Friday, October 21, 2016

Move to Wordpress

Hello!

If you're the sort of person who enjoys peaceful silence then you can continue to follow my Cage-esque experiment in self-publishing over at https://secondsignofmadness.wordpress.com/.

Monday, February 22, 2016

A Partial Defence of "Apathy"

Hello!

I have had one reply that I know of to my Apathy post containing useful critique. You can find it here written by a name you may know, Matt Heusser! First I have to say that I'm grateful to have a considered response. Now I'll expand a little on the points raised, and hopefully draw an interesting conclusion.

When you critique someone in public, there is an audience. That observer effect, to borrow a phrase, changes the nature of the conversation.

This is a useful insight, and it shows how dangerous my post could be. I don't know who's reading, and how they might employ the idea that they should shrug off apathy and argue the point - maybe I'm empowering people with immoral aims or ones who misunderstood my intent! I didn't expect anyone to question me on it. Now they have, and I have to pose some clarifications and try to be honest with what I learned and where I was wrong.

Sometimes, it can be tempting to play to the audience. If you think you’re talking to the other person, and they are playing to the audience, you’ll see a bunch of bizarre behaviors that don’t seem to make sense and you won’t be able to figure out from your position.

Wait, did I just play to the audience? Of course I did! But why? It's quite simple: I want to express and emphasise the idea that critique can be constructive for both parties and doesn't have to be a social nightmare or just to further personal ends. We can place the pursuit of further learning and conversational exploration above our need to seem clever... but it does depend on a hidden intent. You have to believe that my intent is to make us more honest with things that matter in our industry, although if you were following my advice you'd be slightly suspicious of my intent and make up your own mind.

So how do I salvage the point? There's not much I can do about intent. What I can do is say that with a critical mind you'll always be better poised to find a more objective truth than without criticism. Just look at scientific progress. I can also say that the critical tools you use in discussions about a subject are ones you can use in testing software.


Instead of “yes, but…” say “yes, and.” Add, ways to do things, or think about that. “Here’s what has worked for me”. Consider the environment.

This is another critical point, the partial answer to which I hid in a footnote. People are emotional creatures and no amount of intent to find the truth will help you convince someone who thinks that your intention is to attack them instead of seeking a better idea or the limitations of one. Of course some people abuse this and deliberately overreact with anger or hurt feelings to make you look cruel, which can be a smokescreen to hide their bad ideas. It's not as simple as I made it seem, far from it.

That's not to say I regret typing it, though. I'd rather people asked the questions (nicely, generally speaking) and discovered what the reaction is. I'd rather people reading publicly-posted advice had the opportunity to look deeper into the subject. If the person posting the advice refuses to defend the advice (no matter the reason) then we can make a useful judgement about how valid that advice might be, although not necessarily how invalid it might be. If the person posting the advice cannot defend the advice then we can make a similar judgement. It's not that the advice is intrinsically bad. Even if you're right that doesn't necessarily make their point wrong, and making them seem wrong also doesn't make their point wrong. But it does mean that you, and anyone else reading it, is subject to a reminder that they should question what they are reading. Maybe someone else could take up their cause.. happens to me all the time and I'm often glad of it.


Consider getting to know the speaker. Find out if feedback is warranted. Ask if feedback is wanted. Ask for the best way to give feedback. [...] Sometimes, the right choice is to say nothing.

If we're talking about feedback this is great advice. If we're talking about tackling bad ideas and keeping us honest it's... a reasonable heuristic. Part of my intent is to get the professional testing community to tactfully request reasons. In most scenarios it doesn't have to look like feedback and it doesn't have to look like critique. When someone says "I had a great time at the testing meetup" you can say "sounds great! Did you learn anything good?". When someone says "I thought that lecture on testing was really good" you can say "sounds like you enjoyed it! Do you think it will change the way you test or think about testing?". When someone says "Bob's a really awful tester" you can say "what did you see that makes you think that?".

There are a lot of little cognitive tools and heuristics we can use to do this (I'm writing something on
some of them now). That last one I used is called the data question [1].

That's a great start. It's positive. It can often be just asking for clarification so that you're on better ground to ask more questions, even if those questions are of yourself! We must create somewhat safe spaces in which to find better solutions, whilst not, in our friendly way, opening ourselves up to nonsense and 


If the idea is bad, if it is actively doing harm to the community, let’s separate that from “you are a bad person.” Character attacks might not be fit for public consumption, but you can attack bad ideas, often by the consequences of those ideas.

Please, let's! Character attacks aren't usually very useful to prove a point.. unless the point you're arguing is about their character.  Making character attacks to prove a point not connected to a character is not going to help you express the idea that you're a professional skeptic (to other professional skeptics) because every professional skeptic should know about the misuse of ad hominem attacks.


Do it too much, though, and things can change; you’ll find your reputation is built on criticism. That can become a very dangerous business. Better to be known for what you stand for.

