Reasonableness requires self-awareness and an appreciation for the common good. Its staggering how absent those qualities are in many people, and how these attributes evaporate in the face of strong emotion.
Regardless, the "Reasonable Person" is a staple in litigation, used as a benchmark for conduct where the specifics are too complicated or variable to consider individually.
There is a lot of cynicism on this thread, and while I do think it is often justified I think it also misses the point.
This is not (necessarily) statement about fundamental human nature. It is not a political platform. It is not a legal standard. It is not an architecture for a perfect society.
It is merely a personal choice. A strategy or protocol for working with other people. We simply evaluate it on the grounds of its effectiveness versus the alternatives. By effectiveness, I mean whether it enhances or reduces our ability to live peacefully and collaborate with others.
I have found that simply giving people the benefit of the doubt and resolving issues privately mostly works.
There's certainly questions about how to deal with social predators or the emotionally immature, but I think that the correct approach is to build off of this principle rather than to reject it.
CISG (Convention on Contracts for international sale of goods) Article 8/3 has a clause on the reasonable person in the same circumstances.
The article basically states if you can't establish what the other party thinks, and had no way of being aware, you can go on with your business.
In this case, the instruction is written to comp-sci students. I imagine most of them are technical and know how hard it is to try fixing computer-related problems of other people.
Rather, common good is an emergent property of personal gain. People are simply aware that the threads that hold society together benefit themselves the most.
Yep, in the US at least, I consider this a big flaw in the legal system, since "reasonable" people really don't exist in this country. The recent election is proof of this. We need a legal standard that doesn't rely on something that's fictional.
I'd say you just exemplified the problem. While you view the election as proof of unreasonableness of half the voters, I see your outright dismissal as a clear inability to see an opposing view and hence unreasonable.
Maybe he didn't dismiss them outright. Maybe he looked at things from their perspective first, analyzed their beliefs and arguments and concluded that they did not make their decision based on facts[1] and rationality.
[1]Unless you count "alternative facts" of course, in which case their viewpoint is just as valid as yours!
A very clear and cogent overview of a structure. Simple to cite. Pragmatic and practical - I think it's quite a positive to have for an organization.
>Not all people share the same model of reasonableness, so disagreements inevitably occur. Under the reasonable person principle, the first thing to do is work it out privately (perhaps in person, since e-mail is known to amplify feelings). Indeed, many people would find it unreasonable to bring in third parties before trying personal discussion.
As true as this is, holistically, I do think the trend in "modern USA" is a bit less personal. Trending more towards the "easier to tattle anonymously" than have personal interactions. This creates more friction down the line as the third party will, inevitably, disappoint at least one faction if not both.
I do think making the statement is important though, and I do not disagree it's in line with what Reasonable People should do in working out differences.
Agreed, i've observed both personally and with others that americans tend to get upset when someone tries to move a disagreement into private chat, rather than having a public battle about it; and also tend to follow it up by actions that ensure the disagreement is never resolved.
Something I'm slowly coming to realize is that unless you have a logically defensible moral position, it's hard to argue with people that disagree. Terms like reasonable are so flimsy it's hard to use it as a model to communicate with people that don't already agree with you.
The successful operation of a principle like "reasonableness" requires an intake filter to suss out whether people joining the department roughly agree on what it means. If someone doesn't agree with your definition of reasonableness, it becomes a bludgeon wielded by both sides that can't be affixed to a definitive state of the world and the winner will necessarily be side that can exert more political force.
Element three is more concrete. "[3)] No one is special."This is the classic statement that all are equal before the law regardless of position in the department, which is the only way to grant popular legitimacy to rules.
"[4)] Do not be offended if someone suggests you are not being reasonable." I feel this rule is a symptom of the lax definition of reasonableness. The reason people become offended when someone accuses them of being unreasonable, is because the standard is so loosely defined that someone can (reasonably, ha!) believe themselves reasonable when others do not.
