and opinionated even though those are often known as negative traits. Indeed, when faced with myriad options to implement pretty much any given application one should probably pick just one or two with which they are familiar and weigh just those options. To weight all options equally before acting is not to act. The fault is not in having biases. It is in being inflexible in reassigning those biases as evidence stacks against them.
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