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Comment by fish44 | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps we will learn how to be less sensitive from this - I believe that much of humanities problems are from sensitivity rather than aggression. If we disengage from the conversation and view the interaction as a remote conversation - it is much easier to be dispassionate and calm. I guess it will make real in-person conversation much more fulfilling.

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People are sensitive because we're people. It makes us human. Of course we're offended when that happens.

Chatbots don't even have intelligence, they're just calculating the probability of letters. And they're a lot less likely to bring you a coffee laced with laxatives the next time you're rude to them.

Much of humanity's problems are solved because of sensitivity rather than aggression. Holding on to a little amount of sensitivity about things in general goes a long way.

It's not entirely just about sensitivity or aggression, but also when and where the appropriate time and place to manifest those behaviors is. Too many folks these days are sensitive about things that they maybe ought to just "let slide" (ignore / forget), overly aggressive when it's really not appropriate, and not nearly aggressive enough over things that really need more folks to stand up and say "No more!" over.

In my experience, this is mostly because those things we "should" be getting angry over are such massive problems that most people can't see how they might have an effect, so they focus on "smaller" problems that they might be able to actually solve.

The more you view an interaction as remote and detached, the more aggressive you get.

Work as phone support for a week and you’ll see what I mean.

Or Twitter, i guess

Send a set of people explaining their problem through busy algorithmic cabinets for an hour and you'll see it's not a remoteness problem for the most part.

Twitter is just a loudness threshold. Calm reasonable tweets that aren't viral and/or don't attract toxicity don't surface as much, if get posted at all.

I don't know. I think such a thing will make conversation more crude and transactional, and will result in an even greater detachment from each other than has already happened.

Would you mind elaborating on some of what you view as humanity's problems, and how they're caused by sensitivity?

> If we disengage from the conversation and view the interaction as a remote conversation

Simply become the robot.

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