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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

Different people saw those emails in different ways. In fact, some people are invigorated by strong words as opposed to being cowed and driven away by them. I'm not saying that you didn't perceive them as vicious attacks, I'm saying that the spectrum of human behavior includes people who think being harsh is fine, and give and take it freely. You can't just throw out everyone that behaves in a way that makes you uncomfortable, that's just xenophobia sneaking in through the back way.

What's really wrong is when someone consciously goes out of their way to target another person's emotions, but that has little to do with the average niceness of their writing (which is mostly set by their natural personality baseline).

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Yes, in a public environment, we do censure and object to 'strong words' (i.e. vicious vitriol). Public places demand a sense of decorum, lest the devolve into vicious places where only the mean survive.

Its not xenophobia; its civilization. You can talk as you please to your mates. But people you don't know? Its a whole different topic. And conflating the two is dishonest.

I think you realize that at some point a line has to be drawn, given you called "targeting another person's emotions" wrong; and also that everyone's line is in a slightly different place and what's reasonable to some will be uncomfortable or hurtful to others.

Given that, why is it wrong for people to try and influence their community in such a way that it minimizes people's discomfort? Shouldn't every community have the right to self-determine what conduct they're okay with?

I've always believed that you should be liberal in what you accept but conservative in what you generate. It's fine to strategize your own behavior to come across well to as many people as possible (for example not eating meat in front of a conscience-driven vegan) but when it comes to other people's behavior you have to be very judicious about the difference between uncomfortable (but natural) signals and malicious actions.

In this case, I'm highlighting intent when I say "targeting." I shouldn't become upset when someone that always comes across as abrasive comes across as abrasive to me, but if someone goes out of their way to consciously be more abrasive than usual then that's a signal I should pay attention to. If someone who is usually very meek says something slightly harsh, then I should multiply it by a large factor to get back to their internal mental state (which is what I really care about). Likewise if it's a case where I should take what they say and divide it.

But the spectrum of harshness is like the spectrum of spicy food. While I may be content with spicier food than my mother is, if I forced her to eat some of the food I find palatable, she would cry.

So if I want to have a pleasant, welcoming, and accessible meal, I should probably cook it to her spice level instead of mine.

You’re both right. In any other situation we’d say “ok, these are the limits between which 2 SD of the population falls, outliers will just have to deal with it”. And that would work. Here however we can’t measure anything, so we have no idea where to place the limits, or even what the distribution looks like.

"In fact, some people are invigorated by strong words as opposed to being cowed and driven away by them."

Maybe. But I'm going to guess that those that are "invigorated" by seeing someone be told that they should be "retroactively aborted" are not demotivated by not seeing that, and that more people are demotivated by seeing that.

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