I’ll share mine first.
I had a psych patient one night pile shitty toilet paper next to his toilet overnight. Normally my psych nurse brain would consider this a symptom of disorganized psychosis, EXCEPT!
I remembered an aita post about a conflict between a western OP and his middle eastern roomate trying to figure out why their roommate put their shitty toilet paper in the trash. Turns out many middle eastern toilets can’t handle toilet paper.
Oh and inpatient psychiatry doesn’t provide freestanding hard plastic trashcans (turns out they make great clubs). We gave him one of our freestanding paper bag trashcans and problem solved.
TL;DR; Reddit expanded my cultural knowledge enough to differentiate disorganized psychotic behaviors from a genuine cultural difference. Thanks reddit!
Anyone have any similar examples of positive exchanges of knowledge or culture using reddit?
I know in your example you’re trying to give the right answer or explanation as you see it, but this is also very closely related to Cunningham’s Law:
So you’re still providing a service even if it feels bad to have an expert steamroll whatever perception you had. Chances are tons of people had the same vague notion as you and your misguided logic eventually led to the correct path.
Thanks. At least I know I’m helping everyone by being punched in the face here. Too bad it doesn’t make or hurt less.
At the same time (on platforms where conversations don’t get bumped so people don’t usually come back to them if they didn’t participate in the first place) wouldn’t that convince some people that your answer is right and they’ll never see the true answer? Wouldn’t it be better to only have answers good enough that the actual expert doesn’t feel the need to intervene?
I wish there was a forum version of Reddit/Lemmy and that’s one of the main reasons, longer discussions with all the info in one thread…