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Be Kind

boz.com

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Re: Be Kind

#311

Post by INTPenis »

thisisboz wrote: post #106
aristus wrote: post #59

This is a fantastic article from Boz. I have to be blunt in my criticism, however, as I imagine Boz would expect and appreciate. I had a few run-ins with him in the early 2010s and I don't see much evidence that he learned from these experiences or changed his basic working pattern. Or maybe he was even more raw before I met him. :) I learned very early on not to have anything Boz wanted nor to cross him. It's hard t…

Yup, this post is about the start of a journey that is still ongoing for me. It still takes work and I still lose focus and do poorly and tried to call that out at the end. To your specific point, I probably was even worse in 2008 than what you experienced in 2010. That's probably true at every point since. I'm getting better, but I am sure you can find people even in the last year who would say this post doesn't ref…

I assume you already know this but it's not an easy journey and it will take time.

I am on the same journey as you and my conclusion is that I am essentially a creature driven by emotions. My emotions get the better of me and I revert back to my old state where I will bluntly tell someone how I feel about them and their work.

Just last week I had to bring appology chocolates to work. Self improvement was never easy.

Really, the main change I see now is that I almost immediately regret my words or actions, but I still have to work on the immediate apology that should follow that regret.

Re: Be Kind

#312

Post by mattlutze »

latchkey wrote: post #179
jorgearturo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about. I admire PGs work too, but don't you think this criteria would introduce to the community a herd-like mindset of following perceived moral leaders instead of evaluating ideas for their own standing?

Sorry, I don't understand the relationship you're trying to make between votes and mindset. If someone important likes what I said, I'm going to think that I made a good comment. If they dislike it, then I'm going to reconsider what I said a bit more deeply. Neither of these would change my mindset from a simple up/down vote. I'd want a comment or discussion to take place first.

The previous is suggesting opinion on threads would bias around popular personalities on the site. pg is popular here, others are too, but not all are universally "important" to the world. Publicizing to a greater extent these personalities' thoughts on subjects will drive out other viewpoints, as commenters self-edit in hopes of those up-votes.

In the case of your example, if someone important likes what you said and you feel rewarded for that, you're more likely to say that (or something similar) again, regardless of the objective merit of the statement.

Say your comment was "Java is stupid". it only gets 3 upvotes, but XYZ likes it. You feel validated, so next time the subject comes up you say it again. Commentary was then shaped by a personality rather than the merit of the commentary.

Re: Be Kind

#313

Post by HolyHaddock »

mreiland wrote: post #277
roflc0ptic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly believe cooperation yields better long term outcomes for everyone, and because of that I pick low cost pro-social strategies over low cost anti-social strategies. I don't frame this as "trying to maximize use out of people". I think about it as sparing people from having unnecessary unpleasant interactions. I see telling people they're wrong as selfish. It's almost never necessary, and in a probabilistic s…

Why is it Nadya's responsibility to persuade or convince?

A reasonable question. Perhaps it's not and there's no reason for anyone to take any time to say anything when someone's wrong.

But if they do take that time and say something, then it's not unreasonable to consider the goal. Is it to demonstrate superiority and massage ego? Unkindness works well. If it's to help someone correct a mistake, do better next time or bring their conversational partners thinking closer to theirs on a subject, then kindness is likely to work better.

Personally, I prefer to work with someone who's right and delivers the message in a way they think I and my other colleagues will respond well to, than someone who's right and delivers the message thoughtlessly, or in a way designed to maximise their own pleasure.

Re: Be Kind

#314

Post by zxxz »

pekk wrote: post #301
zxxz wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women are not weaker? Ofcourse, physically they are. Otherwise why do we have sport events segregated by sex? There is a reason why they are weaker sex. This one more instance how everyone has been educated/trained to pretend that women are not weaker. And how women are educated to feel offended if they are called weaker sex.

That has nothing to do with the earlier discussion, which wasn't about physical strength and wasn't about women being offended. You made a claim, and you were challenged to provide any support of that claim. You have not provided any support for it; and where you could have admitted you were unsure or withdrawn the claim, you tried to change the subject. This is silly, and I'm done with this thread.

Remember, you have stated that women are not weaker and even asked for a proof. When I provided a proof for physical strength, you say something incoherent.

Ok - So let's see if women are equally strong mentally at least. How many great thinkers, world leaders, mathematicians or philosophers are out there who are women? You might say - oh they were suppressed through ages, which again proves that point that they are weaker. No point in not taking things at their face value. What's wrong for someone to accept they are weaker if they really are?

