Hacker News Reader

Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

> The more time I spend with people who've been emotionally abused, listening to their experiences, the more I understand how huge a part of abuse is the tone of speech involved in that abuse.

Have you asked yourself who was emotionally abused in the Damore affair? Who was misrepresented in a defamatory fashion? Who was publicly denounced and fired?

Frankly, I think it's sociopathic to emphasize kindness so much as a moral principle while being so horrible to the people who fall afoul of a favored ideology. This is the one thing about our current elite that I find the most revolting. Fake, hypocritical promotion of kindness, with immediate and overwhelming viciousness to anyone who dares to disagree with them in the slightest.

View on HN

Okay. Well, first, I'd just ask: in the discussion here, do you think I've been inconsistently applying kindness, or, more directly, being unkind to those who disagree with me?

Second, I really don't understand how this should be applied to my assertion that tone matters. Can you walk me through that? Or, am I mistaken in thinking that you're saying you disagree that tone matters?

You're now several layers away from the point.

No one disagrees that "tone matters", but issues of social censorship - rapidly adopted taboos - are only dealt with by frank conversation, and tone policing serves only to preclude that.

Yes "tone matters", but that is never pointed out by the side that isn't protecting its hegemony in doing so.

Damore wasn't quite as gentle as he could've been, but the context did not clearly ask for gentleness and invited critique, which he gave.

It's a bit rough expecting engineers to have expert kid gloves on delicate social matters, especially when a large group of people on side are sitting poised and ready to pounce on any disagreement - at which point "tone" is going to be evidence of malice.

IMO, you don't need expert kid gloves when you can have lazy gloves instead.

Sure, someone still needs to be taught (or miraculously realize on their own) the basic rules, but once known them, I don't think the rules really require any skill to use, even if applying them can take time and effort.

Realizing when to use them, comes back around to OP and K-complicity; "if I'm worried this'll get me in trouble, use the kid gloves.". Or, perhaps: "If this is a sensitive topic, use the kid gloves". Which to me seems pretty straightforward - do you know anyone who doesn't think diversity/etc issues are sensitive?

Here's a few of my "rules":

1. Don't make statements about other people - only ask questions.

2. Say less. Say less than that.

3. Look for opportunities to hand off the "microphone"

Are there rules you've noticed, that are easy to apply, that make talking about hard things easier, or less fraught, for you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com