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Comment by mst | Hacker News Reader

That rewrite completely loses the point though.

The point is not "accepting people different than me", it's "having suitable principles to still fight in favour of people I might otherwise rightly or wrongly dislike".

You completely removed the part where he not only didn't act antagonistically towards them but actively opposed other people doing so as well.

And that part was the single most important part, and the principle he was arguing in favour of.

If you think your rewrite was the same exact content, then I'm afraid I don't think you understood what he was saying at all.

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> If you think your rewrite was the same exact content, then I'm afraid I don't think you understood what he was saying at all.

Bingo!

He's obviously not a very good writer. I don't need to argue for freedom of speech and equal rights and justice for all because in my world those are givens. I don't need to justify to myself or others why those truths are self evident. Nor do I need to recount a story about being young and stupid. Everyone used to be young and stupid, that's also a given. There is no need to write it on a blog and show how you're so much better than what you used to be. Let your actions show how you are better. I don't need to be told when I can infer directly from someone's actions whether they're good or not. Words are deceptive, actions are truthful.

I don't put words like "very stupid", "angry", "I'm afraid", "fearful", etc. in my writing because I don't identify with those things and I don't want anyone reading my words to identify with them either. If I intend to say something then I say it without flowery language about my youth or emotionally charged words because I reserve those words for private conversations with people that I trust.

> I don't need to argue for freedom of speech and equal rights and justice for all because in my world those are givens.

The article was about somebody who was arguing that using falsified numbers about rape statistics was not only acceptable feminism but was actually a good thing and that anybody who disagreed with that deserved to be destroyed.

Speaking as somebody who believes that the truth is quite sufficient justification for feminism to win, and that lying serves only to hand our enemies means to attack us, I believe that sadly we live in a world where that argument does need to be made.

I would prefer to live in a word where these arguments don't need to be made. I would prefer to live in a world where those truths are self evident.

But we don't yet, as both Adria Richards and David Shor have found out to their detriment. So making the argument that we should continues to be valuable.

Then there are better ways to make those arguments. Recounting stories about being "young and stupid" is not one of those ways.

I am entirely fine with you believing that there are better ways to make those arguments - in fact, given any specific argument is almost certain to be imperfect, one would assume that there are.

But I would note that "there are better ways to make those arguments" is quite a distance from your original position.

What was my original position? More precisely, what did you think was my original position?

> It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister.

Yes, and you provided an example of such associations with "youth", "stupidity", "anger", "fear", "transphobia", "homophobia", "atrocity", "anger at others", "anger with self", "dislike of others", "opposition to others", etc.

> When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines.

> And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa.

> The point is not "accepting people different than me", it's "having suitable principles to still fight in favour of people I might otherwise rightly or wrongly dislike".

> You completely removed the part where he not only didn't act antagonistically towards them but actively opposed other people doing so as well.

What word other than "sinister" would you use to characterize the cluster of words I quoted which are implicit in the writing I quoted?

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