My Sincere opinions as a Chief Delphi reader

[DougHogg]

I have found that when people have different viewpoints and are arguing, they can actually work it out by communicating unless one or both parties start to criticize the other person or the other person's communication, at which point the whole thing goes down hill.

It is quite amazing really that if people get the idea of being willing to receive a viewpoint that is different from their own, without getting annoyed and retorting critically, they can overcome the most incredible disagreements.

One of the keys I think is to let the other person know that you have received his or her communication. Then they feel that they have been successful in getting their communication to arrive. For example, if one person says, "I think that restaurant is dumb." and the other person just says, "Okay", that doesn't mean that the second person agrees. They were just willing to receive the first person's viewpoint. Now the first person won't feel they have to defend their viewpoint, as they might if the second person had said, "Your crazy! That place is great."

After saying "okay" or otherwise acknowledging receipt of another person's viewpoint, you might give your own viewpoint about that thing. You will then have an interchange of viewpoints, a beautiful thing that expands our horizons. But if we put down another person for communicating or criticise their viewpoint, pretty soon they might be doing the same thing to us, and if it happens enough, nobody is going to want to say anything.

I guess the point I am making is that critizing another person's viewpoint will just likely to cause him to defend it more vehemently. Acknowledging that viewpoint and expressing your own in a positive way will do more good.

Also getting back to the example of the people talking about the restaurant, it might turn out that they were talking about different ones, and if they stopped critizing each other for a minute, they might find that out and go and have some fun.

(I think some people actually get withdrawal symptoms after their robot has shipped. Maybe we should have some EduRobot competitions to fill the gap before regionals.)