I read an interesting article the other day where the author took a moral position and reasoned it through [0], showing how it was legally reasoned through in high profile situations. This kind of cooperative principle is harder to state, but more easily defended on grounds that are still require agreement, but in principle can reference an objective reality (e.g. from the article, elements like "proportionality"). Obviously, the referenced article is not a scholarly work, so there is more that can be done, but
I guess this is the kind of thing political science majors learn about in school that I didn't get exposed to as much except through my own reading.
Something I'm slowly coming to realize is that unless you have a logically defensible moral position, it's hard to argue with people that disagree.
Backfire Effect: "The backfire effect occurs when, in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger. The effect has been demonstrated experimentally in psychological tests, where subjects are given data that either reinforces or goes against their existing biases - and in most cases people can be shown to increase their confidence in their prior position regardless of the evidence they were faced with."
Possible solution -- first tell them how they're right, and then show them how each of your perspectives overlap/align (connect the overlapping truth), like discovering the missing piece to a puzzle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13672763
> ... it's hard to argue with people that disagree. Terms like reasonable are so flimsy it's hard to use it as a model to communicate with people that don't already agree with you.
You are absolutely right on both points, and I think it's important to recognize (as you did) how vague language can be. It can be astounding how much miscommunication and cross expectation can happen even after parties agree on really concretely elaborated terms.
But - in part I wonder if this misses the spirit of the Reasonable Person Principle. My interpretation is not that "reasonable" is (or even should be) a concrete criteria under which to judge people, I think the point of the principle is to default to giving benefit of the doubt. I think it's a suggestion that when one finds a disagreement, one should assume that the opponent has legitimate reasons for their position before one tries to argue with them. In other words, try harder to not argue at all, but instead to understand.
Yes, fallacies of definition are one of the primary reasons for misunderstanding, e.g. we both are using the same word, we both have an idea of what the word means and/or are using it in a specific way; however, we both think the word means something different, and we both assume the other person is using the word in the way we are. Piles of disagreements have been built on this one simple fallacy.
That's one of the reasons why I like how Rich Hickey begins all of his talks with precise deconstructions of the definitions for the words that are integral to the theme of his talk, as he does in "Simple Made Easy":
Once you establish a common understanding for the meaning of the words you are using, you have not only cleared up any potential misunderstandings, but you have also implicitly established points of agreement and have established a solid foundation to build on.
Yes, you're totally right. This is a clearer description of what I had in my head with my above comment. Re-reading the Reasonable Person Principle, there is the specific guidance (emphasized more than once) to seek personal resolution over public resolution of differences. That's not covered by the Principle of Charity, but I would think for most reasonable people in most circumstances, personal resolution of differences would be a byproduct of adopting the Principle of Charity.
In any case, reducing ambiguity is always a good thing, but it does make me smile to think about trying to be crystally unambiguous about the wording of principles whose purpose is to acknowledge the existence of vagueness and ambiguity, and suggest outcomes will be improved by using the most reasonable and most charitable interpretations available.
This has me wondering if there's a meta-level principle or eponymous law around somewhere concerning the ambiguity of language itself, there must be, right? Something like, 'when someone says something you find untrue, first assume you didn't understand what they said, and seek to validate your interpretation before disagreeing'...
Makes sense. Good summary. I've heard it mentioned as "don't be a jerk", "don't first assume when others act like jerks they always meant to". The last part, avoids quick escalations of misunderstandings.
Interestingly just last year I remember someone posted the syllabus to the Advanced Database Systems: http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/ (latest version). Really good stuff there.
But one thing I noticed there was plenty of red triangles. Apparently those are trigger warnings. So I opened some of those papers, for example: http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/papers/04-occ/tu-... , expecting to see some horrible things, but I couldn't see what would be triggering there. There are transaction ids, commit phases, reads, writes, B+trees ...
