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Not that it ties directly to this article but Ive always found the quote "Judge people by their intentions, not by their actions" to help me quite a bit in the

by ProAm 13y ago

Not that it ties directly to this article but Ive always found the quote "Judge people by their intentions, not by their actions" to help me quite a bit in the professional world. People can often be frustrating, counter-productive, or as in the case of this article sexist, but sometimes they don't mean to be. When you have to deal with others try and look at what they were intending to do not necessarily the results of what they did. EDIT I bring this up because of how she ended her blog post and felt it was relevant.

abracar 13y ago
Right - I also find it helpful to judge them for their actions in general, and not just for one stupid thing they may say.
- Mz 13y ago
  "Believe your eyes over your ears," so to speak. It's a good rule of thumb.
mherkender 13y ago
I sorta disagree, actions are what really matter. I think it's good to cut people slack and avoid grudges/judgement in general, but how are we supposed to deal with society-level problems if each example of the problem can be written off as a well-intentioned mistake?
- ProAm 13y ago
  I can see where you are coming from but if you boil people down to being good or evil (over generalizing), who do you want on your side? There are people who purposely intend to do bad things and do, and there are people who mean to do good things and do bad. No one is perfect and people make mistakes, and results don't always come out as intended. But the people who intentionally act on bad intent are never people you want to work with. To come back to your original statement actions are not what matters in the end (in relation to what hacker news represents) but results are. In the end we all want positive results, but we are all people, and good people will always get you closer to your goal than bad people.
solidsnack9000 13y ago
The notion of a concurrence of the "mens rea" (the guilty mind) and the "actus rea" (the guilty act) would seem to apply here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrence A person who did not mean ill warrants different treatment from one who did; but can we ignore their bad behaviour?

by ProAm 13y ago

abracar 13y ago

Right - I also find it helpful to judge them for their actions in general, and not just for one stupid thing they may say.

Mz 13y ago
"Believe your eyes over your ears," so to speak. It's a good rule of thumb.

mherkender 13y ago

I sorta disagree, actions are what really matter. I think it's good to cut people slack and avoid grudges/judgement in general, but how are we supposed to deal with society-level problems if each example of the problem can be written off as a well-intentioned mistake?

ProAm 13y ago
I can see where you are coming from but if you boil people down to being good or evil (over generalizing), who do you want on your side? There are people who purposely intend to do bad things and do, and there are people who mean to do good things and do bad. No one is perfect and people make mistakes, and results don't always come out as intended. But the people who intentionally act on bad intent are never people you want to work with. To come back to your original statement actions are not what matters in the end (in relation to what hacker news represents) but results are. In the end we all want positive results, but we are all people, and good people will always get you closer to your goal than bad people.

solidsnack9000 13y ago

The notion of a concurrence of the "mens rea" (the guilty mind) and the "actus rea" (the guilty act) would seem to apply here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrence A person who did not mean ill warrants different treatment from one who did; but can we ignore their bad behaviour?