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LM: #337: Your critics are full of it
As we discussed a few weeks ago, feedback comes from the three-headed feedback monster.
It’s contradictory, it’s confusing, it’s…made up.
There’s a pretty robust body of research on what’s called “choice blindness” that shows why you shouldn’t listen to your critics.
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People will explain why they find someone attractive. Never mind the photo they’re pointing at has been switched to the person they didn’t choose.
People will defend their political stances. Never mind the stance they’re defending is the exact opposite of what they just said they believe.
In one crazy study, people in a supermarket taste-test described why they preferred one flavor of jam over another. Unbeknownst to them, they were doing so while tasting the jam they hadn’t picked. Even if they had said they preferred Apple-Cinnamon, a sweet flavor, most then explained away what they liked about Grapefruit, a drastically-different sour flavor.
Studies of patients who have had the two hemispheres of their brains disconnected shine a light on how people rationalize after-the-fact the choices they make. If you prompt the right hemisphere to point at a snow shovel, by showing it a snowy driveway, and show the left hemisphere a chicken, it will explain the shovel is for cleaning up the chicken coop. Similar information processing imbalances prevent normal brains from objectively describing their actions and preferences.
All this to say, when people criticize your work, there’s a solid chance they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
When you make something, you expect that the message you’re sending will be the message received, but it almost never will. So don’t take criticism personally.
Aphorism: “Victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone” —Tacitus
Cool: The Artificial Intelligence Show is a podcast with the latest AI news, as relevant to marketers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.
Best,
David
P.S. The unreliability of critics is more evidence nobody knows anything.
