5 ms·

> complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered Even in that case, at least in the US, one must do the equivalent of bringing the solution. Lawsui

by mmt 8y ago

> complaining in a court of law about some harm you suffered Even in that case, at least in the US, one must do the equivalent of bringing the solution. Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both [1]. They can't merely be a complaint that open-endedly asks the court to decide the solution. The exception is for criminal cases, and those are brought by the government, not individuals. > But you should never "Never" is an extremely high standard, superlative, even, which makes it difficult to agree with. > make someone feel like their complaint doesn’t deserve to be heard unless they also have a ready made solution in hand too. This strikes me as a strawman, because the discussion isn't really about people's feelings, whether they deserve to be heard, nor if a particular solution is ready made (as opposed to merely a proposed, initial version). Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends. In that context, the advice is to provide an alternative solution, in addition to criticisms of that trend. Since that advice is based on the giver's personal experience with the relative receptivity to such challenges, at least in a particular company, that makes it valid advice. You may well feel that it is somehow morally or ethically wrong for the people in that company to have been less receptive to a challenge in the absence of an alternate solution, but they still were. Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice. [1] Also declarative relief, but that's rarely in response to something that can easily be likened to a complaint, as we're discussing in this context.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both” I’m only trying to talk about how we perceive people bringing complaints. I think you misunderstood and it’s my fault for choosing a needlessly complicated example to include. I’m saying it should not matter whether a complaint is big, small, formal, or informal (that’s why I listed a range of possible situations when someone might have to bring a complaint). Across all those cases, the social norm of treating the person as if their complaint deserves to be considered should not be predicated on whether they offer a solution at the same time. (Which is different than any legal requirement or other non-norm aspect.) In other words, your point about asking for specific types of relief in a legal complaint is not addressing whether people believe the party bringing the complaint is just being a whiner or something, which is all I ever wrote about. Granted though, maybe I should have chosen a non-legal example, like complaining to a referee in a sports competition, to get the point across about the variety of situations without dragging in possible confusion over red herring legal specifics. Or maybe an example with an arbiter determining the relief, if any, in an employment dispute or something. > “Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends.” I was never responding to the OP, only the parent comment above mine that talked about using a rule of thumb of not bringing complaints, only solutions, and specifically mentioned it was heard in a corporate context. That combination of details seems appropriate for counterpoints that if a corporate environment codifies a culture that dissuades complaints by pressuring people to first have solutions in hand, it’s a very bad thing that will hurt marginalized people (and in a corporate setting that might even be the intended effect). Whether a local rule of thumb making the shy person feel unwelcome to point out a deficiency in some work artifact during a team meeting, or making someone feel they can’t talk about rude behavior of their desk neighbor because they don’t have a seating change proposal or they really like their seat already. The situations where people need to feel free to complain without proposing a solution are constant, pervasive, all around us, and often involve people we don’t consider or see because of biases or other blind spots. > “Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.” I believe that is actually does explicitly invalidate the advice. Obviously, others are free to agree or disagree with the moral point of view behind my comment (e.g. that policies which might discourage suffering people from expressing their suffering are wrong), and then choose for themselves which part of the advice they prefer. That’s why we’re discussing it in comments. But that doesn’t invalidate my original disagreement of the parent comment, nor have any affect on the usefulness of me writing up counterpoint comments that express dissent to that proposed rule of thumb.
- mmt 8y ago
  OK.. I think I now understand what you're trying to get across, and it may have to be one of those "agree to disagree" situations. In the spirit of HN furthering of mutual understanding, I'll try to summarize your position: You feel the original advice, in essence, serves to perpetuate the immoral, current standard of behavior and is, therefore, invalid. (Whereas I, on the other hand, am saying that the advice narrowly serves the OP's immediate, pragmatic interests and is, therefore, valid.) Is that a fair distillation?
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    Yes, definitely. If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case of persuading people to give up certain modern tech, then that's fine, maybe it's good advice, maybe not, but it's not a morality or "general rule" sort of topic. The comment is not written that way at all and it's not implied from context, especially because the comment talks about it as advice heard in a corporate setting, which begs the interpretation of a generic corporate policy or something "team players" will do, etc. It is specifically because the parent comment was written that way (a generic heuristic for corporate settings) that I felt it was useful to offer a disagreeing perspective and highlight that it could be quite harmful to encourage adopting such a thing as a generic "corporate setting" rule of thumb.
    - mmt 8y ago
      > Yes, definitely. In that case, as I said, I see your point, and I think we merely disagree on fundamentals, which is fine. > If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case At the risk of breaking the HN taboo of bringing up voting as well as potentially sparking another meta-discussion, I'll say this: The consistent downvoting combined with the lengthy sub-thread with the OC insisting, in essence, that the context was sufficient to convey intent (and subsequently confirming original intent), in the absence of disclaimers, suggests that your position here may be tending toward the unreasonable. This isn't to say that you're categorically wrong and that nobody else could possibly intepret it differently, just that it might be beyond a "reasonable person" standard of interpretation. Personally, I prefer being required to exert extra effort to gain context, so as to have writing be more succinct and free of disclaimers. Perhaps most importantly, though, your belaboring of this point had, at least for me, distracted from your main thesis. It probably still does for some readers, and I find that unfortunate for HN, as diversity of thought is something that I believe helps us all.

