Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

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OK, I see why people like this list. But I would definitely argue with several of the principles presented.

Here are some examples.

Be patient. No matter what. There are times when presenting impatience is the right way to get results. They are usually overused, but deadlines do have a proper place in your motivational toolbox.

Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you. Never? And what if the other is lying, cheating and stealing? I fully agree with "do not lightly assume", but "never" is the wrong standard.

Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.) If a person is using force to attempt to steal from me, or harm those I care about, it is fine for me to lie to them in self-defense. Again, "never" is the wrong standard.

Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun. I find that people are much more likely to accept and act on criticism if I tell a story about myself which parallels the problem that I see. (Sadly "much more" does not mean "very".) This is a concrete example of how my increasing my use of "the first personal pronoun" was a good thing, not a bad one.

Remember that love forgives everything. Only if you define forgiveness in the right way. If someone steals from me, and I have a loving understanding of them, then I can forgive them their past action. But I still probably shouldn't put myself in a position where they can steal from me in the future.

Endure. I did that with my ex for a quarter century. I learned that some things SHOULD NOT be endured. My life is much better now.

Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you. Never? And what if the other is lying, cheating and stealing?

Never assume does not preclude the possibility of drawing conclusions based on firm evidence. It merely cautions against prejudice.

I will note that people living in abusive situations or under oppressive regimes may learn to lie, cheat and steal to survive. They may feel justified. They may even feel they are nobly standing up against evil.

There is some truth to the idea that you need middle class means to afford middle class morality.

> Again, "never" is the wrong standard.

You can assume never means “outside of extreme extenuating circumstances”, since that’s how it’s generally used in common speech.

The point of the list is to reduce the best human behavior into a small cheat sheet. It's like boilerplate that includes all the important functions.

The complexity of the environment created by and occupied by human experiences is infinite. There are infinite scenarios that humans find themselves in, and there are infinite positive responses to those scenarios. You can take any positive human response to a given scenario and "disprove" the response's positive outcome by changing something about the scenario. But once you do that, you introduce other positive responses that could taken instead.

The principles boil down it into 25 patterns of human behavior that tend to result in success for the individual and his/her greater community. The list is an optimum solution: lowest number of characters for the highest amount of good outcome if followed. When confronting the complexity of existence, a set of guidelines is useful to refer to.

However, anyone that consults a list of principles when their family is in danger is likely not smart enough to comprehend the list anyways, so it does not apply to them.

Not using absolute terms like "never", and instead using terms like "almost never" or "except in emergencies", would acknowledge and allow for the complex realities you describe, without adding significantly to the number of characters (an absurd metric) and without sacrificing clarity.

In fact JP acknowledges reality when he excepts lies of omission. So the fact that he doesn't do so in other obvious places is strange.

You're left with some rules that are easy to prove nonsensical and easily dismissed. Which is unfortunate.

More correctly, it is someone's opinion about what an optimum solution might be.

I disagree with that opinion, for reasons that I explained above.

You're also not interested in debating your opinions, which is your right but also frustrating.

The reductive nature of lists like this one is unavoidable. That’s why they have to be edited really well. Sadly, this one is not. It’s a pity that this is so upvoted just because JPB died today. He wrote way more interesting and important things.

A more cynical view is that lists of principles are for those who can't decide for themselves.

> Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you. Never? And what if the other is lying, cheating and stealing?

Motives, not actions. Odds are pretty high that the shared motivation for you and the lying, cheating, stealing other is to achieve the best outcome possible for yourselves, you're just going about it in different ways.

One way this advice manifests practically is that, as a rule, people are not "out to get you", they're just looking out for themselves, and it's much easier to deal with them when you understand that.

Nope, that makes no sense at all. Making yourself a cake is almost always more noble than stealing a cake, even if the motives in both circumstances are to eat some cake.

And let's not bring up the counterexample of a poor mother stealing a cake to feed her child. Some people steal cakes just because they're dicks, and if your worldview doesn't account for that it's lacking.

> I fully agree with "do not lightly assume", but "never" is the wrong standard.

I think there's a distinction to be made between "assume" and "conclude" that might better capture what you're getting at. If I'm deciding that your motives are ignoble based on evidence, it's not an assumption.

Agreed. I would say: Never, ever lie to yourself. Lies to others are sometimes justified — but be honest with yourself about when that is.

yeah, I think some are overstated with the expectation that people will not adhere to them perfectly

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