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Comment by donnachangstein | Hacker News Reader

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Whoa, please don't get aggressive on HN. Regardless of how much of a problem certain dogs are or you feel they are, it is not ok to post like that.

Edit Unfortunately, your account has been breaking the site guidelines in other places too. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44225114.)

FWIW I wrote that post with no aggression intended. I suspect you may be overanalyzing things. Have a Coke and a smile, Dan.

Unfortunately, if my manner of speaking directly is breaking the site guidelines, then I'm afraid my values are incompatible with posting here.

I hope you didn't expend too much energy digging through my post history looking for transgressions. Though I do think it's funny the post that got me yelled at was the post insulting pit bulls.

Remember to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many of my posts were highly upvoted. I bid you good day.

I believe you about your intent, but intent doesn't communicate itself—particularly not in tiny textblobs where tone of voice, body language, and so on, aren't available. Intent has to be supplied along with your message in a way that people can perceive, and the burden is on you (i.e. the commenter) to disambiguate it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

People's posts often generate effects that they didn't have in mind when they were posting. For the health of an internet forum, effects (which are observable) matter more than intent (which is not). https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

The language you used in the last sentence of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44225270 was so garish, violent, and personal that it counts as aggressive, whether you were feeling aggressive or not when you posted it. That was way beyond just "speaking directly".

It's common (in fact we all do it) to underestimate the provocation level in one's own posts and overestimate it in others'. That leads to quite a skew in perception. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(Btw, I apologize for linking so much to lists of my own past comments. It's annoying and embarrassing. But it's the only efficient way I know of to provide additional explanation, and additional explanation is often necessary.)

Anyone owning a pit who isn't both strong & physically large is putting other people and animals at risk. I have met many, many sweet pits, but all dogs can lose it and if a pit goes many of the pit owners I've seen couldn't do a damned thing about it: they are incredibly powerful animals.

To be honest I think that's what attracts many inappropriate owners to them.

Two pit stories:

I saw a fat guy walking a relatively small pit and took my dogs off to the side, about 20 feet away to let them pass. The pit pulled out of his (inappropriately fastened) muzzle backwards (they are smart dogs) and took a dead no-bark run at my terrier. I had my 35 lb terrier in the air and kicked that dog as hard as I could in the side to get the situation under control.

Our neighbor had a BIG pit named Thor (big guy, he could control the dog, but kept him leashed out front.). Thor got off leash once and came over and messed w/our goats. We had one goat (the smallest) who we kept horns on and Thor found out the hard way that that goat wasn't going down w/o a fight. Thor survived but didn't mess w/the goats any more after that.

Again, I like most of the pits I've met, but I see a lot of irresponsible owners.

It’s hard to engage in rational good-faith discussion about problem dog breeds because most folks have already made up their mind, and there’s no changing it.

The chances of someone surrendering their dog to which they are bonded after reading a comment is unlikely. The chances of someone with the opposite opinion adopting a pitbull are similar.

You writing "one of these land sharks" here shows nothing but your ignorance, to both pit bulls and sharks, as both of these animals don't have any kind of natural aggression towards humans. Sure, both are powerful and CAN hurt you (perhaps more than other animals), but are certainly not short-wired to bite you.

But especially in the case of domesticated dogs, the problem are NOT the pits themselves, but the conditions in which they were raised.

No breed of dog is a "violent schizophrenic." Poorly-raised dogs of any breed are dangerous. The problem is bad humans, not bad dogs.

> Don't think scare quotes are appropriate here. Pits are problem dogs; they are the violent schizophrenics of the dog world.

I don't think so.

There are over 200 breeds of dog, it doesn't really track that only 2-3 breeds would be significantly more violent than the others.

We don't have enough data to be conclusive one way or the other, but if you look at the occurrence of strays and breed ownership by socioeconomic status, pit bull breeds are also very high on these lists.

This tracks with human data to some extent: people from lower socioeconomic groups are more often perpetrators and victims of violence.

Looking at breed specific violence and coming to a conclusion about temperament is very similar to looking at race specific graduation rates and coming to a conclusion about intelligence.

> There are over 200 breeds of dog, it doesn't really track that only 2-3 breeds would be significantly more violent than the others.

Why not? There are breeds that are taller or shorter, high-energy or low-energy, great hunters or awful hunters, and so on. And it’s not a mystery why some breeds got this way: they were specifically bred for it.

> There are breeds that are taller or shorter, high-energy or low-energy, great hunters or awful hunters, and so on

there are dozens of breeds in each of these categories — we don't have a single breed of dog that's 5x faster than all the others

While I don’t think the dogs are at fault, I’m not sure your argument follows. Why can’t we breed aggression in only a small number of breeds? We don’t breed short legs into all the breeds.

asked in another way: where are all the aggressive offshoot breeds from pitbulls? there are a wide variety of short-legged dog breeds; corgis, dachsunds, basset hounds, scotties, bulldogs... there's an enormous variety there... yet we're to expect that aggressive dogs are limited to a very specific appearance (seriously, an order of magnitude higher than almost all other breeds)? the data absolutely stinks

there are multiple other factors (social, socioeconomic) that are a better predictor of behaviors that can also be applied to humans

There are relatively few fatal dog maulings, but when there is one it's usually a pit or a rot:

https://www.statista.com/chart/15446/breeds-of-dog-involved-...

I think you should have to be able to deadlift 350 lbs to own either.

The person you replied to: "I'm trying to help animals in need!"

You: "How dare you do this well intentioned, possibly dangerous thing?! Also, let me insult the animals you love!"

What is even a little bit constructive about your post? If you want the parent to change why would you write like this?

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