Comment by lemagedurage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lemagedurage | Hacker News Reader

"And death threats (and trolling, and weird online gender-flavoured violence) are not just deeply unpleasant, they’re CRIMES. If you do this, you are breaking the law AND being a shit human being, and you should either stop or walk yourself into the sun."

Death threats towards people that use death threats, really?

I don't like the article. Some people are more knowledgeable on a topic than others, "if you aren't in doubt you're probably wrong" doesn't apply there. Not even in general in my estimation.

A better alternative to "you have to sugarcoat all your thoughts by 30% before you speak them out" would be to train people to be better at taking criticism. People get spoiled by a high baseline positivity. I'd like to bring my points objectively without sugar coating, if everyone did that there would be no problem. Now i would have to either pretend to be more nice than i am ( talking behind people's back is a consequence of this), be straight to the point and get disliked by people who are used to sugar coating or keep silent. It usually boils down to the latter. Let me work alone if i can't be my critical self.

Also, this article seems to be mostly aimed at unfair criticism, let me pose the following.

If the criticism is fair and reasonable, it is justified, doesn't have to be nice, and the receiver is at fault if they dislike it.

If the criticism is not fair or reasonable, it is not justified, the criticizer should express uncertainty where applicable, they are at fault as the article suggests.

The article makes the point, quite explicitly, that you should not even call a vast conspiracy a “vast conspiracy”. Not because it’s “not PC”, but simply because people on the receiving end of such diatribes have come to associate certain terms with cranks.

You can disregard such advise, and simply launch more and more over-the-top screeches against the MSM trying to silence you. But you’re not going to change any minds.

What about using evidence instead of manipulating your point in order to convince people?

Yes, it would be great to live in a world where everyone would judge everything on its merits alone, like you do.

Unfortunately, we don’t. Which is why we still put on pants for interviews, write in full sentences, and occasionally waste oxygen being nicer to others than warranted by the cold hard facts alone.

Well i do like warmth, just the genuine kind, not the politeness peer-pressure kind i feel is promoted in the article. Real warmth speaks from actions (patterns) and not from words, because words are forged too easily. An evil person could sugar coat twice as much and get a better job than their honest peer, hm? (virus scanners)

When you see through it you can choose to either exploit it or be fair. That's your call.

> A better alternative to "you have to sugarcoat all your thoughts by 30% before you speak them out" would be to train people to be better at taking criticism

The amount of extra effort involved in having a few people "sugarcoat" (as you call it) is tiny compared to the effort in retraining vast swathes of people out of what is after all a fairly standard human behaviour. Behaviour so standard in fact that this doesn't count as "sugarcoating" at all, really, at least not in my view - more like the process of actually assembling a persuasive argument from the unrefined raw material.

(I originally started this post with "Come on, come on, don't be silly". But then I took it out, because it felt a bit rude. But, if you don't think it will hurt, you can imagine I left it in.)

By all means, call it silly, all the more incentive to get to the bottom of it.

"more like the process of actually assembling a persuasive argument"

Why do you use "persuasive" there? If you were right you should be able to prove your point without politeness. Furthermore, if you /need/ politeness to be considered right, /then/ either they're buying bs or you're selling bs. Both are bad for this world.

In my view, people should agree with you based on logic, sane thinking, and not on "what feels good". Because true news isn't always good news, but it's always better news.

You're assuming that the way people behave is wrong, and that the way you think they should behave is right. Well, guess what: they're going to keep on behaving as they do anyway, no matter what you think. Now suppose you still want to convince people of something. Are you going to adopt a technique that works, or one that doesn't?

If i can't convince someone based on reasoning and need social manipulation, then i shouldn't want to convince them.

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