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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't trying to make an argument. I'm just really tired of clueless mansplaining internet randos talking down to experts, as if they'd never heard of Xcode build warnings, which is absurd and insulting.

It took me some time to track down the reference, but here's your argument:

> No, it’s not; the alert is the result of calling legacy CoreGraphics APIs rather than ScreenCaptureKit. Of course the fact that I had to learn this by reverse engineering replayd and locating “coreGraphicsCaptureAPINotificiationEnabled” (sic) is part of the problem. https://twitter.com/_saagarjha/status/1672855750862073856

(Unfortunately, one can no longer see the entire thread if logged out from Twitter, due to recently imposed restrictions.)

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> I'm just really tired of clueless mansplaining internet randos talking down to experts

The vast majority of people on here don't have a figment of an idea of who you are, let alone your gender. If anything, they probably assumed you were a man and were just being armchair arrogant/pretentious. So your base qualification for your complaint ("being mansplained to") is instantly nullified.

As far as your qualifications go, you're as equally anonymous and qualified/unqualified as the other poster is. So get your panties/knickers/boxers/briefs/whatever out of a twist.

If you don't recognize lapcat, you haven't been reading a lot of macOS articles on HN.

Also, "mansplaining" probably just meant "giving unwanted advise about a topic they only have superficial knowledge of".

> If you don't recognize lapcat, you haven't been reading a lot of macOS articles on HN.

I read plenty of macOS articles here. I'm sure I've run across them. They're neither memorable enough nor important enough for me to pick them out from one user or another. And for them to assume that importance would make them far more arrogant to me (and many others) than the "mansplainer" (no matter if they're in the wrong, which I happened to agree that they were).

> Also, "mansplaining" probably just meant "giving unwanted advise about a topic they only have superficial knowledge of".

I could pick up the context of their intention. It's still extremely odd to use a politically and emotionally overloaded word with a specific meaning that clearly doesn't apply here. OP could be a woman themselves, for all we know. The explainer wasn't talking down to lapcat out of an assumed lack of knowledge based on their gender; they were just talking with a general lack of knowledge on the subject, which is pretty common on the internet.

>If you don't recognize lapcat, you haven't been reading a lot of macOS articles on HN

I, for one, barely recognize 5-10 names. I focus on the content, and don't keep the names in my mind after reading something or even after having a chat, unless they make some unique impression, or have a consistent theme and style to be recognizable.

> The vast majority of people on here don't have a figment of an idea of who you are, let alone your gender. If anything, they probably assumed you were a man and were just being armchair arrogant/pretentious. So your base qualification for your complaint ("being mansplained to") is instantly nullified.

It's not about me. I was upset about the careless disrespect in these comments to saagarjha and to the article author Craig Hockenberry. Cycl0p created a HN account yesterday for the sole purpose of replying, incorrectly and dismissively, to saagarjha: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Cycl0p

I'm not a big fan of the term "mansplaining" either, but it's the most recognizable one for something like this phenomenon. I once coined the gender-neutral term "downspouting", but nobody knows it. If there's a better word, I'd be happy to use it.

My own qualifications are largely irrelevant here. All I said was, "I can guarantee that saagarjha knows more than you about Apple development", a guarantee that I think has now has been demonstrated by subsequent comments.

Thanks for bringig it up.

Appeal to authority works when the authority is a real authority in the subject matter I think

> I'm not a big fan of the term "mansplaining" either, but it's the most recognizable one for something like this phenomenon. I once coined the gender-neutral term "downspouting", but nobody knows it. If there's a better word, I'd be happy to use it.

"Arrogance".

>I wasn't trying to make an argument. I'm just really tired of clueless mansplaining internet randos talking down to experts, as if they'd never heard of Xcode build warnings, which is absurd and insulting.

There are people who don't know who an account handle they reply to is, or their expert status and history, in order to show the appropriate reverence. Some wont even recognize the initials "pg" they might be replying to.

There's this saying "A billion chinese don't know who you are and don't give a shit". The same if often true of the mere tens of thousands of HN users.

I think the solution is to assume that everyone is an expert, and try to understand why they said something, and ask for clarification, instead of telling them they are wrong.

> I'm just really tired of clueless mansplaining internet randos talking down to experts, as if they'd never heard of Xcode build warnings, which is absurd and insulting.

This is an unreasonable position to take on a forum where there are absolutely zero clues about the competence of the person in the thread. You may know who saagarjha (and lapcat) are, but there is absolutely nothing in any of your messages, or theirs, to indicate that they are professional Apple devs with decades of experience.

If HN had flair, we might have a chance. But as it stands we have to contend with the fact that each and every HN contributor has to be treated as incompetent developers until they demonstrate otherwise...

And it is incompetent developers - at Apple - that gave us this nonsense notification system in the first place.

> This is an unreasonable position to take on a forum where there are absolutely zero clues about the competence of the person in the thread.

> each and every HN contributor has to be treated as incompetent developers until they demonstrate otherwise

It's absolutely not unreasonable. On the contrary, the HN guidelines state "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(I realize that I've violated the guidelines here in my response to other guideline violations, which I'm not supposed to do, and I'll take my "punishment", whatever that happens to be.)

