Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apology

felleisen.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 282 posts

Re: Apology

#171

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

> Academia used to be a place for misfits who don't understand social conventions.

When and where was that?

Re: Apology

#172

Post by jolux »

skissane wrote: post #169
jolux wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between finding it challenging to fit in and being a bully though, and let's try not to collapse that.

What is "bullying"? Here's one definition [0]: "Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm." Was Felleisen's behaviour a " deliberate misuse of power... that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm"? I don't know this guy personally and all I've rea…

I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were. Many people find his behavior extremely unpleasant, belligerent, mean, etc, as evidenced by the thread on Butterick’s original post, and the OP in this thread, describing being yelled at and insulted. Having a disorder may be a partial explanation for why someone behaves a certain way. It’s not an excuse for behaving in a way that other people find antisocial, and it certainly doesn’t bind others to tolerate that behavior.

Ultimately even if you actually could not act any differently because of a disorder, others would still not be required to tolerate you. This is a consequence of being social animals, we set expectations for behavior and we enforce them. If you can’t play the game, you can’t exactly expect people who can to stop playing for your sake.

Re: Apology

#173

Post by Deestan »

teddyh wrote: post #156
howolduis wrote: post #8

apology? nothing of what I read sounds like an apology. You basically said that your friends told you that what you did looked bad, and based on that, you feel sorry that he "felt" hurt. Then go on saying how good and gracious you were to him? c'mon... edit: typo

See, this is why many powerful people have a policy of never apologizing for anything. To critics, no apology is enough, and any attempt at an apology only serves to prove (to critics) how insincere the person is. There is no way to win. The mere fact that the person here is trying to apologize indicates that the person is probably honestly trying to make amends. This is not a behavior you should discourage, if what…

These powerful people you refer to are treating this all as a game. As if apologies are only a tool to adjust public perception.

And most of the time such people really only do give calculated, insincere apology-shaped statements. Like a child forced to say "sorry" or they won't get their dessert. These apologies are rightfully criticized, but sadly for the most part they do their intended job.

If you are sorry and want to improve, and give a proper apology as a matter of integrity, the grumblings of some bystanders should not matter.

---

That being said, I think howoldius' criticism is overly nitpicky but generally valid. Felleisen sounds genuine, but writing an apology on a post-it on his own fridge and not telling anyone about it, and only acknowledging a small part of the problem as a one-off thing, isn't particularly absolving.

Re: Apology

#174

Post by Guidii »

jwcacces wrote: post #19

The only one who can judge the worthiness of this apology is Matthew Butterick himself. As for me, this sounds like the first steps of the self realization process Matthias should go through in an effort to better himself. Let's not judge it to harshly. Rather let's encourage him to keep on walking down that path of self improvement that we all should be on.

For insight into the larger context here (all the conversations and interactions, along with Matthew's interpretation) see https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/why-i-no-longer-contrib...

Re: Apology

#175

Post by yellow_lead »

dang wrote: post #105
yellow_lead wrote: post #86

I'm curious why this was flagged. If the discussion yesterday didn't break HN rules, I'm not sure why the response would. I suppose both of them technically fall into "off-topic" discussion though.

Possibly some readers are tired of the repetition, and they're not wrong [1] - that's why we downweight follow-up stories [2]. However, we make exceptions when there's significant new information (SNI) [3], which basically amounts to: is there enough of a diff from the previous thread to support a substantially new discussion? Diffs are what's interesting [4]. In this case you could call it either way: the fact that…

Thanks for the explanation

Re: Apology

#176

Post by freeopinion »

123123as1asd12 wrote: post #151
jolux wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m autistic too, and I think what happens is that autistic people who also happen to be brilliant are not expected to learn how to interact well with others to the same extent that autistic folk of average intelligence are, so it ends up being on them whether they care enough about being kind and gentle to others to learn how to interact congenially. I know a lot of autistic people and most of them are nice but some…

The other side of this is that some of us do end up trying to fit in, hiding it but not well enough... Just come off as assholes or socially inept and hurting peoples feelings a lot more than if you were obviously on the spectrum,

Why don't we just assume that everyone with such an abrasive personality is very high functioning spectrum. Should we cut everybody slack, now? Is there a line where we let some have a pass and others not?

Re: Apology

#177

Post by skissane »

jolux wrote: post #172
skissane wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "bullying"? Here's one definition [0]: "Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm." Was Felleisen's behaviour a " deliberate misuse of power... that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm"? I don't know this guy personally and all I've rea…

I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were. Many people find his behavior extremely unpleasant, belligerent, mean, etc, as evidenced by the thread on Butterick’s original post, and the OP in this thread, describing being yelled at and insulted. Having a disorder may be a partial explanation for why someone b…

> I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were.

Why are intentions irrelevant? If someone is hurting me (or others), I do consider the question of whether they are doing so intentionally or inadvertently to be highly relevant to my judgement of their behaviour and how I am going to respond to it.

Re: Apology

#178

Post by WalterBright »

slibhb wrote: post #139
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

> what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven?

Just do not take their behavior personally. So what if he insults you. It takes two to make an offense - one to give offense, the other to take offense. Don't take offense, and there is no offense.

> makes students cry

There's no crying in baseball.

If you live to be my age, you'll experience the death of people you love. Save the crying for that.

Re: Apology

#179

Post by lmm »

fatbird wrote: post #157
slibhb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

It's not actually a hard problem. We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic. We don't need to exile the brilliant monsters; we just need to not make allowances for them. If they can learn to meet norms of civility, we can welcome them; if not, we can ignore them. How many brilliant people have we lost access to because they were driven out of the field by someone like Felle…

> We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic.

We absolutely are, especially with the all-encompassing definitions of toxicity that are popular lately.

Re: Apology

#180

Post by thinknboutstuff »

underwater wrote: post #158
slibhb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

Someone doesn't immediately become a brilliant asshole. Both skillsets take time to evolve and solidify. If we stop making excuses for people – "that's just they way they are, you know coders, they just don't have social skills, he's an asshole but the company would be in trouble without him" – then may be these people would get the feedback that they need before it becomes a problem of this magnitude.

Seriously, if you're that brilliant you can develop some basic social skills. And from what I'm getting from this thread, we are talking fundamental thinking before you engage in a social interaction skills.

It's ok not to be great at everything, but it's not acceptable to be toxic on the basis of your other skills. At the very least, sometimes that means the genius team member needs to just shut up and choose their battles.

And the first step for many of these type of asshole genius types can be to talk less. Once they master choosing their battles, they can work on how they approach the battles they choose to take.

Post reply on HN