Hacker News Reader

Comment by smbullet | Hacker News Reader

Rather than personal attacks you should take the time to actually respond to their comment if you feel so strongly against it.

View on HN

Responding to somebody's life experience with "maybe the people you spoke to were lying" is more a statement about what your priors are than a substantive contribution to a conversation.

I took the time to respond to what I felt strongly about, and maybe characterizing criticism as a "personal attack" describes how it makes you feel, but that doesn't mean that it describes what it is.

Calling somebody sheltered is objectively a personal attack on this forum.

I absolutely intended to tell an entire category of people that they were sheltered. I disagree with you, but it's true that I've certainly seen the term appear within the context of a personal attack in the past, so I agree that if I had found a better way in which to express my anger and disapproval then that would have been preferable.

> if you do not understand that then it is because you live in a very sheltered world

This is the part which is a personal attack. You have some time to edit your comment to restate that, if you're up for it. :)

Fair enough, I've restated that.

> if you do not understand that then consider that perhaps a life in which most problems are inherently tractable, [...] does not actually leave you with a correct understanding of your ability to understand or solve complex problems in the world.

Ugh. That's not really any better. You're still effectively saying the person is an idiot / incapable of reasonable thinking. :(

Okay, assuming that you understand my point, how would you restate it in a way that didn't imply that a person who engaged in that sort of response was an idiot or capable of reasonable thought?

I don't actually have a problem with people being wrong or not very bright in the comments they make. I have a problem with the arrogance and self-involvement that I feel responding to someone like this — someone who has literally signed up to HN so that they could share a few paragraphs about their life — represents. So if you can do a better job of making the problem with that clear to people who might otherwise make such a mistake, then that would be even better.

> someone who has literally signed up to HN so that they could share a few paragraphs about their life

Hmmm, I think we're coming at this from different places.

Personally, I have no problem at all with people coming to HN to share their life experiences. For me, that helps my understanding of the world. :)

Right, but what about the people that respond by rejecting those experiences or implying something unsavory about the person sharing them?

Why? What purpose does that serve? If he re-butts one there's half a million others ready to take it's place.

This kind of thing only gets solved one way. And it's not pretty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com