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Comment by maxbond | Hacker News Reader

If you want to know why someone feels a certain way, you will set yourself up for failure by first explaining to them why they shouldn't feel that way (doubly so if you imply they're "throwing a tantrum" or "being overly sensitive"). You've telegraphed your unwillingness to hear them out, so why should they give you any of their time?

Frankly, I have to wonder if you actually want to know or whether the question was a feint so you could express a very personal criticism less directly. If you weren't comfortable saying it to them directly - maybe that's a sign you still have swipes to edit out.

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Technology is going to keep marching forward as it always has. Most of the gadgets being destroyed in the ad are fairly recent innovations. And they had already done their fair share of disruption too. Speakers made live music less necessary, cameras made portrait painting less popular, and typewriters started the slow death of handwriting.

Should we mourn their technological predecessors or recognize we live in an ever-changing world we've only seen a small snapshot of?

And so ad where a guitar and some camera lenses are destroyed isn't "soul-crushing". Saying that is being overly dramatic.

If you think that the reason people play guitar is that they haven't come across a better piece of technology, then I think you fundamentally misunderstand. I think these people simply value certain experiences and ways of relating to the world that you don't value (which is not a criticism, that's fine). Maybe it would seem less like an overreaction to you if you shared their values. Maybe you would have a more interesting time if you tried to understand what those values were instead of trying to explain to people why they're wrong for holding them.

ETA: I think this nugget of wisdom from Pirate Software is good to keep in mind.

https://youtube.com/shorts/S9xrkjUXuUM

People frequently express themselves in ways that are infuriating and unhelpful (myself included, embarrassingly often). Learning to cut through the noise and learn from them despite that is a valuable social skill. We can't change the fact that people act this way, but we can decide how we will receive and respond to it.

I understand we do these things because we find enjoyment in them. But none of these instruments and gadgets are even going extinct. There might be real shifts happening in our culture but at the end of the day this is just an ad. The emotional baggage that causes someone to be hurt by this should probably be handled at a personal level.

And thanks for sharing your thoughts. There isn't anything you said I'd disagree with. My original point was quite simple: people shouldn't be so soft. Although, I guess that's not really helpful and me saying that won't flip a switch in someone's head.

Appreciate you taking the time to consider. I just feel I should note:

> I understand we do these things because we find enjoyment in them.

It's not that people enjoy making art (though they usually do). People have a much more profound relationship to art than that. I'll try to illustrate in a way that's more grokkable to the technically inclined.

Once I was injured and couldn't use a computer other than a phone for 10 months. I was very frustrated and depressed. I felt like I had lost access to a part of myself.

There were definitely moments that were soul crushing. In particular times when I couldn't get software to work, because I couldn't even extract an error message or any relevant telemetry from the confines of a nerfed operating system, so I couldn't even begin to troubleshoot. I wasn't accustomed to my computer being a black box I couldn't interrogate. It ran counter to my image of myself and my abilities.

One time, several years later, a friend almost spilled wine on my ergonomic keyboard (which I absolutely need to use a computer after my injury). I told them to be careful. They pretended to spill it again. I told them that absolutely wasn't funny to me. They told me I was overreacting.

Do you think that's because I enjoy using Linux and writing Python? Or do you think there could be a bit more than that going on?

So you open up asking someone for their opinion, and in the next comment you dismiss it with "well you can't stop it".

I'd rather not beat around the bush if you simply wanted to disagree with a user instead of pretending to seek out an alternative POV.

>Should we mourn their technological predecessors or recognize we live in an ever-changing world we've only seen a small snapshot of?

You can still buy vinyl records today that work in a phonograph made in the 60's. It is hard (but not impossible) to truly "kill off" old mediums. It definitely can't be done on the order of decades.

No one's mourning the death of music, because music isn't dead. And you don't get to tell people how they should react and feel to media.

It was a rhetorical question. I can't force people to feel a certain way but I can certainly say that they're being overly dramatic.

And right, exactly, none of these things are actually extinct yet, so why dramatize? And if at some point they die off, it won't be Apple that caused it. It will happen because people stop caring, practising and using the things in question.

> so why dramatize?

You dont have the right to tell other people how they should feel and react to things based on your own thoughts and opinions.

Actually, yes we do have the right to make fun of people who are acting overly dramatic.

Its ironic, because you too are telling people how to act and feel, by telling them that they can't do that.

"You have no right" here means you have no moral right, not a legal right. Yes, you have every right to make fun of people. But it is a jerk move. It's the prototypical jerk move.

As for hypocrisy - if someone says, "you're acting like a jerk" and you say, "I have every right to make fun of you," you're not going to be able to convince me these are equivalent positions.

Ok, well I was talking about a moral right then, and not a legal right.

I actually think the jerks are the ones who are over reacting and not engaging with the substance of the disagreement, and the moral position is from the ones who don't take their overreaction seriously.

If you want to say that everyone should just chill out, and not take any of this seriously , then that would be agreeing with me completely as that's my entire point and motivation.

> if someone says, "you're acting like a jerk"

No actually. That's not what they are doing.

Instead what they are doing is dismissing well reasoned criticism off hand without addressing the argument.

Instead of making a counter argument, where they try to defend the silly overreaction with arguments, instead they do the equivalent of saying "well that's just our/your opinion, man! You have no (moral?) right to tell people otherwise.".

They are the ones hitting the eject button from any sort of discourse.

And if you flee and retreat from actually engaging, no that should not be taken seriously.

> you're not going to be able to convince me these are equivalent positions.

Correct they aren't equivalent. The other person is worse. Way worse. Because they are the ones who fled to not addressing the substance of the matter.

Here, read the original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40317635

It is quite reasonable. And the other person had the jerk reaction, by instead of addressing it, they instead say that it is just that person's opinion, and they have "no right".

That is not engagement. That is the poor behavior.

Two wrongs don't make a right. When your position becomes "I have a right to mock you," you've lost the argument in my eyes. You've confessed that argument is insufficient and you need to rely on insult to articulate yourself in this instance. Maybe you're right, maybe you could have articulated a point that would sway me if you had given it some more thought, but that's not evident in what's in front of me.

That comment isn't my favorite, but it isn't an attack. It's still an assertion of the commenters position, with language that's stronger than I'd prescribe but within bounds in my estimation. Flag and/or downvote it if you disagree.

If you want to know what I personally believe, on a postage stamp, I wouldn't say people "have no right" to make such assertions (I don't think it's a productive or interesting line of conversation), but I think it's a bad call to make them (I think it's reductive and misses the forest), so I'm sympathetic to that perspective.

>yes we do have the right to make fun of people who are acting overly dramatic.

Not on hacker news:

>Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Dang isn't some overbearing dictator, but you'll find your time here short if the behavior continues.

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

>Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

We don't do that here, so I urge you to reconsider that approach next time.

> Saying that is being overly dramatic.

...In your opinion.

From a tech person POV the big difference is I buy a camera I can do what I want on it, I buy and iPad and have to pay Apple a tax for all computing that goes through it.

Tone deaf responses like this are a big reason why resentment is building towards Silicon Valley.

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