This response would have benefited from a more humane wording. I wish the tone on HN would be less hostile. Just shows that some help wording things can be a useful tool.
I am aware that hypocrisy is tolerated in vast areas, but be reminded that it is a mortal offence in others.
A "kind" word has the opposite value when said unfelt.
I immediately suspect hypocrisy when someone I don't know sends me a super-friendly, over-familiar, and flattering email asking for something.
I'm sure in most cases people do not genuinely feel that way towards me and are faking niceness (being hypocritical) but rejecting all of it would mean rejecting a lot of actually nice people, so with people I don't know well I assume good faith and respond or not based on the substance of what they write. This is what I mean by "bad at detecting hypocrisy".
We are rejecting falsity - it is lying. We are warning: don't do it. Act properly. Properly is "respectfully". With proportionate measures. Lying is plain disrespectful, and more.
-- yes, you are supposed to be «nice and warm» only in case this is genuine. If it is not, just behave appropriately. "Respectful" does not imply «nice and warm». Also: since «nice and warm» does not imply "respectful", and on the contrary it may suggest the opposite if patently constructed, I would be very careful about any temptation to think that some coating "will do";
-- when suggesting the idea of people «employing... hypocrisy», it is very advisable to avoid the term 'you';
-- teaching people hypocrisy, idea which may appear from your text, would be criminal. If you had to orient them, it'd better be towards the substance.
Regarding your nice -> respectful update, just replace 'nice' with 'respectful' so the proposed idea reads 'correct emails to be respectful if they're not', done.
(By the way, I could add for clarity, there is an extreme difference from the considerations that are apparent in the case of that 'we' and the suggestion "Who has never set fire to a public monument? I did" (Graham Chapman) that was implied in that 'you'. It is really not the same, because avoiding calling people "arsonists" is what I recommended.)
The idea to have engines that notify of disrespectful qualities in text is interesting - of course it should be clear that it is a completely different matter from what was discussed before -, but I suspect that the engine should be quite intelligent to discriminate what is respectful and what is not. It is similar to the former context: a veneer of kindness is cheap and possibly inadvisable; a respectful stance is not superficial hence not cheap - it has harder requirements for feasibility.
> Because it is not just this one who happens to be writing.
I am talking to you and you are representing only yourself, not a collective.
And which wording would you have suggested, to improve the literal post from Skilled, while retaining exactly the meaning Skilled intended?
And systems similar to the one submitted would do _that_?