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Comment by hso9791 | Hacker News Reader

We should embrace criticism. If it is valid, one learns. If not, one may clarify.

Saying somebody's baby is ugly is not criticism - it is simply useless. Attempting to compare proper criticism to it is even more useless.

This post to me is an antithesis to rationality.

Obviously, twitter is a medium more suitable for quick dismissals or approvals than a well-founded critique of a language. In such, I somewhat agree with the original poster. Nevertheless, to take an early 20th century sales coach's bastardization of good manners as our guideline for how to give criticism in the crafts seems a poor course to stake out for society.

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This is patently absurd. The author fleshes out a rich and detailed argument for comparing/contrasting rather than one-sided criticism as a way to provide feedback, but your best refutation of it is to point at the one sentence in which he cited someone you feel is of dubious credibility and proclaim "Therefore he's dumb!"

Oh, but you said "proper" criticism. I get it now.

It isn't rich and detailed. It's a wall of text from someone who is bad at arguing.

Either way, there is more to it than Dale Carnegie.

Well, when reading the text, the reference to Dale Carnegie's work - as well as the author's reflections on that - constitute the pivotal point of the chapter "Why criticism is bad". Without that, what is left except feelings and such?

He even repeats a claim that 99% of people one criticizes "will not see themselves to blame anyway."

That is not how we reached our modern science and academia.

Furthermore, he advises: "It is amazing how often it is you end up in a chair across from someone at a table interviewing you for a job you really need who happens to have worked on an open source project you publically condemned. Whoops."

If one's criticism is well-argued, this may in fact be the tipping point that secures the job. If the criticism was a one-liner on twitter, it may spark a dialogue that generates mutual respect.

My issue with the post is that it throws the baby - ugly or not - out with the bath water.

you should write so that it doesn't read like you are trying so hard.

> This post to me is an antithesis to rationality.

That might be overstating it a bit, no? If you're trying to offer constructive criticism, at any rate.

I disagree, though -- the central point is that you should realistically imagine your critique from the POV of the creator receiving it.

Sure, people should be able to rationally evaluate any critique, no matter how harshly framed, and filter out a few useful bits from it. In reality, most people have egos that are rather more humanly fragile than that, and you should act accordingly.

This, to me, is the heart of rationality: recognizing the reality of the situation (including emotional/psychological factors at play among the actual humans involved!) and acting in that context will bring you far more effective results than if you assume people are as they should be (but aren't).

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