It's true, it can get to be excessive. It's also very tiring, and can be emotionally challenging, and we need to know that it's probably the same or possibly worse for others. It's possible to lose sight of the learning and focus on making an argument. If you've ever seen two people argue who don't listen to each other you'll have seen how it can get. If you've ever seen an argument where one or more parties have no intention of ever changing their opinion you'll know how pointless it seems. But it does show something important about that party - if they aren't willing to defend their idea or consider that they might be wrong or be open to learning something new then how reliable are they with such matters? That doesn't mean that they're bad people, of course, just that they might be a marketer or salesperson rather than a professional skeptic. Perhaps it's not their job to seek truth in confusion. We can judge the value of their advice for ourselves when we know more about then.

However, I do want to be known as a professional skeptic. I also want to be part of a community that keeps me to account if I say something confusing or disagreeable, so I want to be known as someone who is willing to critique and be critiqued, preferably in a somewhat humanitarian and professional way.

I'd like to invoke the words of someone else to help me here.




Thanks Kino. If I had to critque, I might say the post was a little naive. That’s cool tho, man.

This is useful to mention, because it was naive. I did not construct a particularly well-formed argument in my post. I did not expand on the details or predict possible important counterarguments. I think my post was important, and served a message, and promoted thought, but it didn't question itself and it didn't urge caution or handle its own weaknesses. Moreover, I knew that I was doing it, which is why I put any defensive detail in a footnote. Mr Heusser spotted this and called me out on it.

Now look where we are. How did I find these additional insights? How is it that we dug deeper on this issue? Because one (of a very select few) took it upon themselves to shrug off the apathy and question me. Because of that we've found some of the limitations of my heuristics. I've had to go deeper in my explanations. I've had to express more of myself for you to make a judgement about the nature of my intent. I've had to agree with weaknesses in my over-generalised argument, concerning caution and context.

See how good that is? If you're a professional tester you do this sort of thing as a job with software already! Now we can apply some of the same rules with each other.

Carefully.


PS. Many thanks to Matt Heusser for both taking my advice, and improving it at the same time.

[1] Gause, D. and Weinberg, G. (1989). Exploring requirements. New York: Dorset House.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Apathy

How do you keep up to date with the test industry?

It's a question you've heard before at job interviews. You may even have a stock reply. You read books (you have one in mind in case they ask you what you last read) but you can't really remember the content, just the concept. You attend conferences, and while you had a great time at the after-party you forgot everything you heard because the content pandered to your emotions and to what you already believe anyway. You go to meetups and you have a simply lovely time agreeing with each other for two hours over a few drinks.

Can you defend this? Can you say that you keep yourself fresh and in-touch and up-to-date and you live in a state of constant self-improvement for these reasons?

We are a core of craftspeople struggling to improve ourselves and the world around us, we question everything, including ourselves, but it seems perfectly okay to state things like "I enjoyed that talk" without being asked to defend it. When did we get into a state where we refuse to question the value of a talk or book or article? It's very nice for us to have an opinion, but talks and books and articles absorb our time and attention and they should have some value, particularly and especially if we're going to recommend them to someone else.

So next time you hear someone tell you that they enjoyed a talk ask them why it was enjoyable and how it improved them or their testing. If we keep each other honest maybe we'll create a culture of self-questioning and improvement. If you're just interested in getting out of the office and enjoying the after-parties then could I recommend a holiday instead?

Moreover if you give out advice in public, especially if you're at a paid conference, be ready to defend it. If you're reading advice, especially if you've paid to hear it, why not question what you're hearing? Preferably publicly, so everyone can benefit from your question. If someone came for an interview and told you that they're awesome would you hire them at once, or probe for evidence? You need to ask questions. Even if you don't believe in your question you owe it to yourself, to them, and to the testing industry to pose that question - and if you're being questioned you need to understand that the questioning is for your benefit, as well as everyone else's.

We've all had a quick rant at certification or factory testing or misunderstanding of testing in our careers, so let's keep ourselves to a higher standard. Let's practice what we keep telling everyone we do and question things, including anyone who claims to speak with authority on subjects that matter. Let's not sit in the Church of Testing while we hear the good word from the pulpit, let's sit in the lecture hall after the presentation of data at a science conference and strongly question and debate what we're told in search of something better. Then let's question the questioners. And any reasonable target* of questioning should not hide behind outrage or social norms, but understand that we're all just searching for what's best.

Apathy is the dark shadows where confidence tricksters hide their lies. It's the cover of night that lets nonsense dance and play in the piazza of our industry. I now wonder if we can ever turn the lights on.


*Reasonable targets include anyone who speaks or writes with apparent authority or even strong opinion on a subject, including in response to anyone who speaks or writes with apparent authority or even strong opinion on a subject. The way that person should be questioned will depend on who they are. An industry leader should probably be more resilient than a testing newbie. Special attention should be given to anyone selling something. I'm giving the advice "be human, be an adult, have tact and try to communicate"; mainly to stem the flow of questions and comments on how we should all be nice to each other in case people become frightened to be involved.