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

The past is not true

sive.rs

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 362 posts

Re: The past is not true

#261

Post by brightlancer »

jstummbillig wrote: post #180
miiiiiike wrote: post #134

He did the right thing by seeking her out to apologize. The rest doesn’t hold water. “There’s a small chance that the chaos and ruin I’ve visited upon others may not be as bad as as those people made me think. Thanks, I knew my negligence/malice wasn’t that big a deal.” The worst people that I’ve ever met would love for that to be true. They’ll stab people in the back or work to damage people’s careers and when you c…

> Most people who have been told that they’ve caused actual harm, probably did. I think you might be missing the point of the story. To my understanding it could have easily have turned from a rosy past to a grim presence and it would have worked all the same. The point of the story is that, supposedly, the difference in perception is the entire difference. Something is not true, just because it's in the past. The ac…

> I think you might be missing the point of the story. To my understanding it could have easily have turned from a rosy past to a grim presence and it would have worked all the same.

I think _you_ might be missing the point of the story.

It "could have" but it didn't: the story was about he'd been punishing himself for 18 years but Really It Wasn't My Fault.

If it was about a situation where he found out 18 years ago a benign situation wasn't, that could teach a lesson about misunderstanding history. Here, everything else is overshadowed by the fact that "You can change history", where history is how he paralyzed a women by driving recklessly.

Re: The past is not true

#262

Post by blq10 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #252
bittercynic wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt that can never be repaid, I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

No, victims are not obligated to forgive you and neither is society. Sometimes people do bad things that cannot be undone and should not be forgotten. Sometimes that person doing the bad thing is you. Even if you didn't intend to harm someone, even if you did nothing wrong, even if you followed best known procedures and were fully attentive, you can still cause irreparable harm to someone else, and we shouldn't just…

We do that, it's called imprisoning people for a very long time.

This is generally unpopular among liberal and left leaning spaces, and is only marginally popular in right leaning ones.

Re: The past is not true

#263

Post by mrguyorama »

blq10 wrote: post #262
mrguyorama wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, victims are not obligated to forgive you and neither is society. Sometimes people do bad things that cannot be undone and should not be forgotten. Sometimes that person doing the bad thing is you. Even if you didn't intend to harm someone, even if you did nothing wrong, even if you followed best known procedures and were fully attentive, you can still cause irreparable harm to someone else, and we shouldn't just…

We do that, it's called imprisoning people for a very long time. This is generally unpopular among liberal and left leaning spaces, and is only marginally popular in right leaning ones.

My stance says nothing about punishment, imprisonment, or retribution, and is more about recognizing that there are things humans can do to each other that are irreversibly damaging, and that is not an okay thing to do, and recognizing that you have caused someone irreparable harm that will never be "fixed" is the emotionally mature stance. I'm not even saying you should wake up every day with a weight on your shoulders for killing someone, but rather it's something you should keep in mind, and victims owe nothing to the people that harmed them, and I do not believe expecting victims to tell people doing bad things "everything is okay" is beneficial to society. Being without forgiveness from those you harmed is not equivalent in any way to being in prison for life.

Re: The past is not true

#264

Post by 50 »

b450 wrote: post #58

Anytime some even vaguely anti-realist claim shows up in a HN headline, such as "the past is not true", a bunch of predictable and dull comments inevitably show up to perform some table thumping about reality being factual and objective, likely paired with some sanctimonious moral panic about the dangers of relativism (normally with a political slant one way or another). I think these comments are sincere and well-in…

worth looking into c.s. peirce's[1][2] pragmatism material

1: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Sowa-2/publication...

2: https://newcriterion.com/issues/1997/11/vulgar-rortyism

Re: The past is not true

#265

Post by vacuity »

chad1n wrote: post #237

Once, my physics teacher from high school told the class that the only history we should "trust" is the one that we rationally felt and maybe, the one that was told by our parents, while the other historical "facts" are just the result of tons and tons of interpretations of random people that you end up taking as universal "truths".

By that model I wouldn't be able to say anything about the Holocaust (extreme example, I know) or its implications.

Re: The past is not true

#266

Post by femiagbabiaka »

mrguyorama wrote: post #254
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the raison d'etre of the American justice system today. Of course, I also think it would be nice if someone who committed hate crimes was justly punished for it, but stepping back from this specific example, I think the bloodlust around what constitutes a "just punishment" goes too far in most cases.

My stance says nothing about punishment. Punishment has nothing to do with lack of forgiveness. Forgiveness is also not a necessity to treat other people, including those who have harmed you, as inherently flawed humans that deserve basic things like dignity. Forgiveness is a broken concept. Just because you can be a better person later in life should not absolve you of bad things you did before. This isn't a call fo…

It's an interesting idea. Law, justice systems, were all created in order to adjudicate that level of animosity and prevent it passing on to future generations. Holding on to a grudge, not even out of a sense of justice, but purely out of hate, seems like a path towards poor mental health. But I'm lucky enough to not have any hate that strong -- those I've chosen not to forgive I've instead chosen to forget, which is a privilege relative to the level of wrongs done.

Re: The past is not true

#268

Post by mike_hock »

bittercynic wrote: post #229
mrguyorama wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accept that sometimes when you do a bad thing that permanently harms someone else you don't deserve forgiveness (not everyone is christian FFS) and it's not wrong for that to follow you around forever. If that makes you uncomfortable, too fucking bad, don't irreversibly blind someone.

If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt that can never be repaid, I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

I'm gonna be a bitter cynic here and say that blindness also dominates every moment of the rest of the victim's life, so why shouldn't the perpetrator suffer the same fate?

Re: The past is not true

#269

Post by archon1410 »

metacritic12 wrote: post #166
miiiiiike wrote: post #134

He did the right thing by seeking her out to apologize. The rest doesn’t hold water. “There’s a small chance that the chaos and ruin I’ve visited upon others may not be as bad as as those people made me think. Thanks, I knew my negligence/malice wasn’t that big a deal.” The worst people that I’ve ever met would love for that to be true. They’ll stab people in the back or work to damage people’s careers and when you c…

I think misanthropes aren't being enabled by articles like the above. Many of them honestly don't care deep down about the damage they do. Others like Mark Wahlberg just "forgive themselves" for blinding a neighbor as a teen, even if their actual victim doesn't forgive them, so they can feel better about themselves mentally. https://time.com/3623630/mark-wahlberg-pardon/

Tangential: those who couldn't care less would be nihilists, or sadists. "Misanthrope" is better reserved for something else. I guess it all just blends together from certain standpoints... it shouldn't.
Post reply on HN