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Comment by totalZero | Hacker News Reader

  Also you failed, maybe
  you're just 5 feet 6 and can
  never ever become a
  professional basketball
  player no matter how hard
  you try

Muggsy Bogues is 5'3" and played 14 seasons in the NBA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues

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There was once a time when I would have written a comment like this one, but now I'm down-voting it. There are two ways to read this message, and both of them are not something I would encourage, of different reasons, and being ambiguous between them is not in it's favor either.

A. You are trying to highlight that the poster is technically incorrect, so that they learn a new fact. That is mostly fine, but it doesn't add a lot to the conversation, and distracts from the point that they are trying to make.

B. You are making a point that some people succeed despite handicaps, essentially that there are often exceptions and hard work can make up for lack of talent. This is true, but it's a mindset that I think should not be encouraged in the OP. They are clearly having problems with how hard they work, which had lead to them being institutionalized. Telling them that they could have succeeded if they tried harder is not what we should do here.

There are people like this everywhere I just learned to not answer them, you will say something that's true for 99% of the population, instead of reading between the lines and understanding that I was trying to say "people are different and the difficulty isn't the same for everyone", they'll instantly jump on the 1% for who the thing you said doesn't apply and reply telling you how you're wrong, there people argue to argue, to get a dopamine hit (they'll reply to tell me it's some other neurotransmitter at work here) and satisfy their ego, radio has static noise and the internet has these people, just ignore them.

As tempting as it may be to think this way and attempt to critique my personality based on a short textual response to a comment on HN, you may want to consider the following:

You may say something that hits 99% of the people in the way that you intend, but there will be people who fall within the 1% corner cases and take your discouragement to heart. It is important for those people to understand that naysayers are often wrong -- and they don't like having it pointed out. Some of those people may not even leave a comment, but what they read will linger in their minds.

The system lets you downvote my comment and it also lets me reply to your points A and B.

A. Stating the truth is a contribution to the conversation. The boundaries between success and failure are fuzzy and it is a disservice to suggest that you have to meet certain criteria to accomplish difficult goals. Every great success is unique and those who try to convince people that lofty goals are structurally unreachable are generally not the good guys.

B. You are conflating two very different arguments. One is, "OP needs to hit the brakes and re-evaluate because clearly something is leading him down a harmful path." The other is, "Those who set out to do something difficult are going to encounter disappointment, mistakes, and failure, and they should find hope in the knowledge that unique and unlikely success stories can be found in abundance." Your point is the former, mine is the latter.

In both cases, you are attempting to extrapolate my reasoning from my comment and that's an error on your part because you lack enough specific information about my thought process to infer my reasoning. I would appreciate it if you could respond to the best version of my comment rather than casting a harsh light upon it.

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