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Your previous comment is a good example of the larger issue at hand. Your comment, the Google incident but honestly current western society as a whole. It is a

by Smutte 9y ago

Your previous comment is a good example of the larger issue at hand. Your comment, the Google incident but honestly current western society as a whole. It is actually quite interesting to try to understand... What brings a person to make a statement such as yours, without having read the material in question..? Would the same person (you) also comment on how much he/she likes or dislikes food before having tried it? It seems to me this is not about having a "busy week" but a completely different view of truth, what is "right" and honestly when to talk and when to listen. I dont mean to continue bashing you, but your comment was such a clear and ironic example/display of what I think is a very big challenge for western society these days.

throwanem 9y ago
> What brings a person to make a statement such as yours, without having read the material in question Can't speak for any other person or any other case. But, here, I relied on a secondary source who has built a reputation with me for veracity even on contentious topics such as these, despite that he and I disagree on just about every prior in the world when it comes to matters of this sort. Unfortunately, he has disappointed me here, and I've thus made a factual error in an earlier comment which I have since acknowledged in a sibling thread to this one. I'm not sure what effect that's likely to have on the whole larger point about Western society that you're trying to draw here. Seems like a lot of stew from one very small oyster, especially considering you're coming with this at a gay man who spent an entire day's worth of HN participation, a few months back, arguing that gay marriage is a bad idea both for the individuals involved and for the state. Came out net karma positive on it, too, which I found surprising. But I think there's a great deal in my prior commentary here that would surprise you, had you but bothered to look before you went running off on whatever this tangent is about how I'm an example of everything that's wrong with Western society, or I'm privileging my individual opinion of how things must be over the facts of the matter, or whatever. If you want to talk about irony, how about the irony that inheres in making exactly the same mistake against which you inveigh when you see me make it, having incidentally failed to notice that, by the time you got around to trying to set me up as some kind of example of a failure in society as a whole, I'd already seen the error called out as such, requested substantiation of the counterclaim, received same, and clearly recognized that I'd erred? That seems pretty ironic to me!
- Smutte 9y ago
  It seems you interpreted my comment as a critique aimed at you as an individual and I can understand why you did that. However it was certainly not my goal and Im sorry if you felt attacked. I tried to be clear both that your comment (i.e. not you as an individual) was a good example and I also finished my post by saying that I didnt mean to continue bashing you (as an individual). I wrote that because I actually had read your other comments. That was why I added the last sentence. I think this is getting a bit OT. Again, sorry if you felt personally attacked. That was not what I was after. If you take a step back from the posts and just read them for what they are... maybe you could see that it is a pretty good example of the drama we see around this. The Google VP of Diversity made (imho) quite a similar comment in her statement as you did. She did, however, not detract it as far as I know.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    I mean I interpreted the comment as individual critique because that was how you wrote it. If you didn't intend it as personal criticism, then you have a serious problem with your style. Would you like to separate the point you're trying to make from the ad hominem with which you first sought to make it, and try again? Perhaps you have something of substantial merit to say on this point, and perhaps you do not. Either way, conflating it with some kind of sideswipe at what you imagine to be the person of your interlocutor does not help you make your case - especially when, as I suspect may be true here, you're trying to argue in defense of intellectual honesty. What do you imagine it helping, to make such an argument in so flawed a fashion as this?
    - Smutte 9y ago
      The actual mistake that you yourself realized that you made is, imho, a good example of what is happening in this drama. James gets accused of something that he really didnt write and people refer to things that are grossly misinterpreted or just plain wrong and clearly not in the actual document (in more general terms the characterizations could be described as lies or misrepresentations of the truth as per my original comment). Just as your attempt to explain why ge got attacked. A clear difference between your comment and many in this drama is that you retracted your statement and the VP of Google didnt (afaik) and that is good on you! But I never talked about you as an individual in the first place so thats kind of irrelevant to my point. You can call it "unfair" of me to single out your first comment and not your retraction, but again my point wasnt to judge you as an individual. It was to show how that specific comment (partly out of context) was a good example of what is going on.

by Smutte 9y ago

throwanem 9y ago

> What brings a person to make a statement such as yours, without having read the material in question Can't speak for any other person or any other case. But, here, I relied on a secondary source who has built a reputation with me for veracity even on contentious topics such as these, despite that he and I disagree on just about every prior in the world when it comes to matters of this sort. Unfortunately, he has disappointed me here, and I've thus made a factual error in an earlier comment which I have since acknowledged in a sibling thread to this one. I'm not sure what effect that's likely to have on the whole larger point about Western society that you're trying to draw here. Seems like a lot of stew from one very small oyster, especially considering you're coming with this at a gay man who spent an entire day's worth of HN participation, a few months back, arguing that gay marriage is a bad idea both for the individuals involved and for the state. Came out net karma positive on it, too, which I found surprising. But I think there's a great deal in my prior commentary here that would surprise you, had you but bothered to look before you went running off on whatever this tangent is about how I'm an example of everything that's wrong with Western society, or I'm privileging my individual opinion of how things must be over the facts of the matter, or whatever. If you want to talk about irony, how about the irony that inheres in making exactly the same mistake against which you inveigh when you see me make it, having incidentally failed to notice that, by the time you got around to trying to set me up as some kind of example of a failure in society as a whole, I'd already seen the error called out as such, requested substantiation of the counterclaim, received same, and clearly recognized that I'd erred? That seems pretty ironic to me!

Smutte 9y ago
It seems you interpreted my comment as a critique aimed at you as an individual and I can understand why you did that. However it was certainly not my goal and Im sorry if you felt attacked. I tried to be clear both that your comment (i.e. not you as an individual) was a good example and I also finished my post by saying that I didnt mean to continue bashing you (as an individual). I wrote that because I actually had read your other comments. That was why I added the last sentence. I think this is getting a bit OT. Again, sorry if you felt personally attacked. That was not what I was after. If you take a step back from the posts and just read them for what they are... maybe you could see that it is a pretty good example of the drama we see around this. The Google VP of Diversity made (imho) quite a similar comment in her statement as you did. She did, however, not detract it as far as I know.
- throwanem 9y ago
  I mean I interpreted the comment as individual critique because that was how you wrote it. If you didn't intend it as personal criticism, then you have a serious problem with your style. Would you like to separate the point you're trying to make from the ad hominem with which you first sought to make it, and try again? Perhaps you have something of substantial merit to say on this point, and perhaps you do not. Either way, conflating it with some kind of sideswipe at what you imagine to be the person of your interlocutor does not help you make your case - especially when, as I suspect may be true here, you're trying to argue in defense of intellectual honesty. What do you imagine it helping, to make such an argument in so flawed a fashion as this?
  - Smutte 9y ago
    The actual mistake that you yourself realized that you made is, imho, a good example of what is happening in this drama. James gets accused of something that he really didnt write and people refer to things that are grossly misinterpreted or just plain wrong and clearly not in the actual document (in more general terms the characterizations could be described as lies or misrepresentations of the truth as per my original comment). Just as your attempt to explain why ge got attacked. A clear difference between your comment and many in this drama is that you retracted your statement and the VP of Google didnt (afaik) and that is good on you! But I never talked about you as an individual in the first place so thats kind of irrelevant to my point. You can call it "unfair" of me to single out your first comment and not your retraction, but again my point wasnt to judge you as an individual. It was to show how that specific comment (partly out of context) was a good example of what is going on.