by mmt 8y ago

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> “Lawsuits have to ask for some kind of relief, be it monetary, injuctive, or both” I’m only trying to talk about how we perceive people bringing complaints. I think you misunderstood and it’s my fault for choosing a needlessly complicated example to include. I’m saying it should not matter whether a complaint is big, small, formal, or informal (that’s why I listed a range of possible situations when someone might have to bring a complaint). Across all those cases, the social norm of treating the person as if their complaint deserves to be considered should not be predicated on whether they offer a solution at the same time. (Which is different than any legal requirement or other non-norm aspect.) In other words, your point about asking for specific types of relief in a legal complaint is not addressing whether people believe the party bringing the complaint is just being a whiner or something, which is all I ever wrote about. Granted though, maybe I should have chosen a non-legal example, like complaining to a referee in a sports competition, to get the point across about the variety of situations without dragging in possible confusion over red herring legal specifics. Or maybe an example with an arbiter determining the relief, if any, in an employment dispute or something. > “Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends.” I was never responding to the OP, only the parent comment above mine that talked about using a rule of thumb of not bringing complaints, only solutions, and specifically mentioned it was heard in a corporate context. That combination of details seems appropriate for counterpoints that if a corporate environment codifies a culture that dissuades complaints by pressuring people to first have solutions in hand, it’s a very bad thing that will hurt marginalized people (and in a corporate setting that might even be the intended effect). Whether a local rule of thumb making the shy person feel unwelcome to point out a deficiency in some work artifact during a team meeting, or making someone feel they can’t talk about rude behavior of their desk neighbor because they don’t have a seating change proposal or they really like their seat already. The situations where people need to feel free to complain without proposing a solution are constant, pervasive, all around us, and often involve people we don’t consider or see because of biases or other blind spots. > “Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.” I believe that is actually does explicitly invalidate the advice. Obviously, others are free to agree or disagree with the moral point of view behind my comment (e.g. that policies which might discourage suffering people from expressing their suffering are wrong), and then choose for themselves which part of the advice they prefer. That’s why we’re discussing it in comments. But that doesn’t invalidate my original disagreement of the parent comment, nor have any affect on the usefulness of me writing up counterpoint comments that express dissent to that proposed rule of thumb.

mmt 8y ago
OK.. I think I now understand what you're trying to get across, and it may have to be one of those "agree to disagree" situations. In the spirit of HN furthering of mutual understanding, I'll try to summarize your position: You feel the original advice, in essence, serves to perpetuate the immoral, current standard of behavior and is, therefore, invalid. (Whereas I, on the other hand, am saying that the advice narrowly serves the OP's immediate, pragmatic interests and is, therefore, valid.) Is that a fair distillation?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  Yes, definitely. If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case of persuading people to give up certain modern tech, then that's fine, maybe it's good advice, maybe not, but it's not a morality or "general rule" sort of topic. The comment is not written that way at all and it's not implied from context, especially because the comment talks about it as advice heard in a corporate setting, which begs the interpretation of a generic corporate policy or something "team players" will do, etc. It is specifically because the parent comment was written that way (a generic heuristic for corporate settings) that I felt it was useful to offer a disagreeing perspective and highlight that it could be quite harmful to encourage adopting such a thing as a generic "corporate setting" rule of thumb.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > Yes, definitely. In that case, as I said, I see your point, and I think we merely disagree on fundamentals, which is fine. > If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case At the risk of breaking the HN taboo of bringing up voting as well as potentially sparking another meta-discussion, I'll say this: The consistent downvoting combined with the lengthy sub-thread with the OC insisting, in essence, that the context was sufficient to convey intent (and subsequently confirming original intent), in the absence of disclaimers, suggests that your position here may be tending toward the unreasonable. This isn't to say that you're categorically wrong and that nobody else could possibly intepret it differently, just that it might be beyond a "reasonable person" standard of interpretation. Personally, I prefer being required to exert extra effort to gain context, so as to have writing be more succinct and free of disclaimers. Perhaps most importantly, though, your belaboring of this point had, at least for me, distracted from your main thesis. It probably still does for some readers, and I find that unfortunate for HN, as diversity of thought is something that I believe helps us all.