So given that it is coming from same school, shouldn't the same "reasonable-ness" apply. Is it reasonable to sprinkle trigger warnings onto distributed database readings? I understand history, psychology, anthropology, literature, art might have disturbing contexts, but computer science?
Oh you may be right. I couldn't see the pattern right away though. Is it memory resident databases, and it is a pun on them not really being considered "databases"...?
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw
It's a clever quote, but I've always thought this turned a bit on an ambiguity in the word "unreasonable" in the first and second half of the sentence.
This is a fun quote, I've always liked it. But I'm not exactly sure how it fits here. The OP seems to be an etiquette guide for an academic department.
Side point, but am I to understand from this that there is an email list "cs.opinion" which is "no-holds barred and often both agressive and personal"? That seems like a terrible idea in a professional environment.
What an excellent concise framework for handling interactions in a diverse undivided culture. I'm surprised I've never seen this before.
There WILL be disagreements and conflict because so many things are not objective and there is no rational right answer. Guns, abortion, gender, rights everything has a gambit of perfectly reasonable and acceptable positions along its spectrum. Many of which are contrarian by nature.
We solve this dilemma in one of two ways. Blood and fire until 'they' are gone or learning to live together despite having differing moral structures.
>We solve this dilemma in one of two ways. Blood and fire until 'they' are gone or learning to live together despite having differing moral structures.
The first method is the only workable one. The second is impossible: many peoples' morality absolutely requires that they impose their moral values on everyone around them. So "learning to live together" would require living by the moral codes of people you fundamentally disagree with.
Just as an example from your list: abortion. The pro-choice people would be perfectly happy to have legal access to abortions, and for anti-abortion people to simply not get any. That won't work for anti-abortion people, who will insist on legislatively banning all abortions (to varying degrees, to be fair). The only way to live peacefully with anti-abortion people is to simply give up and let them ban abortion. This obviously is unacceptable to pro-choice people. I can make similar arguments about many other moral positions, such as whether women should be allowed to drive or not.
> The only way to live peacefully with anti-abortion people is to simply give up and let them ban abortion. This obviously is unacceptable to pro-choice people. I can make similar arguments about many other moral positions, such as whether women should be allowed to drive or not.
Well, I agree with your general point that people with an absolutist view of abortion may not be able to live together. However, for most, I think the issue is somewhere in the middle, and may not be the highest priority:
- you may be anti-abortion but agree that in some cases abortion is useful/necessary, e.g. for medical reasons
- you may be pro-choice but agree to a limit on abortions in the final weeks of pregnancy(rights of the woman vs rights of the unborn get very blurry there)
Abortion may be an important issue to you but not the most important. An anti-abortion person may be able to compromise living with legal abortion, as long as they are given some small compromise, and as long as their other issues are resolved to their satisfaction(e.g. economy). A pro-choice person may be able to compromise living with illegal abortion if given some compromise for the most extreme exceptions(e.g. rape, medical), as long as their more important issues are settled to their satisfaction.
I believe most people do not hold an absolutist view in earnest, even if they express one publicly. There are plenty of reasons why that is - it's much easier to give a voice to the absolutist view, it's a simple soundbite("abortion is murder!"), it's easy to "recruit" people by othering the opposition - "it's only idiot conservatives that want to ban abortion, no smart reasonable person would stop women from having a choice".
I would like to believe that, given the opportunity of honest discussion, people would agree that finding a compromise is best for their community. I believe the underlying issue behind many such social rifts is that the community cohesion has eroded away, with people split into tribes and into an us vs them mentality. This means that even if they are amenable to compromise, it's likely to happen only through members of their own community, as they see the rest as "others" who are not worth their time(examples here are a plenty, hopefully I don't need to give any..)
There's always the third option of marginalizing the absolutists and ignoring their demands until they die off from old age and no longer form a powerful constituency. I'm not saying it always works or is inherently better, but it certainly has worked in some places.
