Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 6/23/22 04:14, S Moonesamy wrote:

> Hi Keith,
> At 01:49 PM 22-06-2022, Keith Moore wrote:
>> Such feedback sounds really presumptuous and at least borderline 
>> offensive.   It creates more heat than light.
>
> The "more heat than light" idiom is not easily understood by someone 
> who is not familiar with IETF English.

That's interesting, and thanks for the feedback.   I think the phrase is 
quite common in English (not just in IETF).   I thought it's meaning 
would convey in most languages, as fundamentally it's contrasting 
between two attributes of fire which is surely known all over the 
world.   I thought the meaning of "light" as illumination, something 
that makes things easier to see, versus "heat" as something that 
encourages anger, was obvious.    But now I see that the phrase "more 
light than heat" occurs in Shakespeare's play /Hamlet, /and in that 
quote it's the heat that's taken to be the desirable property.   So now 
I see that the meaning is not inherently obvious at all!

>
> You pointed out that the style of feedback could be construed as 
> "borderline offensive".  If I am not mistaken, some of the persons who 
> commented on the thread were also arguing against that style of feedback.
>
> The is a research article [1] which discusses a "club good approach" 
> viewed through the IETF process.  I could choose to discuss the "club 
> good approach" with the author as she might be able to share a 
> perspective which is different from what I see or I could choose to go 
> with IETF groupthink.  The groupthink happens when an idea is 
> described as bad because it was tried before and failed.  The 
> assumptions on which the idea was based, which were current thinking 
> over a decade ago, may no longer be valid.  I am not sure whether an 
> experienced participant might catch that if he/she is more interested 
> in doing damage control.
Thanks for the pointer to the article; it looks interesting.

In general I think it's both difficult and frightening to re-examine 
long-held assumptions, particularly when there's significant investment 
in them.  I expect that this true for most people if not everyone.   And 
I suspect it's even more difficult for a group of people to re-examine 
long-held assumptions, than for any individual person.

Keith