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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

This anecdote is a ridiculously great example of something I’ve found to be VERY VERY IMPORTANT with parenting (and probably lots else.)

You must be incredibly delicate with “wrong” answers otherwise you might gaslight, discourage, or otherwise mess with your child’s ontology.

I’ve learned to ask “why do you think that?” When I get a “confident wrong answer” as I call them. A surprising amount of the time my child has some very rational explanation.

Someone once told me, “most arguments among engineers boils down to communication. Usually you’re not arguing about the exact same thing.” These moments with my child really made me grok that.

I wish “being wrong with an explanation” was rewarded the way it should be when I was a kid.

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Note that (AFAIK), for adults, "why" can get you the wrong response (puts people on the defensive), so (AFAIK) it's recommended to use "what" instead (which tends to get at the "why" you wanted in the first place) -

"why do you think that?" -> "what led to you thinking that?"

:shrug: It works, sooooo.

I also stay away from second person:

"what led to you thinking that?" -> "what led to that thought?"

My preferred version: "what was the motivation for choosing that?".

It's especially helpful on a team working with legacy software. Because the root cause can sometimes be a historic team decision, no longer attributable to anyone on the current team. Where "led you" can result in the "oh it wasn't my idea" responses, rather than "I think they made that decision because ..." responses.

>what was the motivation for choosing that?".

That had the second person in it, it's just obfuscated with less-than-clear language. "The motivation" belongs to, and is exclusively controlled by, the second person.

> That had the second person in it,

It can have* the second person in it. It's up to the otherperson if they want to answer in with their motivation, or the team's motivation, or explain that they weren't told the motivation by <owning person/team>.

It gives me a lot of information about the person answering, and the problem at hand. For example, if it was a team motivation I can follow with "and what are your thoughts on it?". If it was "my motivation" I can follow with "and what does the team / <so and so> think of it?". If they don't know the motivation, I can follow with "Who can we talk to, to find the motivation?" help them learn this is an important part of being a great software engineer.

Anyways, it's just my preference, regardless if it "technically" has the second person in it. Your milage may vary.

No it is not. The motivation and choice belong to some person, the grammatical "second person" refers to you especially and no one else. Sure in some situations there is no one else who motivation and choice could be attributed to, but in many there are. Anyway this is about a rhetoric trick: avoid attribution to the person you are addressing to reduce the chance of them going defensive, denying responsibility, trying to wiggle out of blame, and instead answer the actual question. In a more general sense avoiding such details increases focus.

Oh that's excellent, thank you!

This is great. I also often go with something like "can you explain that to me?", because it puts the focus on my apparent lack of understanding the thought process rather than the implication that there's a deficit in the process.

"How do you know".

But anyway, I don't think it matters that much.

I've been using "How did you figure that out?" which I got from Marilyn Burns and her wonderful interviews with kids.[0]

Her videos are really cool to watch — often the kids will self-correct their wrong answers when talking through their reasoning. Even if they make the same mistake the second time, it gives the listener really great insight into how they're thinking about the question.

And it's a great question to ask when the kid is right too — often I'm surprised by my son's answer, such as when he figured out how to spell "only" by looking out the window at the right-turn only sign painted on the street outside.

[0] https://twitter.com/search?q=ListeningToLearn.com&src=typed_...

Please don't. Euphemism treadmills destroy langauge.

It seems to me that euphemism treadmills also create language.

That doesn't mean we should permit them, but there should be a better reason than "this will lead to change".

I prefer "What makes you say that?"

Why is clearly a personal judgement. What is something other, not the person, and we can even possibly feign objectivity and share a point of view of the matter.

Like the saying goes, nobody likes a "whys guy."

This makes me recall the time I was riding on the bus, and there was a little boy (maybe 4 years old) with his mum. The little boy was proudly reading the numbers off the other buses he saw drive by.

"7, 23, 5, 86," the boy proudly stated. Then a bus numbered "5X" came by.

"What's that?" The boy said, pointing in confusion.

"That's the bus number!" his mom said.

"X is a number now?" the poor kid asked in a painful tone. You could just hear his understanding of the world crumbling around him.

Still happens to me as a programmer when diving deeper into the domain.

Just to continue on the "number" theme: that address-form you recently built is probably wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_numbering

(where "wrong" is considered in the larger domain. It is probably "right" for your use-case and niche-domain, though. E.g. where you are certain you'll never ship to Thailand. Ever)

This why I evaluate future coworkers (interviewer or interviewee) on the speed at which we can align mental models. I have worked with some great engineers with whom I felt like bashing my skull in trying to get them on the same page, and some very middling engineers with whom I was immediately able to understand. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I would rather work with someone I can communicate with than an unapproachable great.

I think it would be worthwhile to ask "why do you think that?" on some confident correct assertions as well. Will help with collaborating on developing the child's use of rationality in case they're right for the wrong reasons, and also to avoid overly associating being asked why with being wrong.

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