Comment by eevilspock

He starts out presuming the problem is with the receiver or the words. He never considers it could actually be him in a way he doesn't yet perceive. This is evident as he doesn't even appear to get the gist of the mhoye blog post that triggered his question.

> "The more self-effacing I make it, the more I try to put in that I think the trouble is only in my own understanding, the more mocking and sarcastic it seems to me and the more likely I think it is to be misinterpreted."

His trying so hard to be "self-effacing" brings to mind Shakespeare's line, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

He considers the TEN different phrasings, yet never the straightforward and humble "Did you ever try sshd?". All ten reflect a patronizing attitude, the assumption that his immediate intuition is correct by default. The "naïvely" one comes off to me as obnoxiously pseudo-humble.

Complex wordings aren't random. They reflect something of the speaker's mind or attitude.

There is a good reason why many people love the way very young children put things so simply, without mask or artifice. WYSIWYG.

I believe the author, Mark, has good will. But good will is not the same as humility, nor does it give one self-awareness. Like a man who believes he isn't sexist because when he, a man who's never been in a woman's shoes, looks in the mirror he doesn't see any sexism.