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Comment by csnover | Hacker News Reader

> And the chuckling in the call when someone has already said they’re not in a proper emotional state is just bullying.

I can’t speak to who this person was or why they did this, but I did just want to mention that there is at least one good faith explanation that isn’t straight up bullying.

When I am in uncomfortable situations, I have a nervous chuckle. If I were in this call, giving this feedback to this person, I probably would have done that at least once. Thanks to some great feedback I once received, I learned that people were interpreting my nervous laughter as me thinking that what they were saying was dumb or wrong, even though this was not the case—I was just feeling anxious. It’s possible that this person really was chuckling at the OP to bully them, but it’s also equally possible that they were just feeling super nervous in an emotionally charged situation and laughed because of that.

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You're kind to interpret that as generously as you are. I mean that. I appreciate that. Forcing ourselves to see the other side is important, even if only to immediately discard it; because it's the practice of doing so that helps us when we really need it.

For me, I think it's unlikely the generous interpretation is correct, for only one reason: a group of 4 of them needed to call him, rather than a 1-1 conversation. This is a group dynamic that is well understood and they knew what they were doing, using the safety and strength of a group to ensure he couldn't push back. In such a scenario, one of the participants in said group is unlikely to be nervous in that way, although it's certainly possible (especially if they know, deep down, they're being unfair and are battling heavily with that feeling -- even the group strength won't help them).

This is the strongest argument against zero-tolerance policies (I don't think it applies in this case, but there are plenty). They are fundamentally inhumane.

(You find zero tolerance in schools too. It's heartbreaking to see children doing innocuous things and responsible adults completely vacating any kind of responsibility or accountability.)

If you get a group of people together, everyone's going to have to put in at least a little effort to get along. If the code of conduct doesn't enshrine this then it's almost inevitably going to cause issues.

You may be able to argue that it's not a case of bullying in this narrow instance, but if the policies lead to a one-sided situation with no recourse, then it's bullying at a structural level.

While zero tolerance policies at schools are awful, at least there they serve an arguably useful purpose: avoiding litigation against the school. In a CoC it's just an easy way for the commissars and nomenklatura that wrote/enforce the CoC to harm their enemies

In principle, I believe codes of conduct are self-evidently a good thing, and generally introduced with good intent. It's the zero-tolerance that's harmful.

In the case of both the imaginary school and the imaginary code-of-conduct committee, the task is to square the unsquarable circle of human diversity. That takes nuance, emotional intelligence and flexibility. You can never get that 100% right, and the mistake is thinking you can. That's where flexibility is important. Zero-tolerance is proudly anti-flexibility.

Either you put in the effort to construct a humane environment or you decide that it's OK to throw the out-group under a bus (easier when you can dehumanize them). The latter takes a lot less work.

Then it seems to me that you're not the sort of person who should be on such a phone call, unless you can get this habit under control.

> unless you can get this habit under control.

The OP is not alone in that, I also chuckle/grin when under huge stress (it sometimes also happened when I heard about the very bad health condition of people really close to me), and saying that "one should get this habit under control" is like saying to depressed people just to smile so that they won't be depressed anymore (and it's also like calling depression just a "habit", but I digress).

You need to get it under control if you want to work in the kind of roles where it creates issues.

If you freeze up when you see fire, you can't be a fire fighter. If you faint when you see blood, don't be a surgeon. If you can't handle the stress of ganging up on someone, don't sign up for a CoC committee.

In this context you're the disciplinarian. You shouldn't be very stressed in the first place. But if you are, and you can't avoid the chuckling, then you shouldn't be the one making the call.

Calling someone and telling them you've found them to have violated a rule, and that there would therefore be certain consequences, is not an easy task, nor one that most people should be expected to do well. There's no shame in not being good at it.

NumFOCUS should think about this. Someone in Jeremy's position could decide to sue them. They should think carefully about how these decisions are to be communicated to the putative violator and who should do it.

You may be right, but according to their own code of conduct and actions as stated by Jeremy, all that matters is how the complainant feels in response to the action of the speaker, and they should therefore be immediately and summarily dismissed from their role of conference organiser and/or CoC enforcer.

My aunt had a nervous laughter. I learned that when I was five, and I had just got a bike and trying to learn how to ride it.

My aunt was visiting and I wanted to show off, lost control and hit the asphalt with quite some speed. Hands and knee were all scratched up and hurt like hell and there she was, standing, laughing out loud. I recall thinking how mean that was.

While cleaning my wounds my mom explained the situation, and I've tried to keep this in mind whenever facing "inexplicable" reactions.

Jump cultures and you get to see fun variations on the "nervous laugh". It is rather interesting how different cultures consider the behavior of other cultures to be unacceptable in some situations.

Yes. Long ago on my university campus, a deranged man had cornered a woman on the street while screaming incoherent profanities. She was standing there with her mouth over her hand laughing, nearly hysterically. It's a classic fear response.

If that were the case it would be super ironic that they were trying to nitpick on Jeremy's behaviour (if we can even call it that) when they couldn't get their shit together themselves.

Especially when the CoC requires vague things like 'be kind'

Happens in person too. I've been long cured of my habit of using a default smiling expression when I'm thinking about something tricky. There were some unpleasant experiences before someone passed on to me that I was 'smirking [at their problems]'.

It's also possible that the chuckler thought the guy was joking. Not as crazy as it sounds - people joke about being tired/sleep-deprived, unmotivated, and (more to the point) various negative emotional states all the time in a business environment. Others laugh because they've been there. Perhaps all the more so if you phrase it in an unexpectedly precise, analytical way using big words. If someone says "Right now I would prefer a silica-rich intertidal environment in a tropical latitude" I would probably laugh. That's a trivial example but you get the idea.

Not saying "This is how it is," but rather "It's possible." Also keep in mind that we're only getting (ironically) one side of it/one person's experience with this blog post, and will likely never know what was in the mind of the one who chuckled.

My son used to get in so much trouble - he has a mocking laugh when situations are serious. Infuriating! It took us parents years to work it out, and also his school. For his recent transition to senior school we explained this ahead of time to his new teachers: so much easier. He still occasionally gets in trouble, but for what he did/ didn't do instead of the same, with additional rudeness.

In this context, it's up to whoever is offended to decide how guilty the perpetrator is. Or even a third party to be offended on behalf of someone else.

Yes nervous laughter is a thing. This whole thing is a mountain of a mole hill that I wish would be settled privately. If it really can't then that's that.

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