Comment by leafboi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leafboi | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks. But this is the internet. I use a bit of aggression experimentally at times. Overall though, it sounds confrontational but I'm actually pretty factual and I never attacked anyone personally, it's all about the topic and idea. I actually admit when I'm wrong (see above, and who does that in life and on the internet?).

What's going on is I'm spending zero energy in attempting to massage the explanation with fake attempts to be nice. I'm just telling it like it is. Very few opportunities to do this in real life except on the internet.

In the company I work for do I spend time to tell my coworkers that pure functions are the key to modularity when classes and design patterns are ingrained in the culture? Do I tell them that their entire effort to move to microservices is motivated by hype and is really a horizontal objective with no actual benefit? No. I don't. People tend to dismiss things they don't agree with unless it's aggressively shoved in their face. They especially don't agree with ideas that go against the philosophies and and practices and they've been following for years and years.

Thus if I'm nice about it, I'm ignored, if I'm vocal and aggressive about it, I'm heard but it will also hurt my reputation. It's HN feel free to experiment just don't try it at work.

Yeah my attitude isn't the best, but honestly, if I was nice about it, less people would read this or think about it. By doing this on the internet I can raise a point while not ruining my rep. (And I'm not actually aggressive as there are no personal attacks unless someone said something personal about me)

Tell me, in your opinion, how would you get such a point across in a culture where the opposite is pretty ingrained? I'm down to try this, I can repost my original post with the errors corrected and a nicer tone to see the response.

I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but the truth is that you can make factual arguments without being so aggressive. Whether the aggression is targeted at a person doesn't really matter. It's unnecessary, disrespectful, and just feeds into the general toxicity that plagues our culture.

> Thus if I'm nice about it, I'm ignored, if I'm vocal and aggressive about it, I'm heard but it will also hurt my reputation.

I think the fact we are talking about your tone and not your points about functional programming speaks to this by itself. You weren't heard. You were felt, though.

> I'm not actually aggressive as there are no personal attacks

Aggression without a target is still aggression. If I aggressively take the recycling out, that aggression is still experienced by people around me. Probably my partner, who will inevitable have a little talk to me about it, lol.

> Tell me, in your opinion, how would you get such a point across in a culture where the opposite is pretty ingrained?

Engage in an intellectual conversion based off mutual respect. You will never change someones mind on the spot, intellectual people will often mull things over for a while. In the process you may learn a few things yourself. I've worked in places that excelled at this, where respectful discourse was promoted. Conversations revolved around facts, but respect was maintained.

Sidebar: Shopify doesn't really have microservices. They have a few services, but they are entire services which serve an entire business unit. They are the exception. When I worked there I worked on one such service. What I'd tell people is if you couldn't start a whole new company with the service you were building, don't build it as a service.

I think you missed my point. I'm saying when you aren't aggressive people tend not to want to intellectually engage with you. People are emotional creatures and what doesn't excite them emotionally they don't engage. I'm saying I used the aggression on purpose for my own ends, but I caveated by saying that no actual attack occurred.

I think you need to think deeper than the traditional "mutual respect" attitude and generally being nice. Not all great leaders acted this way either. It's very nuanced and complicated how to get people to change or listen. The internet is an opportunity to try things out rather then take the safe uncomplicated "nice" way that we usually try in the workplace.

>Engage in an intellectual conversion based off mutual respect. You will never change someones mind on the spot, intellectual people will often mull things over for a while. In the process you may learn a few things yourself. I've worked in places that excelled at this, where respectful discourse was promoted. Conversations revolved around facts, but respect was maintained.

Right except this is exceedingly rare. Most people do not act this way. Respect was maintained but the point is instantly forgotten and dismissed. Likely the respect covers up actual misunderstanding or disagreement. I find actual intense arguments open people up to say what they mean rather than cover up everything in gift wrapping.

Think about this way. The reason why Trump won the election is not because he was nice. The complexities of human relationships goes deeper then just "mutual respect" There are other ways to make things move. The internet is often an opportunity for you to try the alternative methods without much risk.

>I think the fact we are talking about your tone and not your points about functional programming speaks to this by itself. You weren't heard. You were felt, though.

The world moves through feelings. Not for all cases but oftentimes to get heard you need to get "felt" first.

> >I think the fact we are talking about your tone and not your points about functional programming speaks to this by itself. You weren't heard. You were felt, though.

> The world moves through feelings. Not for all cases but oftentimes to get heard you need to get "felt" first.

This is true, but you have options in terms of what feeling you're aiming for.

There is a world of difference in the response you're likely to get from "When Z you should do X because Y" vs. "We had a Z problem, it turns out that Y was the issue, so we did X."

The former will probably get you an "uh-oh" and the latter an "a-ha" or "hmm". Big difference.

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