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105

How often do you admit you were wrong? (startrek.website)

submitted 5 days ago by jtrek@startrek.website to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

103 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.)

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[–] hraegsvelmir@ani.social 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] hraegsvelmir@ani.social 2 points 5 days ago

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.