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Comment by codeboost | Hacker News Reader

Oh come on. Everyone is so fucking sensitive these days. We now have psychological terms for every little emotion and behavior, but come on, put these into perspective.

Our grandparents would slap you in the face for calling this an abuse. Try sitting in a trench with tanks rolling by and bombs falling from the sky during WW2, at 18.

I could go on with examples of what 'emotional abuse' is, but I think you get my point. The submitter fucked up and he got a slap on the wrist. And it was good for the entire community. The 'abused' submitter will probably triple check his commits and will be a better programmer as a result. Everyone wins.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_abuse

Telling somebody that they are "so fucking sensitive" is abusive. I'd be offended by that comment if I was the recipient of Linus' wrath here.

And what would have happened due to getting offended? Your leg would fall off? Your eyes would bleed? "Getting offended" is a purely cultural and personal issue. Somebody out there in the world is offended because you wear shorts, so what. Got to find your way to deal with it or confront it. Those online wambulance calls are ridiculous.

http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137392506516022&w=2

So as far as I'm concerned, the discussion is about "how to work together DESPITE people being different". Not about trying to make everybody please each other. Because I can pretty much guarantee that I'll continue cursing. To me, the discussion would be about how to work together despite these kinds of cultural differences, not about "how do we make everybody nice and sing songs sound the campfire"

> This wambulance calls are ridiculous.

This statement is also emotional abuse. Emotional abuse creates psychological pain. Psychological pain creates physical pain. That is all that happens. It's a biological process.

Why is it a problem if I say that I would feel pain in response to somebody's words? This is just a fact I know about myself.

If you have psychological issues, you should consult a specialist. You can't put guilt on everybody who doesn't meet your rhetorical or substantial standards - even for the purely technical reason that this solution simply won't scale.

Feeling offended is a buzzword way too often abused for selfish and discriminatory reasons, so don't be surprised many people refuse to accept it as an argument, especially the ones comming from different cultural backgrounds where they weren't indoctrinated by a political correctness bubble.

Emotions are what they are. They are not negotiable, you can't make them go away, they are simply things that are there. If I hit you in the face, you would feel a bunch of different emotions. Who am I to tell you that these are not real things you are feeling?

Yes, I agree that stating an emotion isn't an argument, because it is a subjective truth.

> If I hit you in the face, you would feel a bunch of different emotions.

Yes... but even here, context matters.

I do martial arts, and when I get hit in the face while sparring, it's useful feedback and something I can learn from. If my training partners weren't willing to hit me occasionally, they'd be doing me a disservice.

I agree that context matters, but Linus isn't a sparring partner. Maybe a better analogy would be your martial arts teacher suddenly hitting you for wasting his time because you were lazy the last time you put back your equipment. If another student kicked you for complaining about this treatment, it would be normal to feel upset.

It's normal to have expectations about human behavior, and it's normal to get upset when they aren't met. It's actually healthy to expect our superiors to treat us with civility when we screw up. We expect that from the cops, for example. If your underlings are continually screwing up, this generally indicates a problem with your process. It's similarly healthy to expect colleagues, friends, and partners to support us when an authority has misused their power.

> And what would have happened due to getting offended? Your leg would fall off? Your eyes would bleed?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_abuse

> Our grandparents would slap you in the face for calling this an abuse. Try sitting in a trench with tanks rolling by and bombs falling from the sky during WW2, at 18

I've sometimes wondered if a case could be made that a society needs an occasional war to put things in perspective.

A couple years ago, I read about a poll that was conducted before elections in some European country (I don't remember which) that found that a large fraction of young people though that the most important issue to them was that candidates would make it easier for them to download free music. This beat issues like unemployment, government corruption, getting out of recession, climate change, the environment, the tensions between immigrants and natives in their country, and their country's participation in things like the war in Afghanistan.

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