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The author seems about a decade younger than me and "raised" isn't the word I would use for myself, but I doubt I would have made it if not for the friends I ma

The author seems about a decade younger than me and "raised" isn't the word I would use for myself, but I doubt I would have made it if not for the friends I made and the things I learned that way. The thing about pulling yourself up out of a bad situation is that you learn to be usually very deliberate in how you talk about it and what you talk about. People who've never really known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually just better not to create the opportunity. If you feel you've noticed an odd ellipticality in accounts like these, the vague sense of something going unsaid, it's this. If that's all you've noticed, better not to pry.

ehnto 2y ago
Well said, something I had not yet put to words. It came up on HN recently, about how work is a place where it can be best to leave some things unsaid, because it invites assumptions about your character and capabilities that might not be true, or positive.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Any quasi-public forum it's probably best to leave controversial and nuanced opinions on things unsaid especially under your real name. (But even under a supposedly anonymous handle, it's probably worth asking if you really need to post this.)
- throwanem 2y ago
  That isn't even unreasonable as a cultural norm, although it is that those who most firmly enforce it also cherish silly habits like saying "bring your whole self to work." The expectation of not oversharing needs to be met by a commitment of not over-asking, but I suppose that's really too much to expect in an age so degraded that all the obligations across lines of social class are understood to run in only one direction.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    I once heard, in a different century, that the "modal restaurant script" differed between the US and the UK in that in the former, the waitstaff asks the diners a bunch of (to a cultural outsider) overly prying questions, while in the latter, the diners ask them of the waitstaff. Still true? Never was?
    - Fuzzwah 2y ago
      Australian who has spent time living in the US: yes, the difference is still true today between how waiters at an Australian restaurant and servers at a US restaurant interact with customers. Waiters wait. If you need anything you make eye contact and they come over. Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc. I've always thought it was due to tipping. Servers need to be active and show they're being attentive in order to get tips.
      - theshackleford 2y ago
        > I've always thought it was due to tipping I've been bothered far more by wait staff in Australia than I ever have in the US. Must be down to the location and the restaurant.
        Loughla 2y ago
        It's also interesting to think about it when you say bothered. I'm super american, born and raised and now living in the western Midwest. When the wait staff talk to me, I'm genuinely interested in hearing about them. I like meeting new people, even if those people are being paid to meet me. I legitimately enjoy learning about the lives of the people I meet, even briefly. Is that an American thing? Is that a bad thing?
        throwanem 2y ago
        I don't think it's a bad thing, but it is most strongly a Midwestern and Southeastern thing, and I'm from the South. Boston might give a different answer.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  Keep your identity small. https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html (Not saying I agree or disagree with the essay but it seemed topical)
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    I think the central takeaway of this essay is dead wrong, you should aim for the exact opposite. The fewer labels or identities you have yourself, the more strongly you hold on to them and the more fragile your personality. If the only thing you identify yourself by is your job and that gets taken away from you in a downturn, never to return, what's left? A lot of people who are in that situation and don't have other selves to identify with struggle strongly. On the other hand, people who identify with more facets of what makes them them have a lot of options to fall back on. You're not only your job, but you're also a parent, a child, an athlete, a hobbyist, etc. Even if you stop being one of those things, you keep being all the rest, and that gives fortitude and resilience.
    - throwanem 2y ago
      In this connection it seems fit to note that "I am someone who found ways to overcome the problems that I faced" is also a statement of identity.
    - tbrownaw 2y ago
      If your self-image includes the structure of the world around you, or the behavior of people other than yourself, you'll run into problems. I enjoy working with computers. I happen to work at a particular company doing computer things. Only one of those is an innate "what makes me, me" thing. Even if computers didn't exist, I'd still probably tend to gravitate towards things that are fun for the same sorts of reasons.
      - lll-o-lll 2y ago
        And if you hit a physical or health issue that takes that away, or dramatically reduces the amount of time you can spend on it? This isn’t hypothetical; I have worked with people who’ve had to quit this form of work for the following reasons: Carpal tunnel that prevented using keyboard and mouse, brain injury, neck injury that made it impossible to sit at a computer (or desk), long Covid and “brain fog”. I imagine that vision impairment might lead to the same. If any of these were to happen to me, would I still have my sense of self? Are we more than our love of technology?
tbrownaw 2y ago
People with different life experiences should just be quietly written off due to the faulty assumptions they might make out of ignorance. > If you feel you've noticed an odd ellipticality in accounts like these, the vague sense of something going unsaid, it's this. If that's all you've noticed, better not to pry. In what context? Work acquaintances chatting over coffee at the office? Parasocial public discussions on the internet? Intentionally public discussions? Friends talking all night over drinks?
- throwanem 2y ago