Sure, you can just ignore the moralists you don't like, but what if they don't go quietly? Then you have to use something stronger against them. With the abortion issue for example, it's been a never-ending tug-of-war in politics, with each side constantly working to change the makeup of the SCOTUS to either maintain the status quo or to overturn it. While not an actual, physical battle, it's been a constant political one, for decades now. It's never been settled. And with the latest election, the "let's wait for them to die off" idea obviously isn't working so well: the anti-abortion people are winning politically (at least for now), so I reject the idea that the people with strict religious moral codes are dying out. (Notice that, in the US at least, it's religious people who typically have far more kids than non-religious people.)
That usually does end in violent conflict. I clearly phrased my original remark badly, badly; my point was not that the surrender or conflict can always be avoided, but that they are not always the inevitable outcomes. It depends on demographics, the political/historical context and so on. Peaceful realignments do occur too; I brought it up because studying where that breaks down might help identify the conditions that make conflict more likely.
Its sounds more like the definition of a prosocial person, not reasonable. I think there needs to be something in there about, say, enlightened self-interest as it relates to the community, rather than simply asserting that reasonable people think about the common good.
In the economic sense, a common approach is to model reasonable people as trying to maximize their gain or utility, without much regard to the common good.
Sure... And Ayn Rand will therefore tell you let that child drown if it isn't yours, you don't expect a reward, and rescuing it may get your shoes wet.
Which is why "the economic sense" must not be applied unreasonably.
There could be a better term maybe. "Average" may actually work, or "well-adjusted". Maybe even "what would Benjamin Franklin Pierce (gen 50+) / Ted Mosby (others) do"
This just feels to me like one of those things that seems great on paper, then in practice requires a lot of things to line up to work as intended (like Communism?).
I also really dislike the fact that the language used would be very hard to a non-native English speaker, which makes me question how useful it is at solving the problems it is obviously addressing (cultural differences, social norms, etc.).
I take a slightly different view of it, with mostly the same conclusion. When something seems to require people be able to identify and self-regulate some of the baser elements of human psychology, it's unlikely to to work in practice. I contend that even the most reasonable and rational person will have periods where they enter a state of unreasonableness and/or irrationality that is impossible to identify while within said period.
How apt. Here is a principle that tries to define sane communication within a community and espouses flexibility and understanding. A hyperliteral reading of a statement that has a very reasonable interpretation (i.e., that it has been implicitly understood up to the point it was put to writing) is precisely why things like this exist.
We are not debuggers and are expected to look beyond words and grasp intent.
Hey, I didn't even get into the dissonance between "Everyone will be reasonable" but then "Do not be offended if someone suggests you are not being reasonable."
To be clear, I'm not addressing you specifically since you're clearly posting out of humor. When someone composes a message with errors, we can engage 1) the erroneous message or 2) the message without errors or 3) the meaning behind the message. It's unfortunate how news aggregation boards with short-lived posts - reddit, HN included - tend to reward slams at levels 1 & 2 when the conversation should really start at level 3.
I think one common reason people are not reasonable is they lack proficiency in the needed social skills. I think books like Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication can be helpful here.
Indeed. In my experience, unreasonableness in interpersonal contexts often seems to stem from unmet emotional needs. Having the tools to deescalate the situation and address those needs is critical to getting emotional arguments back on to the rails of civil discussion.
To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right [1]:
When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show
another that he errs, we must notice from what side he
views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and
admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on
which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees
that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see
all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing
everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that
perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see
everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side
he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are
always true.
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which
they have themselves discovered than by those which have
come into the mind of others.
— Blaise Pascal
Empathy [2] (cognitive empathy) is the ability to put yourself in someone's shoes and see things from their perspective. Not everyone has the ability to empathize -- we often believe our level of empathy is like that of everyone else, but this is not the case. Cluster B personality types [3], those with Asperger's [4] or on the autistic spectrum, and some with ADHD lack the ability to empathize. Recent research out of Berkeley has shown than medication can help those with ADHD access their Executive Function and gain their ability to empathize [5].
