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Comment by manofmanysmiles | Hacker News Reader

Are you implying other people's emotional immaturity is exclusively my problem to solve?

Also when you state an absolute like the word of God, how do you expect it to be received?

The article seems to imply to me: form relationships where direct truth is welcomed while acknowledging that people do have emotions.

Facts can be true and the feelings can be strong at the sam time. Attaching emotions to facts intentionally is intentionally adding a non-factual dimension to the conversation.

If you consider emotions as facts, and are communicating with me, I prefer if you express them as directly and honestly as possible so they can be included in the discussion.

Intentionally not expressing emotions clearly while using them to communicate is inherently without integrity. Specifically the words are not aligned with the emotions. The lack of integrity is structural (as opposed to some ambiguous moral ideal.)

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> Are you implying other people's emotional immaturity is exclusively my problem to solve?

Emotional maturity (from most standpoints) does not mean being completely emotionally unaffected by other people's communication. Insofar as it is emotional immaturity that gives rise to a particular emotional response it might be ethically that person's duty to work on it, if that's how your personal ethics works. But from a pragmatic perspective if you want to get something done that involves that person as a colleague or collaborator it's probably not going to be productive to continually bash your head on their psychological quirks until they go to therapy. You'll have much more luck adapting your own communication to be more aligned with their needs, regardless of how reasonable you personally think those needs are.

If you can't or don't want to put in the effort to do that your other option is to make sure you surround yourself with people who can already communicate effectively and relatively comfortably in the communication style you consider natural. You can cut off relationships, move jobs, or fire people to purge everyone else from the circle of people you have to interact with. But you'll be missing out on all the positive contributions of those people, who probably bring viewpoints alien to you, and you run the risk of sycophancy. Plus you'll have a harder time finding people to date/collaborate with/employ/… if you restrict your pool that way.

In practice I think people tend to end up somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. They'll decide a maximum investment of energy they're willing or capable of putting into accommodating other people's needs, and make sure that work × time doesn't exceed that threshold.

I agree with the pragmatism. I think pragmatically yes, it is my responsibility. In a very real sense, I am able to respond, being aware of the emotions, even if perhaps the person I am speaking to is not.

I guess I have a hard time viewing this as anything but intentional emotional manipulation.

Adapting your communication doesn't have to imply deception or even insincerity, it just means understanding what's important to your target audience and making sure to address it. Sometimes that's something like financial impact or user focus; sometimes it's emotional reassurance or intellectual challenge.

> Are you implying other people's emotional immaturity is exclusively my problem to solve?

Ignoring others emotions is not a sign of emotional maturity.

The inability to empathize with others and make meaningful predictions about how their emotions will affect communications is specifically a lack of emotional maturity.

This kind of sentiment comes up every time this topic is raised. This idea that we should be able to treat people mostly like logical robots is not grounded in fact. The fact is that human emotions have a huge impact on the way they communicate and receive communications.

> Also when you state an absolute like the word of God, how do you expect it to be received?

Case in point. You had an emotional reaction to the parent comment, and you responded with an attempt to shame the communication style rather than address the factual content of the communication.

Your emotions dictated your response here, not the facts, and your response was emotional in content as much as factual. Hyperbole is specifically an appeal to emotion.

> Ignoring others emotions is not a sign of emotional maturity.

I completely agree.

> The inability to empathize with others and make meaningful predictions about how their emotions will affect communications is specifically a lack of emotional maturity.

I completely agree.

> Case in point. You had an emotional reaction to the parent comment, and you responded with an attempt to shame the communication style rather than address the factual content of the communication.

Yes I did. I am still curious how OP expects that to be received.

> Your emotions dictated your response here, not the facts, and your response was emotional in content as much as factual. Hyperbole is specifically an appeal to emotion.

I think I agree here too. What do you mean?

> Yes I did. I am still curious how OP expects that to be received.

I’m curious why you perceive their statement to be made as if it’s a pronouncement from God and not a simply a statement of their view on the issue.

> I think I agree here too. What do you mean?

I mean that you both responded emotionally and communicated with an emotional appeal. You exaggerated what OP actually said and called it a mandate from God. This isn’t factual engagement. It’s emotional.

> I’m curious why you perceive their statement to be made as if it’s a pronouncement from God and not a simply a statement of their view on the issue.

To me it's basic grammar.

The sentence structure is approximately:

X is Y.

I consider this a statement of fact, or perhaps en equivalence relation. This is what was labeling a pronouncement from God.

(The idea that how your audience receives the communication is their problem and not yours) < X

(entirely why

some engineers are shit communicators and seem lost when facing the realities of human culture and politics.) < Y

Parsing it more carefully, the word "some" is leaving a hole for a lot of ambiguity that I did not see earlier.

So more careful reading reveals it as

X entirely explains property (are shit communicators) for a subset of the entities designated as engineers.

Even with these qualifies it is stating X is Y, rather than "In my experience X is Y."

I know in school I was taught to write this way. I find it confusing, and reveals something interesting about the person saying these words.

However maybe the real problem is I don't actually know what the words mean.

Perhaps I need to interpret it as the following:

In OPs view of the world, X is Y is true.

Perhaps that is what you're calling a "communication style", with a lot not being said explicitly.

Thank you for your comments, I am going to contemplate.

Edit: I just read my original comment and it is full of X is Y statements. I guess I'm full of shit. I'll try harder next time!

It’s not a case of “try harder”. My only point was that emotions run through all human interactions. That’s how it actually is. People very, very frequently make decisions based entirely on emotion and then produce a logical argument post hoc for the decision.

It’s valuable to be aware of how humans actually act.

I also completely agree.

My "try harder" was with regard to doing exactly what I had just had an emotional reaction to and criticized.

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