Hacker News Reader

Comment by s5300 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I don't understand that tweet, I'm not sure if it is something dismissive for you to lose respect over or not? He says it's 'not a disease' but that people with it 'are sick'... I'm not sure if the point is simply that it's not a single well-understood thing with known causes, but more of a description of a state of affairs. (Sort of like 'cellulitis' is just 'a skin infection of some sort'.) But I think that would be correct.

Nobody is perfect. I wish we'd stop trying to find reasons to hate everyone who is celebrated, or we'll never celebrate anyone.

Maybe then do not celebrate a person, but celebrate the good actions of any person.

But that's basically what we do. We learn about Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, MLK, etc for what good they did.

Then someone eventually figures out they did or said some wrongthink by today's standards and tell us those people should be hated because they messed up.

But the kicker is we never once learned about nor celebrated said wrongthink. We celebrated the best in people... and I think that should continue.

"Nobody is perfect" is incredibly dishonest framing.

you never really die on the internet.

There's a famous quote that says we all die twice, once when we physically die and a second time when we are truly forgotten by humanity. It's attributed to lots of different people. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2025/10/15/die-twice/

Whenever I encounter this idea, I think of a certain Henry Symeonis who is, by this standard, still "alive", even though he died in 1264.

There was so much bad blood between him and the Oxford University that Oxford students had to take a pledge never to reconcile with Henry Symeonis upon ther Bc graduation. This tradition stuck for 550 years.

https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/culture/bizarre-stor...

And we are still aware of him today. Neither an important king, nor a great artist, just a guy who triggered a petty revenge from some long-dead academicians who are, ironically, likely completely forgotten, name and all.

And thanks to the magic of computers, we can give them everything you've ever written, and simulate you on the Internet. Forever.

Real respect isn't lost over one bad take.

Adding my opinion: Especially if he's done so much good and especially if he's calling out Israel.

Genuine respect absolutely can - and should be able to be - lost over a "bad take." Whether this instance is one of those is another question entirely.

I would even argue that respect that can endure through numerous shitty takes, just because there's one facet of that person that isn't shitty, is far less genuine than otherwise holding that person up to a standard for your respect.

Separating "one take" from "many takes" -- one should be able to give grace that people are wrong occasionally, and especially that they are fallible and susceptible to being emotional or relying on anecdotes for a particular theme that their experience has affected them differently than your experience has affected you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com