Comment by aliswe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aliswe | Hacker News Reader

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This person was one of the most knowledgeable ever in arabic. He was blind, and one time he was invited to a wedding. Being blind, he stumbled and fell on a person in the ceremony. The person then proclaimed: Who is this dog?!

Al-Ma'arri famously replied: The dog is the one who does not know 70 different words for "dog".

And that, my friends, is the challenge or insult of al-ma'arri, as it's widely known in arabic, ma'arra al-ma'arri.

As-Suyuti, the incredible polymath, wanted to disassociate from this insult, and collected all the names he knew of "dog", in rhyme, and called it "the disassociation from the insult of al-ma'arri", or in arabic, tabarri min ma'arra al-ma'arri.

Here's a recitation of it on yt: https://youtu.be/wbS6es1lOxU

I believe he only collected something like 65, though.

An academic recently did a doctorate (I believe) and collected all the words he could find for "dog", having access to vastly more literature from both the aravian west and east.

I believe he got 67.

I must be missing something, but isn't that a petty, arbitrary, and stupid "challenge"? Of course the person at the wedding should not have called the blind man a dog, but the response just lowers Al-Ma'arri to the same level. It would be one thing if he said, "The dog is the one who calls another man a dog" (which would have the added benefit of being a funny self-deprecating paradox). Instead, he gloats about trivia? I didn't realize they had fedoras in 10th century Arabia.

what you're missing is that this an apocryphal story that dates back so far that it's now part of the vernacular of a culture. think about that - humor and wit and intellectual bravado were completely different 1000 years ago, let alone how different they might be today in arab culture vs western culture. furthermore note that "fedora wearers" today are lampooned because they speak/behave anachronistically. what you're doing is akin to making fun of someone wearing a fedora during the time when fedoras were actually worn!

And furthermore, the people being called "fedoras" are wearing trilbys.

Humphrey Bogart wore a fedora.

In fact, the word Fedora comes from Al-Maʿarri's contemporary, the great tailor Al-Feyḍaou'rā.

I agree.. it sounds like he was socially anxious (not arguing that he should/shouldn't be so) and had lashed out emotionally in the guise of a holier/more intellectual-than-thou snip.

Cultural historical differences be damned; while types of comedy and speech have changed over time, real wit has always been a part of modern human behavior, and putting someone down in the name of comedy has always been a slight. I especially agree with the call out about basically esoteric trivia; it sounds like something I would have said when I was 17, thinking I was above everyone, and just making everyone else around me feel extremely awkward.

Remember these men were the 10th century equivalent of academics — this kind of story sounds just like something you’d hear of in modern academia too. Something about smart people with gigantic egos and poor social skills.

I disagree. Because the accusation is so arbitrary (the dog is the person who dont know the word for dog) it must be understood as something like:

If anyone of us is a dog, then, indeed it should be the one least learned.

The bite of the comeback gets lost in translation. It was pretty good given the context and the language.

Sick burn, bro. Too bad it's wasted on the dead.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here? We ban accounts that do that repeatedly and you've unfortunately been doing it a lot.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Looks like I'm on your radar now. By the way, the etymology of the word "fedora" that was offered by one of the posters is incorrect-- I think it's an attempt at humor. It was not named after a tailor, but after a French play. I hope this helps you in your duties.

what is the substance of the comment they responded to? why didn't you scold that person too for essentially insulting a 1000 year dead person?

I agree that it was a presumptuous, smug, and uncurious comment. But these things are matters of degree. Public internet forums are unfortunately replete with comments like that. If I were to scold all of comments on HN that land with me that way, I'd have to post 5x as often as I do. That's physically and psychologically impossible. Also, doing so would generate tons of protest comments because people's interpretations and identifications vary so much.