  You give the impression here of having taken something I said quite personally. I hope I may be forgiven for not yet really understanding what or why. Likewise, my responses may be somewhat less on point for the distraction. The account under discussion is attributed public speech on the Internet. In other contexts, other conventions apply. There are about as many such contexts as there are kinds of relationships between humans. That's about as general as I can really make it. If you're asking for a recommendation, it would be twofold. First, if a question seems like it might be taken as nosy, try to find a way to reframe it, or don't ask it at all. Second, when someone seems to persistently misunderstand something you're saying or asking in a more personal than professional context, consider that they may be intentionally deflecting a question or subject which they consider inappropriate to address in that setting.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    The bit I quoted seemed to be saying that curiosity and wanting to understand things are bad. Maybe that can be off topic and so out of place at work, but in online arguments prompted by something intentionally made public?
    - throwanem 2y ago
      I'm talking about behavior. What motivates that behavior isn't relevant. A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled. Whether that undue desire is motivated by curiosity, prurience, arrogance, pity, or simple fascination - and I have seen all of these, sometimes in combination - has no bearing on the effect of the question on the one so asked. The vice inheres in the asking, because that forces the choice between refusing to answer and arousing the ire of jilted entitlement, and giving you an answer you have already done much to suggest you are not prepared to understand. Within acceptable error, everyone who ever tries to have this conversation from your side proceeds from here to umbrage at the idea their behavior within it is in any way either predictable or discreditable, owing to the purity of their intentions.
strken 2y ago
I'm not sure what could be going unsaid here. The schizophrenic dad, absent mother, limited and erratic money for food, no adults to do the shopping and cooking, and mentions of programming blogs and escaping poverty all paint a clear picture. It's an open account and I don't feel the need to pry or ask questions about the exact conditions of the household, which were presumably not good, but I don't see anything vague. Your comment, on the other hand, raises my curiosity in exactly the way that you seem to be against. I have no idea what you're trying to warn me not to do.
- throwanem 2y ago
  You're doing all I could ask. Early in the history of the thread it looked like there would be a turn toward the sort of "Why didn't he just...?" questions that often tend to arise. They're not more useful in this context than any other, and it was that waste of effort on points uselessly missed that I sought to deter.
  - Aachen 2y ago
    Ooh, now I finally understand what kind of thing one would want to avoid. The original comment could perhaps have been more concrete by saying something like (for stupid, privileged people like me) > People who've never really known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually just better not to create the opportunity [for them to ask "why don't you just ..."]. Skimmed a dozen sub-replies that were sorted above this but now I finally get it
    - throwanem 2y ago
      Well, I've never pretended I don't also join these discussions to learn. Thanks for helping that happen! Bad enough to have been made to learn a lot of things most people never get close to knowing. Explaining some of that knowledge so those people don't need to go through it to get the benefit isn't actually harder, but it can feel that way. It isn't really a case of not being fairly met in the middle, but it can feel that way easily too. One other note: I've intentionally not used the language of privilege, and I did not call you stupid. If you're anything I'm not in this connection, it's fortunate, and that's not blameworthy nor something I would ever hope to see change. Indeed the entire point of trying to talk about it at all lies in the hope of making it possible to understand some things about what going through hell can do to a person, without needing to find out firsthand. Prose seems like an easier medium than the less overt and direct forms of art where such matters are more often openly discussed. I begin to imagine I haven't simplified the task as much as I thought, though, by this assumption. On that basis I can also recommend Strange New Worlds s2e9 "Under the Cloak of War," which is the most nuanced and honest discussion of the experience of past trauma I think I've ever seen on TV. That it looks up front like a war story is a metaphor that pays off in the last act with a pane of frosted glass. Read it knowing that, and maybe I don't need to say anything else at all.
ryandv 2y ago
> People who've never really known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually just better not to create the opportunity. Having fell hook, line, and sinker to the conceited and holier-than-thou notion that (progressive) people have been enlightened beyond assuming things such as gender or shared lived experience or even race, I can corroborate the claim that silence is the winning move here. Unfortunately as others have noted downthread there are many who like to, and will insist upon, prying in this post-privacy era of the Internet. People like to pat themselves on the back for having been educated beyond making such assumptions; in reality they still have the blinders on and are still constrained by the tunnel vision that their own upbringing has imposed, not even capable of comprehending that other ways of growing up and living can even exist, and presuppose that everyone visited the same waypoints in life at the same time and in the same order. The framing of one who has grown up in privilege is fundamentally different from one who struggled through adversity; si duo idem faciunt, non est idem.
- throwanem 2y ago
  This is why I don't mind making the recommendation. You seem angry in a way I think I recognize. It feels righteous because of the injustice in which it originated, but it also embodies and perpetuates that injustice. Act on it without grave reflection and it will always lead you to do harm. I want you to read Kingsnorth because I hope that may lead you to see the error in abandoning all hope of the world. He is as clear in it as anyone I know. That is extremely attractive and I want you to think hard about where it leads.

