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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

I'm 100% with you on your goal, it's a noble act to mentor someone with the spirit that you appear to be applying.

However, it sounds like you are giving them preferential treatment. You say it's just different, but then if those differences aren't available to others they might also advantage it is a preferential treatment.

I guess one could argue it's not preferential in that you'd give the same assistance to another ex-addict.

Personally I don't think you have to help everyone just because you're helping someone, ie preferential treatment doesn't seem wrong to me a priori.

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Will you quit arguing over such petty differences?! Jesus Christ! People view the world differently, so of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts.

You said he's not wrong, and you're just arguing over semantics. Why argue? Why?

Sorry for not keeping my post cold and logical and HNish, but that's the problem: you're being robotic here and arguing just to argue.

>Will you quit arguing over such petty differences?! Jesus Christ! People view the world differently

Off topic but WRT your response - "people see the world differently" but apparently my fixation on truth isn't allowed?

On topic, why argue? He says that he's not discriminating but he describes discrimination. I simply wanted to point out that apparent contradiction.

Discrimination is some sort of bete noire of corporate society but I find it quite silly to suggest that we should not discriminate for people because of the peculiarities of their personal situations. If you find that robotic I find your response curious but I suspect you won't meet an enquiry about it well so feel free to move on to one of the other 10 million or so comment threads of the day.

>of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts

If you use the same words to mean something else then we need to converse more to establish that which you are trying to communicate.

I'd like to apologize, since I am not a native speaker. So when faced with subtleties I might not perceive them properly. That said I'm aware of what I wrote and how it doesn't make sense.

And now for the record to just rehash what I am doing:

1. The person is obviously being treated differently from others (he is being given a chance),

2. I will not treat his work differently due to his condition. I want him to get up to speed and I'm helping along,

3. He doesn't need blanket pats on the back. He needs them when they're due and he also needs a proverbial kick in the arse when due.

Also, discrimination is a term used when we act negatively towards someone. I'd be discriminating against my mentee if I were telling him that he's no good dimwit. Or are you suggesting that I'm discriminating towards others?

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