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Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

You give the impression here of having taken something I said quite personally. I hope I may be forgiven for not yet really understanding what or why. Likewise, my responses may be somewhat less on point for the distraction.

The account under discussion is attributed public speech on the Internet. In other contexts, other conventions apply. There are about as many such contexts as there are kinds of relationships between humans. That's about as general as I can really make it.

If you're asking for a recommendation, it would be twofold. First, if a question seems like it might be taken as nosy, try to find a way to reframe it, or don't ask it at all. Second, when someone seems to persistently misunderstand something you're saying or asking in a more personal than professional context, consider that they may be intentionally deflecting a question or subject which they consider inappropriate to address in that setting.

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The bit I quoted seemed to be saying that curiosity and wanting to understand things are bad.

Maybe that can be off topic and so out of place at work, but in online arguments prompted by something intentionally made public?

I'm talking about behavior. What motivates that behavior isn't relevant.

A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled. Whether that undue desire is motivated by curiosity, prurience, arrogance, pity, or simple fascination - and I have seen all of these, sometimes in combination - has no bearing on the effect of the question on the one so asked. The vice inheres in the asking, because that forces the choice between refusing to answer and arousing the ire of jilted entitlement, and giving you an answer you have already done much to suggest you are not prepared to understand.

Within acceptable error, everyone who ever tries to have this conversation from your side proceeds from here to umbrage at the idea their behavior within it is in any way either predictable or discreditable, owing to the purity of their intentions.

> A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled.

Jesus, is this really what you meant? I can't imagine how barren my life would be if I restricted my interactions with others to only include things to which I was "entitled."

It's not an "all the time" thing, but an aspect of how human relationships work. Like everything else there, it's contextual. In the context of public conversations and professional relationships, it's reasonable to consider there exists a threshold of intimacy beyond which further inquiry is improper.

That shouldn't be a tremendously controversial statement, I hope. If there's a variation on it here, it is only that "improper", again as with anything in human relationships, is contextual and not always obvious, but that there can exist subtexts in a conversation which indicate when it verges thereupon.

I wasn't trying to straw-man you and I agree with this more verbose phrasing. There's a vibe in some related comments that suggests that the proper way to manage your work affairs is to interact through some narrow "proper" API, in which nothing is sought nor proffered, that we exist to each other as callable services only.

I try to generally be polite and treat people the way they seem to want, but I'm not going to live some meek life terrified that someone might take offense at my over-reach. If I'm going to screw up, my defaults are set for errors of commission.

> If I'm going to screw up, my defaults are set for errors of commission.

There have been times in my life where I said the same.

> I'm not going to live some meek life terrified that someone might take offense at my over-reach.

This isn't about that. This is about the wrong assumptions people make, much more easily than they realize, based on someone speaking knowledgeably of things very far beyond their own experience. Those assumptions easily motivate harmful behavior.

> There's a vibe in some related comments that suggests that the proper way to manage your work affairs is to interact through some narrow "proper" API, in which nothing is sought nor proffered, that we exist to each other as callable services only.

This is a cold and mechanistic view of the thing. I would rather say that some relationships more easily bear personal intimacy than others, and a basic aspect of human social competence lies in knowing which are which and avoiding the imposition of undue strain on those relationships that can't support it.

Yes, it's bad. Learn to mind your own business. If you don't understand, you are failing the test.

So what you are saying is that people have some hangup on saying ‘I don’t want to say’ and instead say all kinds of vague stuff that I might want to clarify, and that I should recognize that and just let it go?

I’m not quite sure how to distinguish that from people unintentionally being vague.

Not everyone takes "I don't want to talk about that" easily. A '...with you' is always available to be inferred, and a weak ego easily takes insult at that. If that weak ego belongs to someone who signs your paychecks, now you have a problem.

I don’t think telling those people ‘learn how to recognize no’ is going to make much of a difference.

That's why I'm saying "here's how not to act like that kind of person."

Specifically, I'm saying "here's how to avoid pushing things to the point where 'I don't want to talk about that' is something that has to be said."

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