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Comment by oblib | Hacker News Reader

A good friend once told, after listening to me bitch about someone who loved to comment on my work, "You can learn something from everyone".

I spent some time trying to dismiss that before considering that if he was right I'd already missed out on a lot, and that certainly humbled me because when I started looking for it I found he was right.

The flip side to this is sharing what you know when it contradicts what others are envisioning as a result can result in those same others responding with animosity.

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Years ago I saw someone doing a community outreach lecture tour, for Next Generation Science Standards. On behalf of NSF I think. She was getting hostile questions, many of the too-broken-to-even-be-wrong variety. Ones where normally I'd just shake my head, perhaps think "nutter", and hope the speaker was able to move on without getting bogged down.

She addressed the questions with a grace, and insight, and empathy, that was awesome to watch. I'd not have thought it possible. I wish now I knew who she was, and had video. If anyone knows of this skill set being taught, I'd love a pointer.

So I no longer think of the quality of a question, and of a questioner, as being a worthy bound on the quality of an answer.

I try to give good answers to misguided questions, but it can be really hard to do well. You have to guess what wrong assumption they're proceeding from in real time, and then respond with something that addresses that while still being interesting to the rest of the audience. Some people are great at it, through some combination of genius and practice.

I learned this lesson from the videos of the Harvard course on justice. The lecturer got explanations that I thought at the time were laughable, but somehow in his response he rephrased them to be reasonable and a great platform to deepen the conversation. It requires a great deal of empathy and intelligence to do that and I try my darndest to read as much sense as possible from any question directed my way. Here's an example:

https://youtu.be/kBdfcR-8hEY?t=2446

That lecturer was truly amazing. I thought the trolly car thought experiment was something that is not worth much more than a few minutes thought, but he not only proved otherwise, but was patient enough to ask questions and wait for the class to stumble slowly through the arguments.

A perspective I try to keep in mind ever since it occurred to me years ago, is that every utterance is a true statement, given the right context. No matter how mistaken or deliberately deceitful, it adds to your knowledge about the world if you figure out how it fits in. Conversely, every lie is an instance of not telling "the whole truth". It's common sense for most people that there is a clear and moral difference between a straight out lie and leaving out some context, but I think there is a smooth gradient and no bright line between them.

“Every man I meet is my better in some way, and in that I learn from him.”

Ralph Emerson’s secret of the true scholar.

I've not seen that before but it is perfectly put.

That is exactly the approach I've learned to take. I honestly started out trying to disprove the notion because I was full of myself. But it really didn't take long to prove it and then doing that soon became a goal.

Canoeing is a good example. My first shot was with my wife on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. I was working my ass off and about 2 hours into our float the guy who shuttled us to the dropoff came gliding by with his wife pretty much effortlessly while I floundered and ricocheted from bank to bank.

Awhile later I saw them sitting on the bank chilling out so I paddled over and flat out asked him "How do you make this look so easy?"

He told me everything I needed to know in just a few minutes and the rest of that float was a joy.

I find myself in a similar situation - a friend's perspective is that you can learn from anything. Mine is that you should triage endlessly after a certain point, I guess that makes me dismissive.

Of course, if I told him "So, you can browse facebook all day and be better off?", he would probably say "You know what I mean."

Real "wisdom" is knowing when to be dismissive and when not to be, either extreme is bad, but being able to discern is tacit knowledge that no one can really say anything useful on without being super specific.

To me, to "learn from anything" requires a certain diversity in your sequence of "anythings". Every now and then you need to try something completely different, and/or explore several dimensions of life simultaneously.

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