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Comment by ohnomrbill | Hacker News Reader

Why should I try to interpret comments in the best possible light? I could make an effort to interpret them in the worst possible light, too. I have no reason to believe that internet commenters mean well.

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Because the failure conditions are worse.

Let's see, here are the possibilities:

1. Someone means well, you interpret it as them meaning well and respond accordingly. Everything is fine and dandy, everyone's happy. 2. Someone means well, and you interpret them as meaning ill, and respond accordingly. Now you are angry for no reason, they have had the experience of making a well meaning comment and being shot down for it. Everyone is miserable. 3. Someone means ill, and you interpret it as them meaning ill, and respond accordingly. Now they have gotten the thrill of getting through to you (remember, they mean ill, so that is their intent), and you are angry (for a good reason). You've made yourself miserable and a troll happy. 4. Someone means ill, and you interpret it as them meaning well and respond accordingly. Now they don't get the pleasure of having bothered you, you have shrugged it off an it's not great loss to you. You are now happier than option 3, and they haven't had a chance to hurt you like they meant to.

Of course, real life isn't quite a simple as that; but that does cover a very large number of possible interactions on the internet. By biasing yourself toward the most charitable interpretation of others comments, you reduce the risk of a simple misunderstanding leading to everyone being unhappy, reduce the risk of just giving a troll exactly what they want, and contribute to a more positive environment in general.

It really does help out in an awful lot of cases, and reduces friction dramatically if you always assume good faith unless you have very compelling evidence to the contrary.

> Why should I try to interpret comments in the best possible light?

Because doing so contributes to the community and not doing so harms it.

When you respond to the strongest interpretation of a comment, you're responding to what's most substantive in it. That raises the signal/noise ratio for everybody, and curiosity is what we're trying to optimize for.

There is a different between the "strongest" interpretation of a comment and the "best possible light".

For example, if somebody tells me "Angersock, you can go happily fuck yourself", I'm not going to expect them to be wishing me a rousing and cheerful round of masturbation--that is the "best possible light", but not the "strongest interpretation".

Properly handled, assuming the worst of a comment, articulating the argument you think is being made, and then rebutting it, is far better than just assuming the best--provided it's done civilly, of course.

You're responding to a pretty weak interpretation of what we're talking about here. :) The point is to address the strongest plausible interpretation of what another is saying. It's pretty well-established what the Principle of Charity means [1]. (By the way, you can see from [2] that there's an ongoing discussion about formalizing it for HN.)

I don't think it's a stretch, mutatis mutandis, to take even a comment like "go fuck yourself" charitably. It could, indeed probably mostly does, mean "I'm angry about something unrelated."

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

2. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20principle%20of%2...

Since "you can happily go fuck yourself" is not in fact an argument, the principle of charity does not demand that you interpret it as anything more than a rude interjection. At its strongest, it would require you to assume that the commenter was legitimately upset and deeply invested in the argument, which would perhaps keep you from responding in kind.

> At its strongest, it would require you to assume that the commenter was legitimately upset and deeply invested in the argument

I don't think even at its strongest the PoC would require you to assume that the commenter was legitimately upset, only that the commenter was intending to express that they were upset.

The PoC only applies to interpreting what the intended message is, not to conclusions about its justification as would be necessary to support the interpretation that the commenter was legitimately upset.

I can't help but suggest that your pretty nitpicky distinction between "interpret[ing] in the best possible light" and "rebutting the argument you think is being made" is, perhaps, not interpreting the argument for the guideline in the best possible light.

Because HN has an international audience where English is often a second language; also cultural expectations can be markedly different to the US.

This is a much larger factor on HN than I think most people realize.

Even within the US.

A bigger project than HN that has put a lot of time into the norm we're talking about today is Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith

That actually came from the original C2 Wiki, although it's been refactored (across sites apparently...it's now on MeatBall) significantly since I first came across it c. 2003:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AssumeGoodFaith

I suspect it's a much older idea than that, probably dating back to the Enlightenment. It's closely related to the Principle of Charity, which was coined in 1958 but again, refers to a much older principle of logical discourse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

> That actually came from the original C2 Wiki

That's fascinating! Has anyone traced it to its precise origin there? I'd love to see that.

I think the Principle of Charity is pretty spot on for 1958. I suspect John Rawls said something assuming good faith, too, given the quotes I've found [1]:

In his book A Theory of Justice, Rawls stated that citizens are obliged to act in good faith, and to assume good faith on the part of others until clear proof emerges to the contrary. They must recognize, in effect, that the system cannot meet everybody's claims at once and accept that at times they will be on the losing side.

And a good recent blog post [2]:

Several maxims guided me in doing this. I always assumed, for example, that the writers we were studying were always much smarter than I was. If they were not, why was I wasting my time and the students’ time by studying them? If I saw a mistake in their arguments, I supposed they saw it too and must have dealt with it, but where? So I looked for their way out, not mine.

[1] http://www.rbc.com/aboutus/letter/may_jun1995.html

[2] https://parentheticalpilgrim.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/good-f...

Here's the obvious link to Archive.org ('02):

http://web.archive.org/web/20020502092511/http://www.usemod....

Think about the possible outcomes:

Wrongly assume the best: It quickly becomes apparent, things move forward, you may even steer things in a better direction.

Wrongly assume the worst: You look like a jerk, possibly demotivated people or made them feel bad, and now there is an air of conflict that needs to be ventilated by unnecessarily defensive comments.

Pedantic "corrections" that offer no additional value are seen as pretty contemptible behavior in real life, so you probably shouldn't make a habit of it.

This is either a non sequitur or a wildly uncharitable read of the remark you're replying to.

The issue is really with speed of judgement. It's all too easy to become close minded after judging something, especially when judging something negatively. The key is remaining open minded as long as possible to take in more information, then you're in a better place to judge. Disagreement in a respectful manner is a reflection of how you've balanced the positive and negative, if you prejudge Internet commenters you'll have made it much harder on yourself to find that balance.

Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that the debate concerns a non-subjective question, so it has a right answer, only it is unknown which it is.

The best outcome for HN is if we as a community converge on the right answer.

Now if someone brings argues poorly, but for the right answer, and then someone comes along and crushes the poor argument. Then the counter-arguer "wins" and succeeds in humiliating the "opponent". But the the wrong answer wins, and that is bad for the community

If on the other hand, someone comes along, reinforces the poor argument, and then brings a weak counterargument, then that gives the right answer a better chance of winning.

Because if your goal is learn something in a dialogue, not win internet points, you'll want to understand the strongest version of someone's argument -- which isn't necessarily what they wrote verbatim.

Generous interpretations raise discourse. Because they're attempts to find strong versions of positions.

However, it takes two to tango; worthwhile discussion is a cooperative venture. There's systematic reasons why a forum is incapable of reaching a certain level. Take Twitter and misogyny. (Or HN for that matter; Twitter's rampant death threats shouldn't lower expectations when evaluating other forums.)

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