> And it is incompetent developers - at Apple - that gave us this nonsense notification system in the first place.

I'm inclined to think that it was more of a bureaucratic mess. There are tight timelines, lack of coordination among different teams, underspecified or conflicting requirements, etc.

>It's absolutely not unreasonable.

We disagree, but that's our individual prerogative. I don't contend with the idea that one must kowtow to authorities on the basis of a single message thread - you only know of the competencies of saagarjha by stint of having interacted with them for years - it is entirely unreasonable to require others to have that same understanding, when literally nothing in this forum promotes any means by which to gain that understanding other than to follow individuals for years.

If ssagarjha had prefaced their statements with "I'm an XXX dev with YYY years of experience on this subject, and my conclusion is .." then you'd have a point. But there was no such introduction - and thus it is absolutely unreasonable to expect other contributors to the thread to understand the prowess of the person whose opinions they are challenging.

>"punishment"

.. seems to be limited to having to deal with other, random strangers on the Internet, and whose competence you are yet to divulge from limited interactions...

> bureaucratic mess

All developer incompetence is bureaucratic mess, there is no other form of it. We are bureaucrats, not artists. Not even Apple can escape this fact, as we can see time and again with their low-effort, poor quality releases lately ..

> We disagree, but that's our individual prerogative.

It's not our individual prerogative. I again point to the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> >"punishment"

> .. seems to be limited to having to deal with other, random strangers on the Internet, and whose competence you are yet to divulge from limited interactions...

HN does have moderators.

> Not even Apple can escape this fact, as we can see time and again with their low-effort, poor quality releases lately

I blame upper management for that, i.e., Federighi and Cook.

>It's not our individual prerogative

I mean that it is entirely our prerogative to disagree on whether one should recognize an expert, immediately upon engaging with them. There's nothing in the HN guidelines that indicate otherwise - unless your point is that one should have respect for the potential experience of everyone one encounters on HN, which is fair.

But I still contend that your position that we should all know saagarjhas' competence is entirely unreasonable. There are tens of thousands of such individuals here on HN, how are we supposed to know we're talking to the very founders of the technology we're discussing? Its unreasonable, but its your prerogative to make the statement, "don't argue with saagarjha, he's an expert", and its just as viable to see this is a "call to authority fallacy" designed to shut down honest, viable - and valuable - dialog that results from the challenge to this so-called authority.

In other words I don't think you're applying the HN guideliness effectively. Please let people challenge experts - its important to our community, after all.

>Federighi and Cook.

Never accept technical management from someone who can't do your job. This is Peter Principle, 101. Someone at Apple is dropping a lot of balls lately, and it shows in the very poor quality of their releases over the last few years. The notification system is entirely dysfunctional, on both iOS and MacOS - I would wager the bureaucrats don't actually use these tools.

Meanwhile, why and how would they know who "saagarjha"is and whether they're an expert? Are they supposed to be famous, I mean Carmack or Lattner famous no "they are known in some circles".

Even if they visit their blog, they can just see: "Hi, I'm Saagar Jha. I'm a software engineer from Cupertino, California, but I spend an inordinate amount of time in the southern part of the state" and a list of smaller projects and experiments.

> unless your point is that one should have respect for the potential experience of everyone one encounters on HN, which is fair.

Yes, that is my point.

And I think it should also apply especially to the article authors, who are all too often disrespected and dismissed.

> Please let people challenge experts - its important to our community, after all.

Of course. But challenge them intelligently not dismissively.

> Never accept technical management from someone who can't do your job.

Well, I'm self-employed, so. ;-)

On the other hand, I made more money when I worked for someone else, so that's a big tradeoff.

>And I think it should also apply especially to the article authors, who are all too often disrespected and dismissed.

We agree, thanks for the kind conversation.

>Well, I'm self-employed, so. ;-)

Well whatever you do, don't give yourself a promotion! :P

>It's absolutely not unreasonable. On the contrary, the HN guidelines state "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

How does that fit with accusing the other person of "mainsplaining", of purposefully disrespecting an "authority" (sic), assuming they would have known who the other person is and it's only because of their audacity they responded as if they might have possibly missed something basic, and so on?

> How does that fit with accusing the other person of "mansplaining"

It doesn't, as I said in the very comment you're replying to: "I realize that I've violated the guidelines here in my response to other guideline violations".

> assuming they would have known who the other person

That wasn't my assumption. Although one ought to know who the submitted article author is, as that information is easy to obtain directly from the article.

> they responded as if they might have possibly missed something basic

That's the problematic part. We're not required to know who the HN commenters are, but we are required by the HN guidelines to treat them with respect and respond to the most charitable interpretation of their words.

My complaint isn't "You don't know saagarjha". Rather, my complaint is "You're assuming that saagarjha is an incompetent idiot, but saagarjha just so happens to be extremely competent and knowledgeable."

Moreover, Cycl0p created a HN account yesterday for the sole purpose of replying "Nonsense" to saagarjha https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Cycl0p

Do you not see a problem there?

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