In March 1981, during preparations for STS-1, the first Space Shuttle launch, three technicians inadvertently entered an area with an oxygen-deficient atmosphere and died (one at the scene, one a few weeks later, and one years later, from complications stemming from the mishap). Tragic as this was, though, it could have been even worse—after witnessing the three technicians get into trouble, two more people entered the area with the oxygen-deficient atmosphere and were overcome. Fortunately, by this point others were aware of the situation and the latter two were rescued with no lasting harm done.

The human instinct to help is incredibly strong. We want to help. We want to make things right. We want to fix things. When we see someone struggling, or hurting, or in trouble, most of us want to do something. The trouble is, sometimes we have to know when to control this urge. Sometimes, our attempts to help may harm us, or, even worse, may harm the people we are trying to help.

“But I was just trying to help!” is a pernicious thing. People want to feel like they’re doing good, like they’re doing their part. They don’t like being told that the thing they are doing, the thing that they think is helping, the thing that they feel good about, might actually be doing more harm than good.

For folks in the disaster-response business, this is an incredibly common narrative. “Thanks, but we don’t need any more donations of thing. Please give money, or the things we’ve indicated we actually need.” “But I was just trying to help! Why don’t you want my help!?”

As the vignette in the introduction illustrated, this is also why “scene safety” features prominently in training for first responders. “Never mind the giant white cloud and pungent odor, someone over there is in trouble!” And then you end up with another victim.

Sometimes, though, it isn’t quite so dramatic.

Sometimes, we may think that the stakes are so low that it could not possibly hurt to try to help, to offer some advice, to try to make something better. We might walk past someone and say “Hey, you’re frobbing your encabulator wrong!”, and think “oh, I’ve done my good deed for today, now that person will learn to frob their encabulator properly!”. But will they? Or have you in fact done more harm than good?

Offering advice, especially unsolicited advice, is actually a tricky thing, and can easily do more harm than good. I’ve had an opportunity to puzzle over this recently, and here are a few principles I think are worth considering:

  • Consider whether the person wants your help: “Hey, I notice you seem to be struggling to frob your encabulator. Would you like some help with that?” comes across completely differently from “You’re frobbing your encabulator wrong!”. Put in more fundamental terms, consent matters. Sure, maybe there are extreme cases, where someone is about to do something that will seriously harm themselves or others, or cause severe property damage, where you may feel the need to step in immediately, but in the vast majority of cases, you can take the time to confirm that the person wants your help.

    And if they don’t? That’s okay! Some folks learn by struggling through things, and other folks are just hard-headed. Don’t take it personally. It is fine to step back and say “well, if you decide you’d like some help later on, I’ll be right over there”. And if they ask for your help later on, great! And if not, that’s fine too! Your interlocutor may simply not be in the right place to accept advice in that moment.

  • Consider that the person may have received conflicting advice: You must recognize, understand, and accept that you do not necessarily understand the full context. What looks silly, or stupid, or wrong to you may in fact be a sign of a more complicated situation. “Well, everyone does it this way!” is the sort of assertion that is just begging for someone to provide a counterexample.

    Sure, it may look to you like the person is frobbing their encabulator wrong, but maybe they’re doing what they were taught to do! Maybe their encabulator is different from yours, and needs to be frobbed in a different way? Maybe they’ve got some special thing going on, that you wouldn’t know about just from walking by?

    Particularly if you are in a position of authority relative to your interlocutor, it is important to be mindful of the risk of giving advice that may conflict with what they’ve already been told to do by someone else. Especially for neurodivergent folks, “authority figure X is telling me to do Y but authority figure A told me to do B” is a shortcut to sheer terror. So, don’t set people up for that trap. It’s okay to ask “hey, how come you’re doing it that way?” or “did someone tell you to do it that way?”, and this is far superior to randomly offering conflicting advice.

  • Be genuine and empathetic: “Well of course your encabulator won’t frob when you do it like that, you idiot!” isn’t a great way to start. In fact, for some folks, that will end the conversation right then and there; it will nullify anything else you might possibly have to say, no matter how well-intentioned you may be. Is someone making a comically stupid beginner error? Show empathy. You were a beginner once too. And think of it this way: they might be one of today’s lucky ten thousand.

  • Be prepared to follow through: “Oh, your encabulator isn’t frobbing? Just use the Foobar Method!” is meaningless to someone who doesn’t know what the Foobar Method is. And no, following up with “just Google it” isn’t okay either. This condemns them to AI slop, either Google’s own or from some content farm. These can literally be deadly, like when AI slop started telling people to combine cleaning products in ways that would produce toxic gases. If you’re going to tell someone that they should do something differently, you need to be prepared to show them the right way, or refer them to a resource that you trust and will vouch for. And if the advice you’ve given doesn’t work, you need to be prepared for some troubleshooting, too!

  • Know when to stop: If your attempts to help are clearly making it worse—if they are making your interlocutor confused, or upset, or in any other way obviously not helping, stop and apologize. Digging in, pushing your advice, or falling back on “but I was just trying to help” will all just make things worse. It’s also worth recognizing when you are in over your head: “Hey, I think there might be something really wrong with your encabulator, and that’s more than I know how to fix. You might want to get it checked out; I can help you find someone for that if you like.”

All together now: “Hey, I notice you’re really struggling with your encabulator. Would you like some help with that?” “You know, unless there’s a good reason not to, you might find the Foobar Method easier for frobbing it. I can show you how, or recommend some trusted resources.”

Does this take more work than shouting “you’re frobbing it wrong” as you whiz by? Of course! But that’s precisely the point. Sometimes, if you really want to help, it involves not just shouting a quip as you pass by but actually making a commitment to see things through. (As folks sometimes say in tech circles, it’s “free like a puppy, not like a beer”.)