Hacker News Reader

A person is perhaps defined by _all_ their actions, but they're not very definable by a single action, out of context. That's the kind of reasoning that writes someone off if they make a mistake, which is totally intolerant.

View on HN

That's fair. I would say a person is defined by what they do next.

I think what you're saying is that you should be careful telling someone that they 'are a baby' or 'are dumb', because they might believe you.

I would also be careful of telling someone they are 'acting like a baby' or 'acting dumb', because most people won't appreciate the semantic difference.

In the context of this article, though, I'm not too bothered since the article is about how one can change their baby-like habits. But it is always a good reminder.

I'm not really so concerned with what you tell someone else, but what you end up telling yourself can be pretty important and stick with you for a long time. an article like this is mostly targeted at one's perception of themselves, and if you read it and start to adopt the model that that "you are a baby" when you act that way, you might have adopted a slightly less healthy model than you could have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com