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I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

freddiedeboer.substack.com

201–210 of 211 posts

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. What? He publicly holds very polarizing (and ridiculous) views on issues that directly affect people’s day to day lives, but I’m not thinking straight because I don’t immediately buy the idea that he’s _just_ being bullied for other reasons ? Maybe folks that he victimized during his psychotic break could also hate him for his opinions, but that’s not really a possibility that he mentions. The tone of good arti…

No. It doesn't matter if you believe him or not. You're not thinking straight because you do immediately start selling the idea that anybody who believes it could be happening is probably an "enthusiastic lackey" for racism.

Oh shit, the fact that I got an overwhelming impression that he’s a douchebag and I expressed my opinion that means I’m not thinking clearly. Only folks that read his post and buy his opinion are thinking clearly.

My bad! I didn’t know that I was criticizing the one and only arbiter of truth. Why wasn’t that fact included in the title?

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#202
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your answer was no, you cannot answer the question. Good luck in your future endeavors! Edit: it’s genuinely hilarious in a non-ironic actual belly laugh way that folks can show up and pretend to be Above It All when it comes to little details about their brazen statements in support of their uh, beliefs? Required line of discourse from an employer or hopeful friend? You showed up, gave me unsolicited “advice” to mak…

You do not seem to be attempting to engage in productive discussion but rather seem like you are trying to start a fight.

Hey why do you feel so uncomfortable saying anything whatsoever about race science while full-throatedly defending a person that ostensibly engages in that?

It’s a simple question: What do you think about this race science guy that you’re defending? “Good” would be an answer, “Bad but I support his speech” would be an answer, but a refusal to respond at all while still attacking me kind of reads as “I agree with race science but do not want to admit so publicly”

But you’re way smarter than me, so clearly your response is something so fancy that not even text posted on the internet could convey your nuanced definitely-not-racist opinion. It’s so fancy and nuanced that only folks of your… “caliber” could understand?

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone suffers from a psychotic episode, and you accuse him of something he does during that psychotic episode without mentioning anything about the fact that he was suffering from a psychotic episode, then that is unambiguously a lie by omission. People who suffer from psychosis do not behave in a reasonable manner. A psychosis is a medical emergency. It's like complaining that someone caused a traffic accident…

Is it unambiguously a lie if I were to say “Based off what I’ve read of this guy’s writing, this guy is a piece of shit racist who has openly admitted to being randomly abusive to strangers.”? Or am I morally obligated to say “He also appears from my perspective to leverage the language of mental illness to excuse himself and attack his critics.”? What if I don’t believe his narrative _ AT ALL _? Am I a liar then? Al…

Love how nobody has interacted with this post at all.

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fascinating because I didn’t ask why I’m getting downvoted, thanks for the uh, friendly unrequested… help with… internet points? It’s fascinating that you cannot actually respond to my original post at all, yet are compelled to post nonetheless. I admire your sense of civic duty, because it’s definitely not some silly nonsense meant to avoid discussing the subject matter that I’ve brought up in order to carry…

Why not just ask him when he stopped beating his wife, and be done with it?

Hahaha

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#205
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your answer was no, you cannot answer the question. Good luck in your future endeavors! Edit: it’s genuinely hilarious in a non-ironic actual belly laugh way that folks can show up and pretend to be Above It All when it comes to little details about their brazen statements in support of their uh, beliefs? Required line of discourse from an employer or hopeful friend? You showed up, gave me unsolicited “advice” to mak…

You do not seem to be attempting to engage in productive discussion but rather seem like you are trying to start a fight.

Hey why are you incapable of commenting about your personal feelings on race science? Is it a contractual issue from your employer? Stay silent if you’d prefer that I find out independently.