ehnto 2y ago

Well said, something I had not yet put to words. It came up on HN recently, about how work is a place where it can be best to leave some things unsaid, because it invites assumptions about your character and capabilities that might not be true, or positive.

ghaff 2y ago
Any quasi-public forum it's probably best to leave controversial and nuanced opinions on things unsaid especially under your real name. (But even under a supposedly anonymous handle, it's probably worth asking if you really need to post this.)
throwanem 2y ago
That isn't even unreasonable as a cultural norm, although it is that those who most firmly enforce it also cherish silly habits like saying "bring your whole self to work." The expectation of not oversharing needs to be met by a commitment of not over-asking, but I suppose that's really too much to expect in an age so degraded that all the obligations across lines of social class are understood to run in only one direction.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  I once heard, in a different century, that the "modal restaurant script" differed between the US and the UK in that in the former, the waitstaff asks the diners a bunch of (to a cultural outsider) overly prying questions, while in the latter, the diners ask them of the waitstaff. Still true? Never was?
  - Fuzzwah 2y ago
    Australian who has spent time living in the US: yes, the difference is still true today between how waiters at an Australian restaurant and servers at a US restaurant interact with customers. Waiters wait. If you need anything you make eye contact and they come over. Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc. I've always thought it was due to tipping. Servers need to be active and show they're being attentive in order to get tips.
    - theshackleford 2y ago
      > I've always thought it was due to tipping I've been bothered far more by wait staff in Australia than I ever have in the US. Must be down to the location and the restaurant.
      - Loughla 2y ago
        It's also interesting to think about it when you say bothered. I'm super american, born and raised and now living in the western Midwest. When the wait staff talk to me, I'm genuinely interested in hearing about them. I like meeting new people, even if those people are being paid to meet me. I legitimately enjoy learning about the lives of the people I meet, even briefly. Is that an American thing? Is that a bad thing?
        throwanem 2y ago
        I don't think it's a bad thing, but it is most strongly a Midwestern and Southeastern thing, and I'm from the South. Boston might give a different answer.
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
Keep your identity small. https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html (Not saying I agree or disagree with the essay but it seemed topical)
- Etheryte 2y ago
  I think the central takeaway of this essay is dead wrong, you should aim for the exact opposite. The fewer labels or identities you have yourself, the more strongly you hold on to them and the more fragile your personality. If the only thing you identify yourself by is your job and that gets taken away from you in a downturn, never to return, what's left? A lot of people who are in that situation and don't have other selves to identify with struggle strongly. On the other hand, people who identify with more facets of what makes them them have a lot of options to fall back on. You're not only your job, but you're also a parent, a child, an athlete, a hobbyist, etc. Even if you stop being one of those things, you keep being all the rest, and that gives fortitude and resilience.
  - throwanem 2y ago
    In this connection it seems fit to note that "I am someone who found ways to overcome the problems that I faced" is also a statement of identity.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    If your self-image includes the structure of the world around you, or the behavior of people other than yourself, you'll run into problems. I enjoy working with computers. I happen to work at a particular company doing computer things. Only one of those is an innate "what makes me, me" thing. Even if computers didn't exist, I'd still probably tend to gravitate towards things that are fun for the same sorts of reasons.
    - lll-o-lll 2y ago
      And if you hit a physical or health issue that takes that away, or dramatically reduces the amount of time you can spend on it? This isn’t hypothetical; I have worked with people who’ve had to quit this form of work for the following reasons: Carpal tunnel that prevented using keyboard and mouse, brain injury, neck injury that made it impossible to sit at a computer (or desk), long Covid and “brain fog”. I imagine that vision impairment might lead to the same. If any of these were to happen to me, would I still have my sense of self? Are we more than our love of technology?

tbrownaw 2y ago

People with different life experiences should just be quietly written off due to the faulty assumptions they might make out of ignorance. > If you feel you've noticed an odd ellipticality in accounts like these, the vague sense of something going unsaid, it's this. If that's all you've noticed, better not to pry. In what context? Work acquaintances chatting over coffee at the office? Parasocial public discussions on the internet? Intentionally public discussions? Friends talking all night over drinks?

