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What is “some degree” and why does that make you think that’s relevant experience? The author didn’t sever the relationship, the wife and daughter did. The wife

What is “some degree” and why does that make you think that’s relevant experience? The author didn’t sever the relationship, the wife and daughter did. The wife who had to live with him far beyond “some degree” and the gay daughter whose very identity the father rejected, years after the rest of the family knew.

Ajedi32 2y ago
I'm not going to go into the details of my relationships with the people I'm close to here. And yes, I'm specifically talking about the wife and daughter when I say that some members of his family decided to abandon him over his beliefs. Maybe there was more going on that the article didn't discuss, so I'm not going to judge the people involved in that specific situation, but severing relationships with your family over an intellectual disagreement that has close to zero direct impact on your everyday life is rather petty in my opinion. If you really love someone, it ought to take more than that to damage your relationship.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > but severing relationships with your family over an intellectual disagreement that has close to zero impact on your everyday life is rather petty in my opinion. The issues being discussed are not intellectual disagreements that had close to zero effect on the lives of the people involved, though.
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    How so? The article doesn't give any indication of that. It just says they disagreed.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > It just says they disagreed. Uh, no, it says that, e.g., for the wife it involved a significantly altered home life, spending, and stockpiling in the home on which she was not consulted and which her concerns about were ignored. And while it doesn't discuss the details of the impacts, treating the daughters sexual orientation as both a choice and a wrong choice is not a mere intellectual disagreement, and certainly did not have trivial impacts. The only person who the "intellectual disagreement that has close to zero impact on [...] everyday life" description might even approximately work for (and even then it is a stretch) is the son, who...is the only one who didn't sever relations.
      - Ajedi32 2y ago
        Maybe. I guess it depends on how much of an impact that had; the article doesn't go into detail. Was this just an unusual hobby that his wife didn't like? Or was it completely consuming their life and financial resources? But you're right, saying it had zero impact is an exaggeration. It does seem like it had a small impact, at a minimum.
  - guardiangod 2y ago
    The gold example the author mentioned is a good indicator. Would you agree, that in a marriage, that money in a shared account is property owned by both husband and wife? And yet, because of the father's belief, he took the money out and converted them into gold without telling his wife. Is this a mere intellectual disagreement, or is this a physical betrayal rooted from his belief? The trust has been broken and the disagreement is no longer on purely hypothetical ground. Realize that today the money became gold bars, next time the money might become a donation to a far-right group in Montana. Can the wife trust him after this?
- throwup238 2y ago
  It’s not an “intellectual disagreement” and viewing it in that lens is part of why the family abandoned him. They’re not debating the merits of Wittgenstein.
- xracy 2y ago
  Just want to call out, totally fine to not want to share the details of your relationship online, but if that's the case, you can't really make the appeal to "being in a similar situation" if you can't back that up in some meaningful way. It reads as being willfully misleading. It seems apparent to me from your other comments that your situation is not really like the one described, because you're not really familiar with the hallmarks of it. But it doesn't matter one way or another since you're just asking the question 'why would you sever a relationship like this?' Which is a fine question to ask on its own without making the appeal to "I've been in this situation", which you don't want to verify. It would honestly make your first comment more solid if you just asked the question instead of alluding to being in similar situation, and then backing off from it here.
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    The person I was replying to did exactly the same thing: "Without going too deeply, I sympathize with the writer on an extremely personal level." If you want to say I'm lying just because you disagree with my take on the issue then okay; I'm not going to expose intimate details of my life just to win an online argument. Just sharing my experience.
    - xracy 2y ago
      Communicating is hard, this is intended to be helpful and informative and I genuinely hope you take it that way. I'm being a little barbed with some of my feedback below, because you're engaging defensively, and I'm just trying to help because I was initially interested in having a different conversation with you based on your first comment. Really importantly, I'm not saying that you're lying. I was offering some constructive feedback on what you said, because I was interested in your experience given that you've clearly reached a different conclusion from me. I was disappointed you weren't willing to talk about it, because I suspect if you're experiencing this and this is your advice you're just earlier in the process than I am. But if this isn't the case, I (and others clearly) were interested in this experience. I don't have a solution to this problem, and I came to this article looking for other ways people were navigating this experience. > Just sharing my experience. But you're explicitly not sharing your experience. You're just saying that you have experience, and then asking why someone would make a decision in this situation. In my response, I can either talk to: 1. Why someone would make a decision in this situation 2. You about your experience. If you don't have experience in the situation, #1 makes more sense. If you do have experience in the situation, then I'm much more interested in the #2 conversation but to do that we have to be a little bit more willing to share some broad strokes about how things have fallen apart. I shared my situation in response to this without making anything too personal/revealing about the family members involved. You'll notice I didn't make an appeal to having personal experience. I just described the experience, because I'm looking to have a conversation about what others have tried that has worked for them. > The person I was replying to did exactly the same thing: "Without going too deeply, I sympathize with the writer on an extremely personal level." 2 things: 1. This is the age-old "if people on the internet jump off a bridge you'd do that too?" My initial response was trying to give you the tools to be better at this, and you're just being defensive here for no reason. I thought your question was still worth responding too, I'm just calling out to you that it's stronger without the appeal to experience that you're not backing up in any way. 2. This is a disclaimer on their own partiality towards one party in the original story. This is actually achieving the exact opposite of what your comment goes towards. It reads much more as "I am stating my bias and what I'm partial towards up front, but I think there is a difficult choice to make here and I'm not certain what the right path is." By contrast your statements taken together read as "I have experience that tells me there's no reason to ever sever a relationship and you just have to take me at my word." But your initial statement could have been "Why would you consider severing the relationship?" and it would've led to less confusion from people interested in the experience.

