Ask Lemmy

Well I think it can definitely be a reflexive response by someone who just doesn't like being contradicted, but it could also be a feeling of "you aren't trying to understand what I'm saying, you're just trying to think of a way to counter it". So it could be worth taking a moment to back up and taking a deeper look at what the person is trying to say.

I have a really annoying way of understanding things. I piece shit together bit by bit and guess at the answer before I'm told. It comes off very interrogative. Even when I'm wrong my attempts to understand seem like I'm being antagonistic. I try to explain to some people how I'm trying to fix the underlying assumptions that led me wrong.

Some people won't respond well and it's really difficult for me to accept that there isn't a way to mediate both of us being happy.

I don't know you, or the people you're talking to, but once you're at the "you always have to be right about everything" point, the conversation is adversarial, and it's mostly a moot point where it goes from here. The goal shouldn't be "winning" the conversation at that point, the goal should be never getting there in the first place.

I do know people who act completely disinterested in any conversation that isn't about them lecturing one or more people about something. If this is how you come across, that could be very irritating to people. They don't want to feel inferior to their conversation partner, they want to have a discussion, not receive a lecture.

So back to the start. The goal should be figuring out how to stop the conversation from getting to that point in the first place, and since you have no control over how other people act, you'll need to start paying closer attention to what you are saying, how you are saying it, and how to start engaging with people in topics that they are more knowledgeable about.

As they say, if you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room.

Dude, what stakes are there in this conversation? If someone says red M&Ms tastes better, do you argue with them? Ideally not.

Not every statement has to be a debate.

If you're finding people don't want to hang out with you... This is why.

I don't think it's correct to say that I "have" to be right, I'm open to being wrong, in this case I'm usually not

Having the last word is the most nonsensical one to me, since it's often unclear when anyone's word would end up being the last word or not depending on if another word is spoken afterward

There is a very apt series of shorts for your behaviour (just that we can see in the post and comments of course):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdyHX8K1yfY& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxSa-C92Wno&

It is ok to know someone isn't 100% correct and not call them out for it. It is a huge social skill not to be right all of the time, but to validate other peoples' feelings and pursuit of learning new things. In short, just be quiet and don't say anything like 75% of the time if you know someone is wrong.

On the chance that you're a fellow neurodivergent, I'm going to share something I discovered after moving back in with my mom. We neurodivergents think of information like one might think of rock collecting. We collect information, compare its shininess and smoothness to other pieces of information, roll it over in our hands. We're eager to show information to people, and eager when someone shows us a new piece of information. Anyone enlightening us has our full attention and enthusiasm. And when we get corrected? That is the smoothest, shiniest stone. We collect that voraciously.

But 1) not everyone shares our information-collecting obsession. And 2) everyone has a weakness to their own special kind of rock -- their own, private kryptonite. And we neurodivergents tend to ignore the pain when we pick up our own kryptonite because we figure "information is always good (even if it hurts)."

But it's not good to expose a person to the information that is their kryptonite. Even our fellow neurodivergents, who will be begging us, "please, bring it closer! Knowledge is power! I must grow!"

As a neurodivergent, you must learn which rocks are kryptonite to which people. You must learn to withhold extremely relevant information in the exact conversations when it's most pertinent -- and do so precisely because its pertinence is why it's kryptonite to the person. And you must learn to do so even with fellow neurodivergents.

Acceptable:

• ✅ - the social behavior of bonobos
• ✅ - the Flynn Effect
• ✅ - the origin of the name of various open source software projects
• ✅ - the economic argument against slavery (that's Roman history)
• ✅ - the fact that the McDonald's coffee lawsuit was actually justified, and the whole story was twisted by corporate propaganda

Unacceptable:

• 🚫 - "Tucker Carlson has been caught lying" >> [this logic here] >> "Tucker Carlson is probably not trustworthy, going forward." (people hate hearing about that logical bridge!)
• 🚫 - the damage that you see a person's religion of choice doing to their psyche (people really hate that)
• 🚫 - most of the situations in which someone's beliefs are incorrect

If you want to discuss the "unacceptable" topics with people, you must look up street epistemology. But keep in mind as you learn it: discussing these topics productively will actually be painful for you if you're a neurodivergent. As you perform street epistemology, you will be asking questions, and the person answering you will be espousing an unbearable symphony of incorrect beliefs.

And you will have to hold back your urge to say, "well, actually" dozens of times a minute, maintaining an outwardly calm appearance and somehow focusing on your next question in the middle of their blizzard of wrongness.