Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting, I find the opposite conclusion.

I think it mostly has to do with other people's insecurities. If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.

I try to follow Paul Graham's dictum "keep your identity small", the saying "strong opinions weakly held" and/or I've extremely strong self-confidence (compared to most people), so I seem to be way less personally affected by statements like these (though I'm sure I have other triggers)...

Granted I'm only 30 so maybe that will change in a few years, but for the time being I've started to moderate my stated opinions to spare other people's feelings (though I still think it would be better if they grew more emotionally mature, but I realize that's unlikely to happen), to improve social relations and, frankly, also because it's getting more and more dangerous out there, with political correctness and/or China-driven character assassinations.

When you say things like, "Veganism is unhealthy," the issue is that it simply leaves no room in the conversation for the other person. Even just a slight change ("I understand that veganism is unhealthy") will almost certainly elicit a different response.

If you feel like you're often pushing people's buttons to the point of censoring yourself, maybe take a step back and see if you can communicate more kindly.

> "Veganism is unhealthy," the issue is that it simply leaves no room in the conversation for the other person.

Smoking is unhealthy, there's no possible conversation.

It is, if you prefer to smoke, it's your choice, no amount of reasoning is gonna change that.

Disclaimer: I'm a smoker, a not very involved one, but still one.

Smoking (or other forms of nicotine administration) is self-medication for a significant portion of the population, due to the not-completely-understood action of nicotinic receptors in the brain...

I think it's particularly harmful and sad to say there's no possible conversation about something when you are of two minds yourself!

> Smoking (or other forms of nicotine administration) is self-medication for a significant portion of the population

It is believed to be, but it isn't.

We could make the same argument for alcohol or even heroin, that stop a cough and relieves from physical pain.

> I think it's particularly harmful and sad to say there's no possible conversation

As a smoker, there is no possible conversation on the fact that smoking kills, cigarettes are killers, no matter the benefits one can take out of them, they are "responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers"

This is a fact that can only be acknowledged as true, even though personally many people decide to ignore this fact and smoke anyway (including myself).

But we smokers are simply wrong.

> I think it mostly has to do with other people's insecurities. If I say something like, "veganism is unhealthy" (because of lack of B12... yes I'm aware there are nuances), some vegans interpret that as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact, or even as an attack on their lifestyle choices, because they are so involved with their egos.

I'll bite. It's true that a vegan diet can be unhealthy, and that it's wise to supplement with B12, but that doesn't mean a vegan diet is unhealthy.

This is like saying "an omnivorous diet is unhealthy because you don't eat enough vegetables". Sure, some people with omnivorous diets need to eat more vegetables, but that's not true of all people who eat omnivorous diets.

I'm not sure whether you would benefit from increasing your precision or accuracy, but the "veganism is unhealthy" line is plain wrong.

(1) Heme-iron is really the only good way to get iron and it's only in meat (2) You're not really going to get carnitine from vegetables (3) You're going to have a really hard time eating enough calories and having balanced ratios of macro-nutrients. Beans and rice which have protein also have tons of carbs and no fat. Good luck with that.

I've seen literally dozens and dozens of videos and posts of really really malnourished people advocating veganism. It's pretty much too hard to execute for the average person.

But “veganism is unhealthy” is an opinion. Your parenthetical about the lack of B12 indicates that you know this, and that the topic is more nuanced. If you don’t normally qualify that statement, why did you choose to do so here?

Frankly, I don’t believe that you don’t mean it as an attack on the lifestyle choices of others, and I’m not surprised that people get defensive.

Imagine that I start off a conversation with you along the lines of 'meat is murder', or 'taxation is theft'.

Both of those statements have some element of truth to them, but they're obviously incendiary, as is your 'veganism is unhealthy'.

For the most part it sounds like you're just lacking tact. I used to be that guy too. Probably still am, to some extent.

> Both of those statements have some element of truth to them,

No, they don't.

They are supercharged propaganda.

> but they're obviously incendiary, as is your 'veganism is unhealthy'.

Not at all.

Saying veganism is unhealthy is stating an opinion shared by many nutrition expert, it says nothing about vegans, it is just what it is.

meat is murder contains a judgement: if meat is murder, you are a murderer, if taxation is theft, who collects taxes is a thief.

I can accept "you eat corpses" because it's true, I don't eat animals alive, they are already dead when I eat them, but it is also imprecise, because I eat just bits of the corpses, not the entire carcass.

> Saying veganism is unhealthy is stating an opinion shared by many nutrition expert,

But also an opinion disagreed with by many nutrition experts

Yes, a minority of them share the same opinion.

