If someone will legit get hurt or killed by incompetence, you speak up. That’s time-sensitive, and you can’t afford to twiddle your thumbs just because you’re anxious or whatever. Immediacy of physical harm is the one situation where action is most important above all and even if you’re shy and withdrawn and generally don’t get along socially with people, you can’t cater to that in certain situations and you have to do something yourself to fix the situation if incompetence is going to cause physical harm.
In situations where an entire company is being incompetent as a whole or is doing something terrible, you leave/quit. Yes, it’s sometimes a choice between removing yourself from an immoral situation or starving–and I have, absolutely, chosen to be poorer and starving rather than be a part of certain things. But other people make that choice on their own knowing their own internal situation and context.
If someone’s just being dumb and the consequences of their dumbness are my own irritation or frustration but nothing that actually matters but my poor feelings, I often ignore it. There is no way as a human to fix everything that is wrong with everyone everywhere, so it becomes important to learn how to internally deal with your disappointment when you discover that the world is imperfect.
Online, I don’t believe really in “debate” (I don’t learn from active, aggressive live-action debate–it’s more likely to trigger me to shut down and STOP learning, which is bad), I learn more from reading other people’s convos. So I will sometimes respond to someone who is being dumb, not as a way to get into a debate with them, but to get my perspective out there so lurkers who learn as I do by reading more than interacting have something to chew over that’s better than the bullshit I saw. I don’t expect anyone to take my words uncritically–that’s not how people learn–I’m just massively disinterested in debate since it fucks up my own ability to keep pressing forward with learning. (Trauma in my past means my responses to stress are all fucky, so I jury-rig things to work around it.)
Wildly depends on the context.
If someone will legit get hurt or killed by incompetence, you speak up. That’s time-sensitive, and you can’t afford to twiddle your thumbs just because you’re anxious or whatever. Immediacy of physical harm is the one situation where action is most important above all and even if you’re shy and withdrawn and generally don’t get along socially with people, you can’t cater to that in certain situations and you have to do something yourself to fix the situation if incompetence is going to cause physical harm.
In situations where an entire company is being incompetent as a whole or is doing something terrible, you leave/quit. Yes, it’s sometimes a choice between removing yourself from an immoral situation or starving–and I have, absolutely, chosen to be poorer and starving rather than be a part of certain things. But other people make that choice on their own knowing their own internal situation and context.
If someone’s just being dumb and the consequences of their dumbness are my own irritation or frustration but nothing that actually matters but my poor feelings, I often ignore it. There is no way as a human to fix everything that is wrong with everyone everywhere, so it becomes important to learn how to internally deal with your disappointment when you discover that the world is imperfect.
Online, I don’t believe really in “debate” (I don’t learn from active, aggressive live-action debate–it’s more likely to trigger me to shut down and STOP learning, which is bad), I learn more from reading other people’s convos. So I will sometimes respond to someone who is being dumb, not as a way to get into a debate with them, but to get my perspective out there so lurkers who learn as I do by reading more than interacting have something to chew over that’s better than the bullshit I saw. I don’t expect anyone to take my words uncritically–that’s not how people learn–I’m just massively disinterested in debate since it fucks up my own ability to keep pressing forward with learning. (Trauma in my past means my responses to stress are all fucky, so I jury-rig things to work around it.)