Cunningham's Law
"The main thing with people of that sort, is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want."
— Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four
This quote states that, if you agree with people and show them that their information is important to you, they will shut up and not contribute anymore. You are better off to instead give the wrong answer and have them protest it with their right answer.
This is the essence of Cunningham’s Law.
The law is named after Ward Cunningham who is also known as the father of the wiki.
The law states that “the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer”.
If you have spent anytime on sites like Stack Overflow as a beginner, you’ll know that beginner questions are often deemed as low-effort questions. So in this case a better (not recommended) way to get an answer is to post the wrong answer and ask for feedback.
On social media too, if you agree with your peer group about a particular topic, then posting something in support of it is not going to add value to your awareness of the topic or going to get a lot of engagement.
People are just going to nod and move on.
Instead, if you post something that is the opposite (or just wrong) of your peer groups’ beliefs, you’ll see people trying to bring arguments to your post resulting in better engagement and learning for you.
I believe this happens because people like to portray themselves as smart by debating on a topic than showcasing that they can be excitable by acting like digital cheerleaders.
A habit of silent agreement is not productive beyond a certain threshold.
Silent agreement kills dialogue and exploration.
One of the reasons I personally do not use social media for political/social dialogue like a lot of people is because in peer networks people silently agree with each other all the time and that is harmful.
And even when they sometimes disagree, a lot of them do it disrespectfully and dishonestly.
One of these scenarios puts you in an echo chamber where everybody is in silent agreement and the other is a hostile environment where you are called names every 2 minutes.
The sweet spot is in the middle.
A good way to evaluate if your peer group is intellectually productive for you or not is by posting something that you are unsure about but something that your peer group disagrees with.
For example, if you are unsure about the effectiveness of non-vegetarian diets but most members of your peer group are meat lovers - post something like “I am not really sure if non-vegetarians diets are any better than vegan diets.”
If this post gives you a wide array of answers that you can add to your knowledge base then your peer group is intellectually productive.
But if they are indifferent to it and just cheer you on or hurl names at you for taking the other side, then they are simply not productive. And this is a peer group you should avoid.
So here is an experiment.
I made this post on Twitter today and I want to know how intellectually curious this peer group is.
Thoughts?
I found a lot of value in this post > other posts.