A majority of them studied and proved its unhealthy effects.

Unless you wanna say that every opinion counts, no matter the opinion, we can safely assume that being vegan is like drinking or having unprotected sex or speeding.

It won't probably kill you, it will even improve life for some, but it's not something one should take lightly like "it has no effects".

How do you know it is a minority?

You seem like the prime example of someone who has to win the conversation.

Purposefully harsh wordings that require parenthesized nuance even here are hardly the listeners fault. If there's a breakdown in communication because you're being pithy and sharp that's a problem you can choose to fix.

Are you open to the possibility that even your deeply held beliefs, like “veganism is unhealthy” could be wrong? I have very frequently blundered into defending a false assertion for far longer than I should have, especially in work settings where you never know when you might meet someone much, much more well informed about a subject than yourself.

That burned me a lot when I was younger. Intellectual humility has never failed to serve me. I wish I was more humble about my strongly held opinions (that I thought were facts) when I was younger.

Maybe because you're mentioning one group specifically. Any diet can be unhealthy. The fact that Vegans need to be a bit more careful doesn't make it inherently more unhealthy.

No, it's just an example. Probably a poor example. In reality I don't often meet vegans, but people get upset for all kinds of reasons / statements, most commonly for political ones which are to be avoided on HN (and real life) (and are quite easy to avoid, if you want to).

Another (non-political) one that comes up fairly often, is that I don't think it's reasonable to congratulate people when they decide to get married... it's a decision after all, nothing to do with achievement and/or luck (for most people I know at least, who aren't extremely lonely to the extent that finding anyone that tolerates them is an achievement... in which case, "congratulations" would be more in order), and if anything, they should be warned (as many marriages end in failure). But if you say that, you're the asshole.

You and I would be friends if we met irl

I truly mean no offense but you kind of sound like an asshole.

I think these are perfectly acceptable thoughts to have but in the context of interpersonal relationships and society as a whole, these statements just seem confrontational and unnecessary.

> I truly mean no offense but you kind of sound like an asshole.

I’m curious if you will elaborate. What your parent commenter said about failing marriages is factual and is supported by statistics —- for decades.

You saying that somebody _seems_ to be an asshole however, I see nothing factual about that statement.

Would you try expanding on your position?

What I'm saying has nothing to do with whether something is factual or not.

We say congratulations to people when they get engaged because it is nice to do so.

Nobody's disagreeing with the statistics, they're disagreeing that statistical likelihood of success is a good criteria for determining whether to congratulate somebody on something or not.

I suspect that if we used that criteria, we'd end up reinforcing a lot of existing trends. For example, my daughter gets into a computer science program, but I know that most women don't end up getting jobs in that field, so I withhold congratulations. Why are you yelling? I'm right! I'm backed by decades of statistics.

Someone to Tomp: "I have brain cancer."

Tomp: "Chances are you will die within the year. Just stating the facts hurp, don't know why everybody I talk to is so sensitive."

So which diet is OK to be claimed as unhealthy without being considered as confrontational?

Maybe published on academica journals is the only way to do it?

But again, if you recommend a journal article about how beef is unhealthy to a beef-lover, you can still kind of like an asshole?

Haha, yeah, you're right. I'm the same with childbirth, getting pregnant and birthdays.. I'm probably quite like you IRL.

Spoken like someone who has never suffered through trying to get pregnant! It’s not as easy as it sounds.

For both my kids we had another pregnancy prior that ended in miscarriage. The first one when you’re excited and the whole thing is new was particularly emotionally hard. Lying in bed with your partner mourning your lost future hard. Most parents wait until after the most dangerous period to announce their pregnancy to the world for this reason. There are a lot of hopes and dreams wrapped up in a very uncertain time.

There’s a whole bunch of luck involved, particularly when people start having to do things like IVF and as I said to the OP congratulating people is often about showing support. It can be an emotionally fraught time leading to physically and emotionally tough times ahead. Pregnancy, childbirth and raising kids is no picnic. The glib answer is “well you chose it” but that doesn’t make it any easier nor less worthy of support.

I don't think you understand marriage if you don't think it's an achievement.

If you give the people in question the benefit of the doubt, you would assume that they understand the gravity of the interpersonal and legal commitment they had made. Building up the trust to make that commitment is hard work.

It'd be like if somebody just made a commitment to donate periodically to charity. Presumably, those donations required that person to establish themselves financially to the extent that they can be reasonable sure that they will be able to keep their promise. So even though it's a "decision," it's closely related to an achievement.

