A conversation on the topic certainly did ensue; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44493015. Perhaps you mean to say that this wasn't the intended effect? But it was at least a highly predictable effect. Perhaps it would have gone better for the flamer if they had made the request without flaming not only the author in question and simonw.
To me the request in question seems to be in the same spirit as "Please don't play your music so loud at night", "Please don't look at my sister", or "Please don't throw your trash out your car window". In each of these cases, there's clearly a conflict between different people's desires, probably accompanied with underlying disagreements about relevant duties; perhaps one person believes the other has a duty to avert their gaze from the sister in question to show respect to her chastity, while their interlocutor does not subscribe to any such duty, believing he is entitled to look at whomever he pleases. Or perhaps one person believes the other has a duty to carry their trash to a trash can, while the other does not.
Given that such a conflict has arisen, how can we resolve it? We could merely refrain from trying to influence one another's behavior entirely, which is the lowest-effort approach, but this clearly leads to deeply suboptimal outcomes in many cases; perhaps the cost of turning down the stereo or carrying the garbage to a trash can would be almost trivial, so doing it to accommodate others' preferences results in a net improvement in welfare. Alternatively, we could try to exclude people whose normative beliefs differ from our own from the spaces that most affect us, but it should be obvious that this also often causes harms far out of proportion from the good that results, such as ethnic cleansing.
All the other approaches to resolving the conflict that I can think of—bargaining, mediation, arbitration, collective deliberation, etc.—begin unavoidably with stating the unfulfilled desire. Or, as you put it, hectoring someone to 'stop doing this'.
There's no analogy or wall of text that makes that comment unshitty and inviting of conversation. It's not a thing one should do on HN because it trashes the place. We resolve this by striving to control our own reflexive dickishness and downvoting/flagging the egregiously dickish comments, which is exactly what happened here.
I agree that it's a dickish, shitty comment, and uninviting of conversation. I don't agree that the reason it's dickish is that comments of the form "Please don't do such and such" are inherently dickish. I think that such comments are uncomfortable but necessary, and tabooing discussion of such conflicts does more harm than good—in addition to the reasons above, it would ensure that only the most disagreeable commenters dare to make them.
Undoubtedly, if you devote the minute and a half required to read my "wall of text" comment above, you will be persuaded by its reasoning.
A conversation on the topic certainly did ensue; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44493015. Perhaps you mean to say that this wasn't the intended effect? But it was at least a highly predictable effect. Perhaps it would have gone better for the flamer if they had made the request without flaming not only the author in question and simonw.
To me the request in question seems to be in the same spirit as "Please don't play your music so loud at night", "Please don't look at my sister", or "Please don't throw your trash out your car window". In each of these cases, there's clearly a conflict between different people's desires, probably accompanied with underlying disagreements about relevant duties; perhaps one person believes the other has a duty to avert their gaze from the sister in question to show respect to her chastity, while their interlocutor does not subscribe to any such duty, believing he is entitled to look at whomever he pleases. Or perhaps one person believes the other has a duty to carry their trash to a trash can, while the other does not.
Given that such a conflict has arisen, how can we resolve it? We could merely refrain from trying to influence one another's behavior entirely, which is the lowest-effort approach, but this clearly leads to deeply suboptimal outcomes in many cases; perhaps the cost of turning down the stereo or carrying the garbage to a trash can would be almost trivial, so doing it to accommodate others' preferences results in a net improvement in welfare. Alternatively, we could try to exclude people whose normative beliefs differ from our own from the spaces that most affect us, but it should be obvious that this also often causes harms far out of proportion from the good that results, such as ethnic cleansing.
All the other approaches to resolving the conflict that I can think of—bargaining, mediation, arbitration, collective deliberation, etc.—begin unavoidably with stating the unfulfilled desire. Or, as you put it, hectoring someone to 'stop doing this'.
There's no analogy or wall of text that makes that comment unshitty and inviting of conversation. It's not a thing one should do on HN because it trashes the place. We resolve this by striving to control our own reflexive dickishness and downvoting/flagging the egregiously dickish comments, which is exactly what happened here.
I agree that it's a dickish, shitty comment, and uninviting of conversation. I don't agree that the reason it's dickish is that comments of the form "Please don't do such and such" are inherently dickish. I think that such comments are uncomfortable but necessary, and tabooing discussion of such conflicts does more harm than good—in addition to the reasons above, it would ensure that only the most disagreeable commenters dare to make them.
Undoubtedly, if you devote the minute and a half required to read my "wall of text" comment above, you will be persuaded by its reasoning.
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