Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

That said, from your very link I find this:

" douglascrockford commented on Feb 21, 2011

I am sorry I hurt your feelings."

I'll take someone who realizes they made a mistake and apologizes for it any day over someone who seeks to get rid of all the people they don't like.

View on HN

Perhaps. In a vacuum I could see reading "I am sorry I hurt your feelings" as pretty condescending. That's not apologizing for what you said; it's more like pitying the person for their irrational reaction to it. (Or that's how it could feel to that person.)

(I'm not saying that's how it was intended or anything. I have no idea. Just saying this could just as easily be evidence for abrasiveness as against it. I'll also just note that I don't think someone should be removed from a conference for mild abrasiveness regardless.)

Condescension is not always regarded as bad. Readers of Pride and Prejudice will recall that Mr Collins, for one, was highly appreciative of Lady Catherine de Bourgh's 'affability and condescension'!

That is a different meaning i.e. dignity with inferiors rather than being patronising.

You may be thinking of when politicians say "I'm sorry if you found what I said offensive", or "sorry for an offence your feel", which is a classic anti-apology.

Normally without the nuance of speech it might be impossible to tell if it was meant in a genuine way. In this case however the context makes it clear he is being arrogant and egotistical in a manner quite consistent with techie internet forum behavior.

The idea of a javascript developer feeling intellectual superiority is of course absurd.*

* Joke

I understand the need to give the benefit of the doubt to someone, but going out of your ways to not recognize the higher probability of this comment being irony seems kind of naive to me. Im my opinion, this looks like a 90% probability of irony and only 10% sincerity. The commentator never made the claim of being butt hurt and kept the conversation technical, but Crockford's comment comes out of nowhere and seems to want to achieve some degree of infantalization that was clearly unnecessary. Given the context of this exchange it's really difficult to me to see it otherwise than a sly middle-finger. I think people trying to see it otherwise are clinging a bit too much to their principles. This is not a court of law folks, it's real life.

I've had people do this sort of gaslighting to me before in discussions of a technical nature. Implying my disagreement with them was somehow emotional. Which is particularly annoying in online discussions where emotion can be inferred or not at the readers discretion.

The problem with doing otherwise is that you give people very little opportunity to ever be sincere. They're locked into a confirmation bias trap with no way out unless you allow it.

And one can read just as easily that the other party seems hurt by the rejection. I would not readily assume that he can't read that either.

This may not be a court of law, but I always try to think twice before I judge people. It's almost always the wrong approach, at least in my experience, and I certainly haven't always been on the right side of that.

In the end, you don't win anything by being right about this kind of thing and I know it's way too easy for me to do all the things I hate seeing others do :(

That's pretty clearly ironic, though.

I disagree. I can only read it that way if I make bad assumptions about him, which is circular reasoning.

In my experience, you should always give people the benefit of the doubt in such things. I've honestly thought otherwise in many other occasions, only to be proven wrong.

I read that as being 50% sarcastic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com