Or maybe this illustrates it more clearly: You'd consider it an achievement to reach a 50th anniversary, correct? As you say, "many marriages end in failure." So why not a premarital relationship resulting in marriage? That doesn't always happen either. Most premarital relationships end in breaking up, not marriage.

So, as long as we're treating these people with maximum respect, we can see that:

1. Getting to the point where they were ready to commit to marriage was a challenging process. Big commitments require stable foundations, and stable foundations aren't free.

2. There is reason to hope that marriage will be a positive thing for the two who have decided to engage in it.

1 and 2 together are sufficient cause for congratulations, so they are in order.

I am married and I agree with the OP. I don't see it as a huge achievement and people who do are the ones who, in my experience, like to spend spend way too much (IMO) on a wedding. But we're proving his point really by discussing it!

Having experiences that suggest that an achievement is likely very minor should not be a cause for withholding congratulations, or any other social pleasantry. For example, in my experience, just being accepted to college at all is really not much of an achievement. There are plenty of colleges that will accept virtually anybody who applies. However, if a friend or coworker were to announce one morning, "I was just accepted to $LOCAL_COMMUNITY_COLLEGE," I would congratulate them. Maybe the hardest part for them was applying in the first place. Maybe it was harder for them to just apply to that college than it would be for you or I to get accepted into Harvard. We can't know, so we err on the side of warmth and encouragement.

As for,

> But we're proving his point really by discussing it!

I'm curious. How so?

You could look at being in a relationship and making that decision as an achievement. Although most of the reason for congratulating the couple is to show support. Otherwise you’re just being opinionated about how much effort is deserving of being worthwhile. Which is fine as long as you accept people’s reactions.

Like you could decide nothing short of an Olympic record is worth congratulating but this is pretty obviously very socially inept.

Edit: Basically on aggregate there is nothing special about it but it’s important to the people involved and how plussed or non-plussed you feel about it should relate to your relationship with them rather than how impressed you are personally about it.

You don’t say congratulations to newlyweds because they overcame adversity and conquered something, you say congratulations to newlyweds because that’s the customary way of communicating to them that you are happy for them. Like so many things, it’s not literal. It’d be like refusing to say “I’m sorry for your loss” when a friend’s parent dies, and then making a point of explaining to them that the reason you’re not going to say that to them is because you didn’t personally kill their parent therefore you have nothing to apologize for.

“It pains me to see what you are going through. I’ll be there for you if you need me.”

No customs, no euphemisms, and to the point.

There is a way out of the conundrum you outlined.

There was never any conundrum. "Sorry" can be correctly used in both an apology or in expressing sorrow. In saying, "I'm sorry for your loss," the context makes it clear that the speaker is not penitent, but sympathetic.

I don't think the problem is other people's egos, but your own.

You are right, but you are not kind. Such arguments don't seem to work on people who have problem with egos or lack social awareness/emapthy.

If you find that people often get upset when you talk to them then maybe you should look for the common factor?

Of course if you're "warning" people when they proudly and happily announce that they're getting married then you're the asshole. It's a super strange superiority complex to have. I got over this "social constructs are dumb and we should only express ourselves in objective facts like Mr Spock" phase when I was in high school, I encourage you to do the same. I remember explaining to some friends that having a party for the New Year was dumb because, after all, it was just a random point in the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Ow, the cringe.

You seem to be operating with a different definition of the word congratulations than everyone else is.

anything in life is ridiculous if you look at it a certain way. why the heck would you sit in one place staring at glass and poking your fingers against plastic all day? how dumb is that??!>>!

perspectives like this have an ideal place in humor, not in criticism. among friends in a trusting and relaxed environment, go to town on how silly we all are. do it in a funny way and you get cool points. otherwsie, not so much.

(also, you congratulate the engaged because they've made a lifelong commitment to another person, which is a hard thing to do).

> I don't think it's reasonable to congratulate people when they decide to get married... it's a decision after all, nothing to do with achievement and/or luck

‘Congratulate” has additional meanings: can be about success and good luck or simply happiness linked to some particular event. You share their joy, that’s all. Even if you don’t think they really have motives to be happy :-)

> Any diet can be unhealthy

Yes, exactly, so if I say "eating candies is unhealthy" I don't think there's gonna be any group jumping at my throat.

Maybe is because candy lovers are not insecure cultists.

They know it's a matter of taste and personal belief, not something with a more profound meaning.

> “as a statement of opinion, rather than a statement of fact”

I think your prior statement about ‘nuances’ discounts this as a fact. Perhaps your strong opinions are not entirely facts?

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