I don't intend any criticism of you personally but I wouldn't appreciate a friend or coworker who behaved this way. Making bold, wrong statements all the time is bound to annoy people and drive them off, not entice them to tailor the conversation to your own needs. I prefer social interactions built not on hacks and manipulation, but on respect and mutual understanding.
It's not to be done with acquaintances otherwise you're right it would be way too obnoxious way too fast.
That said, in a non friendly setting.. it's one of the most efficient way to get things done. Those contexts (like work) are often adversarial and full of opposite incentives, and tapping into people's deep desire to either assert their skills or express deep belief is just way too efficient.
I've tried the friendly honest way.. it was a catastrophe, nobody wants to give you friendliness, it's a currency. Proving you wrong is an intrinsic self-reward.. it comes in abundance.
> I don't intend any criticism of you personally but I wouldn't appreciate a friend or coworker who behaved this way.
I had the experience in the other direction. I was in a team of experts (me not being one of them). My work required occasionally consulting them for their expertise (i.e. I was not expected to become deeply knowledgeable in that domain). Whenever I'd ask a question, I'd either get no response, or a quick, short response that was either incomplete, didn't address at all what I was asking, or plainly wrong given the context.
I got quite frustrated and eventually had to resort to the tactic your parent talked about: When I wouldn't get a proper answer, I would send an "update" laying out the course of action I was about to take - and it was clearly the incorrect one. Suddenly I'd get a lot of useful responses explaining why what I was doing was wrong and how to do it properly.
So yes - this is a bad tactic to do in general, but there are times when it's called for. If you're in a team where you feel the need to do this, find another job. I did as soon as I completed the project.
> Suddenly I'd get a lot of useful responses explaining why what I was doing was wrong and how to do it properly.
Editing a draft is easier than creating from scratch. If you ask an expert open ended questions, you are creating a lot of work for them. But if you take a stab and ask for feedback, that’s much easier.
I get where you're coming from, and I should have clarified in my original comment.
> If you ask an expert open ended questions, you are creating a lot of work for them.
True, but my questions were pretty direct, and black and white.
> But if you take a stab and ask for feedback, that’s much easier.
That's true in that it's showing that I'm attempting to solve a problem, etc. However, for the scenario with this team, the work involved in answering was the same before and after. These weren't open ended issues.
The questions were typically "Should I do A or B?" Eventually, with no response, I'd announce "I'm going with C" where C is clearly wrong. I always then got emails telling me which of A or B was correct.
Oh, and I didn't ask for feedback. I learned that would not elicit a response. Just a straight up "FYI, this is the plan and I've begun execution." That led to urgency in responding.
No one could complain they didn't have a heads up as I often had weeks of unanswered queries to refer them to.
As I said: Crappy thing to have to do, but this was one team where more reasonable approaches just weren't working.
Don't need to do it in real life, just posting stuff on anonymous forums seems to work really well in my experience.
In real life you should mostly just remember to not be afraid to say what you think is true. If you are right then all is well, if you are wrong then it is good that someone helped correct and make you a little bit less ignorant.
