Do Unto Others?

I think I found a loophole in the golden rule. The question I'm asking here is: "Do you tell people they're wrong when they are wrong?" I don't think the answer is clear cut. Speaking for myself, I DO want people to tell me, but I'm not sure the same thing applies to other people. Hence the golden rule loophole.

A long time ago I was a grad student in electrical engineering trying to come up with a thesis topic. My advisor was one of those super smart people you tend to find in university faculties. I used to watch him in awe, when he played with mathematics in front of me on scratch paper trying out new ideas. He was a fully tenured professor and he ultimately left because he wasn't made dean when the job opened up. In any event, he used to say the word "obtuse" a lot. He would say, for example, "this technical article was obtuse."  He said it enough to get me to look it up, since I had no idea what it meant. Obtuse has about 6 meanings at http://dictionary.reference.com/. The general idea of all the meanings is:

OBTUSE:  Characterized by a lack of intelligence or sensitivity: an obtuse remark.  Not having acute sensibility or perceptions; dull; stupid; as, obtuse senses. --Milton.

So the next time he used the word "obtuse," I called him on it. I recall the moment (1982) even today. He was talking about MY paper, or at least one of it's many rough drafts, and said such and such was obtuse. So I said, you mean that's stupid? He said, "No, of course not! Why do you say that?" I said because obtuse means stupid. He said, "No it doesn't" and grabbed a dictionary. Well, of course, he was wrong, and as I recall, I don't think our meeting lasted much longer. We never mentioned it again, and it never came up, since he stopped saying obtuse<g>.

My point is, I don't think I should have said anything. I think the rules to say something are as follows:

• The other person is a friend, and doesn't feel superior to the you. (eg, not a Doctor, Lawyer, Professor, etc)
• The other person is not closed minded on the topic in which he is wrong. (Religion, Politics, etc)

There may be more rules, but that's all I've got at the moment.

So given all this, what do you think I did in the following situation?  This happened about a year ago. I'm visiting my nose doctor in Dallas. He's my third surgeon. (The first one died. The second one did my nose about 6 times and I dropped him for no particular reason.) The third one was the charm. As I said in a previous post, he operated on me once and I've been disease free for 4 years. I really like this guy as a person and he is SMART! He was one of the coinventors of the drug Vancenase, which is a nasal steroid.

So continuing, I'm visiting him and we as usual start talking about Tucson. He's visited once and he is close buddies with the director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. This museum is a big attraction in Tucson, and being director I guess means you are famous. So anyway he's talking about Tucson with fond memories and mentions that he loves Saguaros. Unfortunately he doesn't have the pronunciation right saying "sag-war-oh" instead of the proper "sah-war-oh".

So given everything I've written here, what do you think I did? ....... I corrected him.

I write these darn posts for me more than for anyone else. I can't seem to remember my own rules.

Comments

[PromoGuy]

I recall reading an Ann Landers, or Dear Abby, years and years ago about a similar situation.

A person was pronouncing pot porri phonetically (saying "pot" rather than "poh") and it was driving a woman crazy.

The columnist suggested when the person says the word wrong to say "Oh, you mean pot porri?" wherein you use the correct pronounciation. It is polite, doesn't correct them, and you've done your part with no guilt.

That said, even though I know "foyer" is pronounced "foo-yea," this self-respecting OKIE just can't bring himself to say it that way in public.

[Chris]

Hi Promoguy,

Thanks for the comment: that's a good way of handling it.

And, for the record, I thought foyer was pronounced "foyer". Sigh.