It's better to deal with such a comment by posting a substantive reply, which I'm glad to see that you did above. I'm particularly glad that you did it politely and with a light touch; that's not always easy when a comment has produced irritation.

i don't think it's equianimous what you do. you essentially selectively enforce the rules and thereby normalize such smugness - case in point my response was -1 or 0 for most of today. if you're going to moderate some kinds of antisocial/antipathic behavior then you need to moderate it uniformly - it emboldens and reinforces those that get away with it - they feel validated by the community in their smugness. if you look at my comment history you can find so many of these that i've debated against just over the last few weeks. it's gotten to the point where i'm dreading working in this industry because of the smugness so many people here put on display.

in this case there is a dead comment that further sheds light on the nuance ("The bite of the comeback gets lost in translation. It was pretty good given the context and the language."). why is it dead? what is offensive about that? you encourage this kind of downvoting behavior.

there is another comment (i can't see the score but i'd bet that it's high - as high as the first smug comment's) that responds to the smug comment and concurs.

your pretense to idealism simply biases comments towards articulate arrogance/smugness rather than actual curiousity. imagine being the person that posted the root of this thread (the apocryphal story) and their reaction to the lovingly posted insight into their culture (aliswe - ali swe). why would you ever share here again? and it's such an interesting comment too, something that neither of us would ever discover on our own since we're not arabic speakers. you should have come to this person's defense, not the smug person's. this is not unlike what we see today socially - intolerance of intolerance is more strictly punished than the intolerance.

You're expecting the impossible. One person's uniform moderation is the next person's double standard; no two users will ever agree on this.

Actually, you're expecting several impossibles. Here are two others: that a large public forum can be remotely free of mediocre, uncharitable comments; and that human beings en masse can do anything other than reflect human nature. That's the source of what you're upset about, not this or that industry. Individuals can vary, but once you get to statistically significant quantities, the patterns are mechanical and don't change. If you want change, I know of only one thing that works: observe in yourself how you do the very things you object to in others.

> if you look at my comment history you can find so many of these that i've debated against just over the last few weeks

I looked at your comment history and unfortunately found many instances where you've violated the site guidelines in arguments. That's not ok, and we need you not to do that if you want to keep commenting here. It also adds more than your share of the things you're complaining about on HN, so that would also be a good reason not to do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>You're expecting the impossible. One person's uniform moderation is the next person's double standard; no two users will ever agree on this.

no now you're playing strawman here. i stated very clearly, by way of case in point, what i expect. you're the moderator, i'm expecting you to moderate according to your sensibilities. you recognized the smug comment and said nothing. you also recognized the unsubstantive comment and did say something. simply say something in both instances.

>not this or that industry. Individuals can vary, but once you get to statistically significant quantities, the patterns are mechanical and don't change.

that's like saying that voat.co or a jail or a bank just reflects population.

>I looked at your comment history and unfortunately found many instances where you've violated the site guidelines in arguments.

lol. that that's exactly what's at issue here. you think pointing out where someone is vile is a violation of the guidelines rather than being vile in the first place. in fact it might well be but i don't see myself ever not making comments like these

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20175126

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109277

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817956

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18861923

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18787232

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602650

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18580401

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18459284

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17786540

and the mother of them all

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17035806

none of the comments that i respond to in these got any moderation from you. all of them are worthless and some had you elsewhere in the comments.

You said that we enforce the rules selectively and ought to be moderating uniformly. There are many reasons why it doesn't and can't work that way; the one I mentioned is that readers are in deep disagreement about what counts as uniform. Whose 'uniform' ought we to conform to?

Another reason is quantity. Most random walks you take through HN will be moderated non-uniformly because we can't come close to seeing all the posts. I realize it's tempting to conclude that moderators are failing and probably of bad character, but this rests on mistaken assumptions. We care about this at least as much as you do and work hard, sometimes almost to the point of burnout, to take care of the site. It's a mistake to conclude that we must think a comment is ok if it didn't get moderated. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it.

Since you're concerned about the worst comments on HN, why aren't you flagging them? That's a way you can actually help us do better. Emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases is also helpful, because then we're guaranteed to know about it.

Some of the comments in your list were flagkilled by users, some were penalized by moderators, and some we just didn't see. I agree with you about most of those cases, though not always with how you responded.

It's great if you want to defend others against unfair criticism, as long as you do it thoughtfully and respectfully. Your comments have been doing that sometimes, but other times you've been adding to the problem by breaking the guidelines yourself. Please stop doing that—it helps nothing, and you lose the high ground when you do it. You've been doing it in your replies to me here, in fact. Your argument becomes less convincing when you do the things you're complaining about.

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