throwanem 2y ago
You give the impression here of having taken something I said quite personally. I hope I may be forgiven for not yet really understanding what or why. Likewise, my responses may be somewhat less on point for the distraction. The account under discussion is attributed public speech on the Internet. In other contexts, other conventions apply. There are about as many such contexts as there are kinds of relationships between humans. That's about as general as I can really make it. If you're asking for a recommendation, it would be twofold. First, if a question seems like it might be taken as nosy, try to find a way to reframe it, or don't ask it at all. Second, when someone seems to persistently misunderstand something you're saying or asking in a more personal than professional context, consider that they may be intentionally deflecting a question or subject which they consider inappropriate to address in that setting.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  The bit I quoted seemed to be saying that curiosity and wanting to understand things are bad. Maybe that can be off topic and so out of place at work, but in online arguments prompted by something intentionally made public?
  - throwanem 2y ago
    I'm talking about behavior. What motivates that behavior isn't relevant. A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled. Whether that undue desire is motivated by curiosity, prurience, arrogance, pity, or simple fascination - and I have seen all of these, sometimes in combination - has no bearing on the effect of the question on the one so asked. The vice inheres in the asking, because that forces the choice between refusing to answer and arousing the ire of jilted entitlement, and giving you an answer you have already done much to suggest you are not prepared to understand. Within acceptable error, everyone who ever tries to have this conversation from your side proceeds from here to umbrage at the idea their behavior within it is in any way either predictable or discreditable, owing to the purity of their intentions.

strken 2y ago

I'm not sure what could be going unsaid here. The schizophrenic dad, absent mother, limited and erratic money for food, no adults to do the shopping and cooking, and mentions of programming blogs and escaping poverty all paint a clear picture. It's an open account and I don't feel the need to pry or ask questions about the exact conditions of the household, which were presumably not good, but I don't see anything vague. Your comment, on the other hand, raises my curiosity in exactly the way that you seem to be against. I have no idea what you're trying to warn me not to do.

throwanem 2y ago
You're doing all I could ask. Early in the history of the thread it looked like there would be a turn toward the sort of "Why didn't he just...?" questions that often tend to arise. They're not more useful in this context than any other, and it was that waste of effort on points uselessly missed that I sought to deter.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Ooh, now I finally understand what kind of thing one would want to avoid. The original comment could perhaps have been more concrete by saying something like (for stupid, privileged people like me) > People who've never really known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually just better not to create the opportunity [for them to ask "why don't you just ..."]. Skimmed a dozen sub-replies that were sorted above this but now I finally get it
  - throwanem 2y ago
    Well, I've never pretended I don't also join these discussions to learn. Thanks for helping that happen! Bad enough to have been made to learn a lot of things most people never get close to knowing. Explaining some of that knowledge so those people don't need to go through it to get the benefit isn't actually harder, but it can feel that way. It isn't really a case of not being fairly met in the middle, but it can feel that way easily too. One other note: I've intentionally not used the language of privilege, and I did not call you stupid. If you're anything I'm not in this connection, it's fortunate, and that's not blameworthy nor something I would ever hope to see change. Indeed the entire point of trying to talk about it at all lies in the hope of making it possible to understand some things about what going through hell can do to a person, without needing to find out firsthand. Prose seems like an easier medium than the less overt and direct forms of art where such matters are more often openly discussed. I begin to imagine I haven't simplified the task as much as I thought, though, by this assumption. On that basis I can also recommend Strange New Worlds s2e9 "Under the Cloak of War," which is the most nuanced and honest discussion of the experience of past trauma I think I've ever seen on TV. That it looks up front like a war story is a metaphor that pays off in the last act with a pane of frosted glass. Read it knowing that, and maybe I don't need to say anything else at all.

ryandv 2y ago

> People who've never really known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually just better not to create the opportunity. Having fell hook, line, and sinker to the conceited and holier-than-thou notion that (progressive) people have been enlightened beyond assuming things such as gender or shared lived experience or even race, I can corroborate the claim that silence is the winning move here. Unfortunately as others have noted downthread there are many who like to, and will insist upon, prying in this post-privacy era of the Internet. People like to pat themselves on the back for having been educated beyond making such assumptions; in reality they still have the blinders on and are still constrained by the tunnel vision that their own upbringing has imposed, not even capable of comprehending that other ways of growing up and living can even exist, and presuppose that everyone visited the same waypoints in life at the same time and in the same order. The framing of one who has grown up in privilege is fundamentally different from one who struggled through adversity; si duo idem faciunt, non est idem.

throwanem 2y ago
This is why I don't mind making the recommendation. You seem angry in a way I think I recognize. It feels righteous because of the injustice in which it originated, but it also embodies and perpetuates that injustice. Act on it without grave reflection and it will always lead you to do harm. I want you to read Kingsnorth because I hope that may lead you to see the error in abandoning all hope of the world. He is as clear in it as anyone I know. That is extremely attractive and I want you to think hard about where it leads.