Monday’s brainy mood setter:
There are 5 sisters in a room. Alice is reading a book, Sophie is cooking, Anne is playing chess, Christine is doing the laundry. What is the fifth sister doing?
Answer, at the end. If you were forwarded this email, subscribe here so you can be the one annoying your friends with lateral thinking.
Extreme opinions stand out
First, let’s start with a casual internet definition: according to Urban Dictionary, a hater is a person who simply cannot be happy for another person’s success, so they decide to point out a flaw in that person.
And as you might already know, we tend to pick on others to make up for our own shortcomings.
It’s what in some debates you’ll see defined as a “straw man argument”. Unfortunately, these arguments tend to be very emotional, making it difficult to stay the course.
Someone might say “Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer”. And a straw man argument against this might be “He treats his workers as garbage, are we going to let ruthless capitalists get away with exploiting other human beings?”.
Then things get heated.
This is the problem when facing a hater.
Your purpose is often to prove him or her wrong.
The hater’s purpose is either to rile you up and make you lose composure OR have other haters jump in and criticize you.
Surprisingly often, haters don’t change anyone’s opinion. They are simply loud and the few changes they do generate are because of other’s insecurities, not because of any real valuable input.
Haters get attention because even though they like to appear as contrarians, most of the time they shift the subject to a negative popular opinion and try to associate the things they hate with it.
Keep that in mind next time you get in an argument with someone you can identify as a “hater”. Maintain your composure and make sure you point out the emotional arguments and straw men. It’ll serve you well.
Answer: she’s playing chess with Anne, of course.
This one’s a bit improvised and yes, there are multiple answers to it, don’t get all technical on me. If you asked yourself “which of these activities are not likely to done alone?” - then congratulations, you’ve improved your lateral thinking methods.