As the title says, how often do you admit you’re wrong? Is it different when it’s a factual dispute versus something more subjective?
I make an effort to concede early if I’m in error. I think because my mother almost never admits fault. She’ll fall back to “that’s not what I meant” or similar deflections first, and that’s really annoying.
The last big factual error I made was about the distance of walking, and that’s where I learned about Taxicab Geometry ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry ).
I think some people believe admitting fault is a sign of weakness, but I find it’s more of a power move. It takes strength to do it, and people can tell when you’re sweating and desperate. Usually it leads to resolving the conflict faster and cheaper, too.
(I expect some people will feel the urge to reply they’re never wrong. I’ll file that under never admits fault.)
When it comes up and I am actually wrong.
I would guess a few dozen times a year since I work in a complicated field where we take our best guess and sometimes it isn’t right so admitting being wrong and doing things differently has better outcomes than digging in heels.
There are a lot of people I’ve known who really focus on other people admitting they were wrong but somehow they are never at fault themselves.
I actually usually admit if I’m wrong, but I think I don’t if it’s a thing where it’s obvious I was wrong and the other party is holding it over my head. It’s a character flaw but also I don’t really know how to deal with that situation because admitting I’m wrong to a person doing that, in my mind, gives them permission to blame me for anything else adjacent to the situation, which is usually unfair.
I understand you, but try to see it from a different perspective: by admitting your error you are in fact taking their ammunition away! Continue on and if they try to bring it up again and again you can ask them why they can’t move on, do they have a problem?
I appreciate that suggestion. That is probably the exact way for me to think of it. Now if I can break this pattern…
It’s comments like yours that give me faith in Lemmy honestly. They do a lot to cancel out the judgy and angry ones.
All the time. People tend not to take it well but thst seems their problem.
Also it’s one of the things destroying politics.
Also it’s one of the things destroying politics.
That’s often the previous stop on this train of thought. There are maga people that in their secret heart know they’ve made a mistake, but they struggle to come to terms with that. Though that also carries the fear of losing all their social bonds and being rejected by the group.
Exactly, it’s two sided trained behavior. On one side, no guilt is admitted leading to all downsides of never learning and on the other side there’s a ruthless expectation. It can never work.
It doesn’t help that any time a politician changes their opinion on something, the other side jumps on them for it and accuses them of flip-flopping. In reality, changing a view when presented with a compelling argument or new information is a good thing but they use it as ammunition to attack each other, so of course everyone just sticks to their guns no matter what…
More and more as time goes by. I can definitely recognize that there have been times where I would have dug in and tried to argue my way out to the bitter end, but now I find myself just saying “You know, I don’t really want to waste my time with this” and just cutting my losses. Sometimes it’ll get a “You know what, my bad,” and sometimes I just realize I never really had anything worthwhile to contribute, and just see myself out of the discussion. I’ve had shit takes called out in the past, including on topics I thought myself fairly knowledgeable about. Before, I would have been right back in there looking up sources and trying to eke out a “win” in those sorts of circumstances. These days, I’d rather just concede the point early on and go about my life. I don’t have free time to go wasting entrenching myself to defend a position that’s already benn demonstrated to be untenable and/or just completely incorrect.
I feel like you at least have to look into things enough to confirm that the arguments against you aren’t bullshit, it’s good to admit you’re wrong when you’re actually wrong but not so good when your debate opponent has just figured out how to make the argument too exhausting to continue. It’s also an option to stop responding without conceding anything.
A common example is, someone links to a source that they claim proves all their points. Often the source doesn’t say that at all, and they are banking on nobody taking the time to actually read it. If you admit you’re wrong in this situation you just propagate misinformation.
I meant more when I realize that I’m clearly in the wrong in my first post. Like, I made some ignorant comments on Lemmy concerning Portuguese a while back, and someone who knew the language way better than I did came along and pointed out my post was bullshit and ableist. In the past, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have conceded the point, and just kept arguing away and finding whatever sources backed me up, without being too critical of them. This time, I said, “Wow, that was an incredibly shit take I had.” and decided I should probably take a break from bothering people on that instance for a while and just keep my mouth shut until I was satisfied I’d learned better.
I’m still game to argue a valid point when I know that I’m correct and I don’t think I’m just feeding a troll, but I feel like I’ve gotten better at owning it when I realize I’ve been supporting an untenable and/or indefensible position than I was 10 or 15 years ago, and moving on to change my views.
As often as I am actually wrong.
Tap for spoiler
Which is of course NEVER!
wrong? what does that mean?
And mean it?
Whenever I become aware of it, either through my own realization or someone else pointing it out. I’ll always double check before coming out and saying it, but if my first stance is actually wrong, I have no problem admitting it
Always?
Prove me wrong and find out
As often as I am. Which has become less common in my old age.
When I’m wrong, I always admit it immediately.
It just hasn’t happened yet /s
Once I realize it I will admit it. I kind of like it because it opens up a little spot in my head that’s eager to be filled with better information.
When I am wrong and there is evidence?
It makes sense to me, because you learned something.
At least once or twice a week. Maybe more, a lot of the silly mistakes I make and apologise for are pretty forgettable.
For actual book knowledge things you can look up, once every couple months or less. Mostly because I look up a lot of book knowledge, and rarely am behind the curve.
Subjective-ish things are a weird one, because the reason why you arrive at whatever conclusion has a lot more substance than what it happens to be. You pretty much have to grow as a person to change your mind on politics, for example. There are people who, if I could speak to them again, I’d like to tell they planted a seed that eventually won me over.
I think some people believe admitting fault is a sign of weakness, but I find it’s more of a power move.
The shitty thing is, certain people will take nothing away from that about your character. It just means you were totally wrong and cornered into admitting it, so you must not be very smart. The end.
Now, maybe those aren’t the best people, but there still might be a cost to ignoring them.