In one of the comments on [5], Dr Charles Parker describes empathy as a two-step process:
"Empathy is a higher order function, more evolved with effective PFC [prefrontal cortex] activity than sympathy. Why? Sympathy indicates a certain subjective, feeling level, ability to emotionally reach across the room and identify with the pain of another. The only problem for those practicing sympathy is that, more often than not, they only take that first identification step, and too often get stuck in the other person’s pain. They can’t leave, and become emotionally lost over there. Empathy, on the other hand, requires good PFC Executive Function, with a metacognitively active two step process: 1. Trial identification with the other, and 2. Return to one’s full self for objective management of the other’s challenges. Good next-step advice doesn’t often arise from sympathy, but does often arise from empathetic considerations more objectively managed outside of a purely emotional reaction."
I try not to keep such people in my life. Not a strict rules. My three year old daughter is often unreasonable. Also, I hope people can forgive me at times.
I think a big part of the concept of a reasonable person is recognizing that others have something to offer and giving them respect. Someone I very much disagree with may have good points to be made and I should be open to that. Now that said, I sometimes fail.
I'm having trouble drawing conclusions of any sort from the statements listed here. Am I alone in finding this indecipherable? Perhaps I'm being unreasonable...
'Reasonable' doesn't mean relaxed or even nice. It means being guided by reason, ie the application of logic to available evidence. Socrates was a reasonable person, and his insistence on being so made him a lot of enemies.
It might be worthwhile to define this up front; this worthy advice seems to rest on an implicit understanding of 'reasonable' as meaning 'considerate' or 'not rocking the boat.'
The dictionary I just consulted lists your definition as "archaic". "Reasonable" means (to a reasonable observer) a lot more than the ability to think logically:
- having sound judgement; fair and sensible: no reasonable person could have objected.
- based on good sense: it seems a reasonable enough request | the guilt of a person on trial must be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
- archaic: able to reason logically: man is by nature reasonable.
2: as much as is appropriate or fair; moderate: a police officer may use reasonable force to gain entry.
Thesaurus: sensible, rational, open to reason, full of common sense, logical, fair, fair-minded, just, equitable, decent; intelligent, wise, level-headed, practical, realistic; based on good sense, sound, judicious, well thought out, well grounded, reasoned, well reasoned, valid, commonsensical, advisable, well advised; tenable, plausible, feasible, credible, acceptable, admissible, believable
No, that's the thing, you all have to expect them to be reasonable. They know this, and its social pressure to actually be reasonable. That's how the whole thing works. And then of course, you forgive someone who for whatever emotional reason cannot be reasonable for some brief time. Because, all human.
No, but it sets a standard of interaction and expectations for how conflict should be dealt with.
"Expecting" everyone within a group to be reasonable is another way of saying: if you are consistently unreasonable, you won't be considered part of the group.
The text is worse than that, it says "expect everyone to be reasonable", not "everyone within a group". In a group of have shared interests and shared needs, but leadership is different, it responds to different social pressure. If leadership is dysfunctional you have a problem, and no amount of kumbaya is going to help.
A reasonable person also may have irrational beliefs—like faith, for instance—but apply those beliefs in a reasonable way.
I think "reasonable" means people do things for "reasons", even if those reasons may be logically wrong; it takes into account the fallibility of man. I see "rationality" as more of a platonic form, under which the things people do are strictly logical—but this is often not how people behave.
The reasonable person principle doesn't ask you to assert your conception of reasonableness on everyone—it's just to trust that when you're interacting with someone, they aren't trying to actively harm you or do something that they don't think is "the right" thing to do. What you believe to be right may differ from them, but the key is not to hold grudges, feel personally attacked or angered by the things other people do. Instead, just accept that, given their point of view, conditioning, and environment, people do things for reasons that makes sense in their experience; and what may seem as "unreasonable," may just seem so because you lack the requisite information to assess their thought processes.