Re: Be Kind

#315

Post by YTc0YjY4MzBl »

eclipxe wrote: post #310
YTc0YjY4MzBl wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every interaction in life is a transaction of some sort." What about when a mother kisses her baby's head? What about when a friend offers a hug to someone who has just lost a loved one? What about when a kid gives a friendly smile to the kid who always gets bullied? Are those transactions? Did those people get "good deals"? Now I'm just some hyperbole-prone kid who isn't qualified to give advice to a Life Veteran l…

Of course those are all transactions. The helping hand, the caring kiss from the depths of motherly love, etc - they are win-win transactions. The baby gets comfort and love and the mother gets a dose of oxytocin to encourage further bonding. The friend offering a hug provides comfort and gets the good feelings of helping/offering comfort. Win-wins, but still a transaction, an exchange of value. Time, attention, love…

Surely you would agree that the amount of oxytocin the mother gets is not determined by the quality of her "sales strategy."

Thank you for clarifying that you were not advocating the rather shallow, exploitative, and depressing approach to life that I misinterpreted from your previous comment.

Re: Be Kind

#316

Post by lumpypua »

salgernon wrote: post #78
baby wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why smileys were born. But some people tend to be elitist and frown upon them. :)

The effectiveness of emoticons has been greatly diminished by interfaces that rewrite them as emoji. While I can cope with someone adding an accent to their writing with an emoitcon, when it turns into an emoji I completely discount the writing. Something about the yellow pacman face in various poses ruins a conversation for me. Oh, and it blows to copy-and-paste code into one of those blasted chat programs... hatefu…

I agree the rewriting is obnoxious.

It's a generational thing tho. 😁 Try and find a college aged girl that doesn't use emojis. Only ones that don't are "conscientious objectors", and to most people in that age group and younger emoji are as ambient as air.

Re: Be Kind

#317

Post by jorgearturo »

mattlutze wrote: post #312
latchkey wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't understand the relationship you're trying to make between votes and mindset. If someone important likes what I said, I'm going to think that I made a good comment. If they dislike it, then I'm going to reconsider what I said a bit more deeply. Neither of these would change my mindset from a simple up/down vote. I'd want a comment or discussion to take place first.

The previous is suggesting opinion on threads would bias around popular personalities on the site. pg is popular here, others are too, but not all are universally "important" to the world. Publicizing to a greater extent these personalities' thoughts on subjects will drive out other viewpoints, as commenters self-edit in hopes of those up-votes. In the case of your example, if someone important likes what you said an…

I was trying to be crystal clear. But I liked your conciseness more than my long-winded reasoning break down.

Re: Be Kind

#318

Post by kaeluka »

iamcreasy wrote: post #194

I am an Engineering major(I have been programming since I was 13), and I have a bad habit of over-analyzing everything. I never skim over the details, and I always try to dig into a topic as much as I can to make sure my interpretations are correct. Because of this attitude, I can not enjoy fantasy novels. They ask me to bridge the gap between multiple paragraphs with insufficient information. But at the same time, I…

I needed to learn that others are interesting even though they have nothing to say about what's on my mind right now.

From that came everything else.

Re: Be Kind

#319

Post by mreiland »

jorgearturo wrote: post #303
mreiland wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being kind also mean being more open-minded. Should I be more open-minded about climate change deniers when NASA has stated multiple times human activity is affecting it? I have better things to do with my time.

If you don't want to waste your time with climate change deniers, just skip and don't address them, that's cool, life is short no doubt about that. If you find yourself in a situation where somehow you DID address them (maybe because you care about the world, and you DO sound like someone reasonable that cares about important matters), that means you already decided to use some time on them climate change deniers, so…

That's a strawman. I specifically quoted someone talking about being open-minded, I specifically used the verbiage 'open-minded' in my response, and you start talking about taking the time to "address an issue".

What if you had taken the time to be more fair to my post than that?

Re: Be Kind

#320

Post by jorgearturo »

lotharbot wrote: post #268
fr0styMatt2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the upvote/downvote system here provides enough feedback to the person being voted. There just isn't the information there. For the longest time I was confused at seeing down-voted comments because I mentally assumed that downvotes mean "this is a troll comment / this is some kind of abusive comment". Not so. Also (and I've said this before so apologies for repeating myself!), if downvotes do mean 'disa…

From what I understand, upvotes signify "this adds to the conversation" and downvotes signify "this subtracts from the conversation" -- it's a stronger sentiment than disagreement, but weaker than trolling or abuse (which is what flags are for.) If a comment is disagreeable but worthwhile, my preference is to give a substantive response. If a comment is value-subtracting, even if I agree with the sentiment, I'll down…

Well then, it seems to me that you have a very healthy approach to votes and flags.

It should be common sense but I suspect not everyone with the ability to downvote has such considerations and the HN guidelines¹ offer very little comment on that.

I'm guessing that mods think that once you've risen above the downvote reputation threshold you must be qualified and should have a good criteria on how to use this newly given privilege.

I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do their job, but maybe it would be useful to add some guidelines for that too (Voting, specifically), I think I like your guidelines.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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