It’s genuinely not a hard prompt to follow

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account has been rate limited. At some point, you did something wrong, and noone in administration could even be bothered to warn or tell you about it. That cryptic error message is what gets shown to you instead of anything descriptive. The only way to get it lifted is to email them and pinky promise never again to do the thing they didn't tell you you did in the first place. See this thread: https://news.ycomb…

In that thread, you wrote: > I'll write something, it will accumulate a couple to several upvotes, and then, those upvotes all go away over the course of a few more hours, sometimes to be replaced by net downvotes. Maybe your initial upvotes come from one type of user and the later downvotes come from another type? Starting about six months ago, I noticed that a lot of low-quality comments were getting voted up on HN…

"Effort" is not a measure of the magnitude of how much a comment contributes to a discussion. Just because I don't feel like writing a dissertation does not mean my comment doesn't contain a worthy discussion point.

Even if true, it doesn't explain why it suddenly started happening some weeks ago and wasn't happening before.

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#207
post #7

> But in fact I had not intended to cancel Harris; I hadn’t intended anything at all. I would have attacked him, physically, had he been present, over a pure delusion, which I say with shame I can’t put into words. But I was not thinking that I would hurt his reputation. I was not thinking of cause and effect in any conventional way. I was not in a mental state where I was capable of understanding long-term consequen…

The author should know that this attitude does absolutely nothing for anyone. Throwing blame back on other people for not understanding your hardships is self-serving and a fundamentally dismissive attitude. Mental issues do not absolve actions. You feel that you are not fully responsible for your actions and that is actually fine - but as a person who caused harm you should own your ACTIONS, full stop. "I fucked up.…

Did you actually read the article? The author simply asks critics to give the full context (psychological problems) when attacking the author. The author clearly takes full responsibility for their actions.

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#208
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not seem to be attempting to engage in productive discussion but rather seem like you are trying to start a fight.

Hey why do you feel so uncomfortable saying anything whatsoever about race science while full-throatedly defending a person that ostensibly engages in that? It’s a simple question: What do you think about this race science guy that you’re defending? “Good” would be an answer, “Bad but I support his speech” would be an answer, but a refusal to respond at all while still attacking me kind of reads as “I agree with race…

Since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29221502 was only 6 days ago and you posted a huge number of flamewar comments to this thread, I've banned the account. You simply can't break the site guidelines like that, regardless of how right you are or feel you are.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that thread, you wrote: > I'll write something, it will accumulate a couple to several upvotes, and then, those upvotes all go away over the course of a few more hours, sometimes to be replaced by net downvotes. Maybe your initial upvotes come from one type of user and the later downvotes come from another type? Starting about six months ago, I noticed that a lot of low-quality comments were getting voted up on HN…

"Effort" is not a measure of the magnitude of how much a comment contributes to a discussion. Just because I don't feel like writing a dissertation does not mean my comment doesn't contain a worthy discussion point. Even if true, it doesn't explain why it suddenly started happening some weeks ago and wasn't happening before.

Does your reply argue semantics?

Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author should know that this attitude does absolutely nothing for anyone. Throwing blame back on other people for not understanding your hardships is self-serving and a fundamentally dismissive attitude. Mental issues do not absolve actions. You feel that you are not fully responsible for your actions and that is actually fine - but as a person who caused harm you should own your ACTIONS, full stop. "I fucked up.…

I believe the author did in fact say exactly this. > I did something very wrong, and the complication of my mental disorder should not excuse me entirely from blame for those actions. The degree to which any individual weighs that complication will have to be a matter of their individual ethical sense. Everyone has the right to make up their own mind about whether I should be forgiven or not. These issues are very co…

Amending an apology with an explanation of intent undermines the apology. Stuff like this:

> I am saying that it is a lie to say that I had a particular outcome in mind because I was operating under the antilogic of psychosis. I know because I’m me and I was there. I’m sorry if this is inconvenient for your efforts to develop simplistic moral readings about what happened, but I assure you my psychotic disorder is harder on me than it is on you...You have no idea what was happening in my brain and no right to speak as if you do.

This is the self-serving part that makes the apology meaningless to those who have been affected. It doesn't help that it is full of blaming ("it is a lie", "You have no idea") and condescending language ("I'm sorry if this is inconvenient...") This is a defense response and isn't an attempt to de-escalate the situation, respond with empathy or take any real responsibility.

If I ran over your dog with my car I wouldn't say I'm "a little bit responsible" but "actually your dog shouldn't have been running in the road", right?

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