Ajedi32 2y ago

I'm not going to go into the details of my relationships with the people I'm close to here. And yes, I'm specifically talking about the wife and daughter when I say that some members of his family decided to abandon him over his beliefs. Maybe there was more going on that the article didn't discuss, so I'm not going to judge the people involved in that specific situation, but severing relationships with your family over an intellectual disagreement that has close to zero direct impact on your everyday life is rather petty in my opinion. If you really love someone, it ought to take more than that to damage your relationship.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> but severing relationships with your family over an intellectual disagreement that has close to zero impact on your everyday life is rather petty in my opinion. The issues being discussed are not intellectual disagreements that had close to zero effect on the lives of the people involved, though.
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  How so? The article doesn't give any indication of that. It just says they disagreed.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > It just says they disagreed. Uh, no, it says that, e.g., for the wife it involved a significantly altered home life, spending, and stockpiling in the home on which she was not consulted and which her concerns about were ignored. And while it doesn't discuss the details of the impacts, treating the daughters sexual orientation as both a choice and a wrong choice is not a mere intellectual disagreement, and certainly did not have trivial impacts. The only person who the "intellectual disagreement that has close to zero impact on [...] everyday life" description might even approximately work for (and even then it is a stretch) is the son, who...is the only one who didn't sever relations.
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      Maybe. I guess it depends on how much of an impact that had; the article doesn't go into detail. Was this just an unusual hobby that his wife didn't like? Or was it completely consuming their life and financial resources? But you're right, saying it had zero impact is an exaggeration. It does seem like it had a small impact, at a minimum.
- guardiangod 2y ago
  The gold example the author mentioned is a good indicator. Would you agree, that in a marriage, that money in a shared account is property owned by both husband and wife? And yet, because of the father's belief, he took the money out and converted them into gold without telling his wife. Is this a mere intellectual disagreement, or is this a physical betrayal rooted from his belief? The trust has been broken and the disagreement is no longer on purely hypothetical ground. Realize that today the money became gold bars, next time the money might become a donation to a far-right group in Montana. Can the wife trust him after this?
throwup238 2y ago
It’s not an “intellectual disagreement” and viewing it in that lens is part of why the family abandoned him. They’re not debating the merits of Wittgenstein.
xracy 2y ago
Just want to call out, totally fine to not want to share the details of your relationship online, but if that's the case, you can't really make the appeal to "being in a similar situation" if you can't back that up in some meaningful way. It reads as being willfully misleading. It seems apparent to me from your other comments that your situation is not really like the one described, because you're not really familiar with the hallmarks of it. But it doesn't matter one way or another since you're just asking the question 'why would you sever a relationship like this?' Which is a fine question to ask on its own without making the appeal to "I've been in this situation", which you don't want to verify. It would honestly make your first comment more solid if you just asked the question instead of alluding to being in similar situation, and then backing off from it here.
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  The person I was replying to did exactly the same thing: "Without going too deeply, I sympathize with the writer on an extremely personal level." If you want to say I'm lying just because you disagree with my take on the issue then okay; I'm not going to expose intimate details of my life just to win an online argument. Just sharing my experience.
  - xracy 2y ago
    Communicating is hard, this is intended to be helpful and informative and I genuinely hope you take it that way. I'm being a little barbed with some of my feedback below, because you're engaging defensively, and I'm just trying to help because I was initially interested in having a different conversation with you based on your first comment. Really importantly, I'm not saying that you're lying. I was offering some constructive feedback on what you said, because I was interested in your experience given that you've clearly reached a different conclusion from me. I was disappointed you weren't willing to talk about it, because I suspect if you're experiencing this and this is your advice you're just earlier in the process than I am. But if this isn't the case, I (and others clearly) were interested in this experience. I don't have a solution to this problem, and I came to this article looking for other ways people were navigating this experience. > Just sharing my experience. But you're explicitly not sharing your experience. You're just saying that you have experience, and then asking why someone would make a decision in this situation. In my response, I can either talk to: 1. Why someone would make a decision in this situation 2. You about your experience. If you don't have experience in the situation, #1 makes more sense. If you do have experience in the situation, then I'm much more interested in the #2 conversation but to do that we have to be a little bit more willing to share some broad strokes about how things have fallen apart. I shared my situation in response to this without making anything too personal/revealing about the family members involved. You'll notice I didn't make an appeal to having personal experience. I just described the experience, because I'm looking to have a conversation about what others have tried that has worked for them. > The person I was replying to did exactly the same thing: "Without going too deeply, I sympathize with the writer on an extremely personal level." 2 things: 1. This is the age-old "if people on the internet jump off a bridge you'd do that too?" My initial response was trying to give you the tools to be better at this, and you're just being defensive here for no reason. I thought your question was still worth responding too, I'm just calling out to you that it's stronger without the appeal to experience that you're not backing up in any way. 2. This is a disclaimer on their own partiality towards one party in the original story. This is actually achieving the exact opposite of what your comment goes towards. It reads much more as "I am stating my bias and what I'm partial towards up front, but I think there is a difficult choice to make here and I'm not certain what the right path is." By contrast your statements taken together read as "I have experience that tells me there's no reason to ever sever a relationship and you just have to take me at my word." But your initial statement could have been "Why would you consider severing the relationship?" and it would've led to less confusion from people interested in the experience.