I remember hearing this advice from Stanford prof John Ousterhout when I was taking his classes, and I find it to be profound—it echoes the same dogma of non-reactance that many in the meditation community extol. Check out the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz for a synopsis of what I mean, in which the author points out that when people do things that offend or hurt you, you have a couple options: either be vindictive towards them, and in turn make yourself feel angry and miserable for it; or withhold judgment, attribute any wrongdoing as a consequence of their life experience which you do not know, and don't let it interfere with your life and inner peace. In doing so, you can live a productive, happier life by not wasting time and emotional energy doting on the pain people inflict on themselves because of external stimuli, like the dysfunctional social norms we live under. That text is short, and while it has the occasional new-agey bs, it's almost entirely high quality content—if you're open-minded and ready to take it seriously.
It's interesting seeing Hacker News discuss these sorts of things, as many here seem to discount lifestyle choices like this very quickly.
Check the dictionary: "Reasonable" has much broader meaning overlapping concepts such as "fair", "decent", "predictable".
It may also become more obvious from this other use of the word: "You may use reasonable force to defend your property". A "rational" force doesn't make much sense.
Ted Danson plays himself on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', a Larry David production (which has actually been renewed for at least one more season). Ted Danson plays a lighthearted, even-keeled man, whereas Larry is petty and seems to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. At least that's my take on the grandfather comment.
Not to pile on the commenter, but I agree. If you have to ask if this is satire you either lack experience (most likely) and will later in life understand; or you lack self-awareness and will never understand.
I can't tell if you are commenting on him being part of a clueless American culture, in general, or that his quandary is because the aforementioned culture problem.
comment I responded to asked a question in the form of "A or B". I evaluated their question logically.
what do you think I owe you in terms of "informing or challenging" you? at some point you'll have to actually interpret my comments yourself and figure out what I meant. how explicit do I need to be?
we're talking about indicators that point to what has happened to American culture and society. A comment expressing confusion as to whether or not "behave like reasonable adults" is a satirical statement is quite revealing, don't you think?
I was just going to write that and you beat me to it. Who really would seriously follow this? Possibly the same people who argue passionately about coding standards over being productive? Just struck me as silly.
Reasonable people can argue passionately about coding standards in a conversation about coding standards, but make compromises about coding standards when it's time to actually complete a project with other people.
Zak, you have a pretty high Karma so you just down vote me because you don't like my opinion and I certainly wasn't rude or harsh in my language. Is that reasonable?
CMU had me arrested and held in jail for a week though I had paid my bail because I complained too much about not being able to find an job opportunities with a CS degree. Everyone just says to go to the career center. Career center says they have nothing for me. Couldn't find anyone in the entire University who would act reasonably to anything that didn't benefit them directly.
Try Google. You want to see my arrest record? How can I prove to you the absence of evidence?
Telling someone what happened to them instead of listening to them because you don't want to believe them isn't very reasonable. You have the same reaction as most people at CMU: you don't believe what happened, so something must be wrong with me.
I'm sorry for getting a Computer Science degree at Carnegie Mellon University just because I wanted to become a programmer. Before I went to college people suggested to me that is what I should do if I wanted to get a job. People said professors would help you if you need help with schoolwork or getting a job, nobody suggested they would be rich and not care about any of the students. You can go down to CMU and ask if there's anyone to talk to or to help get a job but no professors of faculty will help you. They don't tell us what resources are available. I here about people at other schools who can get their school to help them. But when I ask at CMU everyone says they'll help me and then they ignore me. They tell me help should be available, but when I ask for it, everyone just gets angry at me.
So, yes, you are being offensive. Try figuring things out for yourself instead of insulting people with your unreasonableness.
Regardless, the "Reasonable Person" is a staple in litigation, used as a benchmark for conduct where the specifics are too complicated or variable to consider individually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person