Comment by JimDabell

8 days ago

> > By definition overly emotional is bad

> Human reactions are by definition not bad.

I said “overly emotional” was bad by definition, not “human reactions”. Don’t change my words then argue against what you changed them to.

> Try an experiment for me. Tell your partner that you want to split up. Once they finish crying, tell them that they're being "overly" emotional. See how that goes for you.

Why? They would not be overly emotional. Crying in response to being broken up with is a normal amount of emotion. Same goes for the mother example.

The whole point of overly emotional is that it is a label that specifically describes the emotions as being in excess. The label means “bad” – it’s bad by definition. If it were not bad in this way, then it would just be “emotional”, not “overly emotional”. Attaching “overly” is describing it as bad.

> > Why are you misrepresenting this as “it will make me sad”?

You did not even attempt to answer this.

GP said they received hate and insults. You misrepresented that as “it will make me sad”. Hate and insults are not somebody saying “it will make me sad”. You misrepresented what GP was saying. Why?

OK, so what makes you the arbiter of when an emotion is "in excess"?

Your partner crying at being broken up with is OK by you. What if they call you a rude name? Or throw crockery? Who decides that the emotions they are showing are bad?

> Hate and insults are not somebody saying “it will make me sad”. You misrepresented what GP was saying. Why?

"How dare you break up with me! You bastard!"

"Whoa! There's no need for rude language!"

Humans use language to indicate their strength of feeling. My reading of the GitHub thread is of people politely replying with several reasons why they don't want this change. When Chrome then ignores them, the people escalate their language to make their strength of feeling known.

This is a normal feature of human language. This is how humans have communicated for millennia.

  • > OK, so what makes you the arbiter of when an emotion is "in excess"?

    You asked:

    > Why shouldn't people be overly emotional?

    I am not the arbiter. I am not calling any particular thing overly emotional. I am merely pointing out that overly emotional is bad by definition. People should not be overly emotional because it’s overly emotional. It’s bad by definition.

    > Hate and insults are not somebody saying “it will make me sad”. You misrepresented what GP was saying. Why?

    You are still avoiding this question.

  • > OK, so what makes you the arbiter of when an emotion is "in excess"?

    The ability to form their own opinion.

    And I take you meant to say, "the display of an emotion" being in excess.

    > This is a normal feature of human language. This is how humans have communicated for millennia.

    Really? An appeal to tradition?

    As if people trying to control their emotions and trying to deescalate and debate it out wasn't a millennias old tradition...