When it comes to factual information, and not opinion - telling someone that they are wrong is not a criticism.
It is fact.
Of course - people have egos and emotions, so when they hear someone tell them they are wrong, they will typically take that as criticism about themselves - and not the fact that you are disputing.
That doesn't refute the comment - "you are wrong" is personal and aimed at the person, "that is not correct" is impersonal and directed at the contents.
This is the complexity of language and communication, but in this case it's pretty clear. "You are wrong" is criticism on and aimed at the person.
Yeah, I don't see it this way. I see it as that "you're always wrong" is criticism and aimed at the person, "you're wrong" (clearly implying "on this") is directed at the contents.
I will agree with you that a short response simply stating that "you are wrong" is aimed at the person - if it isn't supported with the facts, resources and details about why they are wrong.
However - if those details are provided, it is not personal, but just simply factual and shouldn't be considered an insult.
The other complexity is whether or not one is having a debate about something that can be factually quantified, versus something that is just an opinion.
HN, its moderation guidelines, and its moderator practices, are highly sensitive to anything verging on personal attack simply because site behaviour is so sensitive to such writing.
If that means blunting objections as "that's incorrect" rather than "you're wrong", so be it. Two decades' experience, which is a tremendous run in online forum space, is quite difficult to argue with.
(Not that I don't occasionally argue with mods over guidelines, intent, and/or effects, not necessarily on this specific rule.)
If it is rainy near me, and clear skies near you, and I tell you the sky is grey, without corroboration from the weather report, I am wrong to you. If you say the sky is blue, without corroboration, you are wrong to me.
Gravity falls down. On Earth.
The boiling point is 100 degrees. Unless you're using Fahrenheit or Kelvin.
I find that when refuting people, instead of outright debasing their position with a right/wrong dichotomy, it works better to illuminate the possibility there is a larger breadth to the viewpoint. In this way, both views can generally share the same space. Healthily, if one can add such a descriptor.
>> I find that when refuting people, instead of outright debasing their position with a right/wrong dichotomy, it works better to illuminate the possibility there is a larger breadth to the viewpoint. In this way, both views can generally share the same space. Healthily, if one can add such a descriptor.
This can be exhausting. When arguing product characteristics at work, I'm often tempted to say "that's terrible" or "nobody wants that". In my mind those would be factually correct based on my experience and understanding. But I still have to bite my tongue and remember the specific reasons those are bad ideas and "make a case". It is always received better with supporting information rather than presented as a fact. It helps me if I think of it as persuasion or education which is worth the extra time.
It's completely clear what is intended, the only thing you're disagreeing about, is the cultural difference of who is expected to make this translation.
I think that would've been pretty clear from the post too, if you weren't so keen on giving a non-native speaker an English lesson ...
Trying to keep things on topic, BTW, I found that LLMs are pretty good at picking up the kinds of context that makes this very obvious what is really being meant.
So you could use an LLM, privately, to soften people's opinions.
I just tried it for you, I won't copy it here cause the thread is about not using LLMs, but if you get too upset from somebody being simply direct and clear in their manner of speaking, the LLM is trained on enough American cultural baggage that it is very capable of softening that blow with the extra words you so dearly need to see past that red mist.
Someone might even be able to vibe code a browser plugin for it.
It depends on whether what they say is coming from them or if it's something they are citing; "I am extremely attractive" can be countered with "you are wrong", but "People say I am extremely attractive" cannot be, because I did not come up with the opinion, others did.
"They are wrong" is then valid, or "That is not correct" if I have misinterpreted them.
Reading all of the crabby comments about pothole repair make me feel great about my city in MN. Leave voice mail about pothole on my way to work in morning, pothole filled when I return home in the afternoon.
A school photography company I worked for used a custom Kodak stock. They were unsatisfied with how Kodak's standard portrait film handled darker skin tones.
They were super careful to maintain the look across the transition from film to digital capture. Families display multiple years of school photos next to each other and they wanted a consistent look.
I grew up in South GA and my family still lives there. I got the hell out of dodge the week after graduating from college in 1996.
I said in another reply, I’m all for the state and the federal government helping rural America where their own tax base isn’t strong enough. I’m also for universal health care that would help rural areas far more than me. I wouldn’t complain about my taxes paying for it.
It’s rural America that keeps voting for local, state, and federal politicians that put them in this place.
> It’s rural America that keeps voting for local, state, and federal politicians that put them in this place.
In my experience, not everyone's primary policy goal is to ensure that as much taxpayer money as possible gets redistributed in their favor.
Of course, this isn't to say that the problem you described (of people wanting government services but not wanting to pay for it) does not exist, but I find that to be applicable broadly, not just to rural America.
Agree, I live in (fairly) rural area and most of the people out here don't want much more from the government but maybe roads to drive on, and to be left alone.
Counter-point: I live in a kinda rural area and the people out here want the government to enforce their religious, cultural, and misinformed beliefs on everyone else everywhere else, this is typically a higher priority than roads or public safety.
Are you saying they are going to refuse Trump’s bailouts for farmers?
Are you saying they don’t want hospitals near by because that means they would have to accept government help? I’m sure even providing basic infrastructure is coming from funding from sources outside of their community
I don't know any real farmers. Have a few neighbors with small herds of cows but that's not their only or even primary source of income. I try not to talk politics much.
People live out here knowing full well that the nearest hospital is 30 minutes away and if they need to call an ambulance it's probably going to be at least 15-30 minutes, maybe longer, before it shows up.
It's kind of how I feel about Social Security. I'm not going to refuse it, especially since I have paid into it my entire working life. But I'd rather it didn't exist, and I know it isn't sustainable.
That isn’t true either. Worse case if nothing changes, there would need to be a 20% cut in benefits. I am 51 and have modeled that in my retirement projections
Their choice is between two private clubs who both cut services when in power, and are both taking huge amounts of money from private equity.
The Democrats spent the beginning of the 2016 cycle all pretending to be for universal health care (literally the only reason why Buttigieg and Harris got on stage), then spent the rest of the cycle dishonestly campaigning against it while fixing a primary. As soon as Bernie lost, health insurance and healthcare stocks had their highest stock price bump in history.
I agree with your opinions on government funding, I just find it gross when it's used as an excuse to put the blame on the powerless. The powerless are not powerless because they choose to be, they're powerless because they are restrained by the powerful. Not only is the information they receive about the world restricted and their educations propagandistic, but if they voted for what the powerful didn't want, their vote would be ignored.
On the other hand, you've been convinced to blame the powerless for the crimes of the powerful, so I don't know how you're any less of a sucker. I guess you're wealthier than they are, so maybe you're a support system for the people doing the suckering.
edit: I had to add the last, because this type of argument is something I consistently hear from people who are paid to do the exploiting. If you're a thief, you figure out a way to blame the people you steal from.
Yes because in 2020 when middle of the road Biden barely eked out a win against Trump, I’m sure Bernie would have won.
Bernie’s ideas were way too left field for me and I consider myself to be a bleeding heart capitalist pig - ie let companies make money, tax them and use the money to provide a safety net. Also take away the idea of your insurance being tied to your employment
We have paid police, because we want law and order. We have paid dump/collection center workers, because you need a place to take trash. We have paid teachers and school staff, because we want a good education for our kids. We have paid road maintenance workers, because it's really helpful to have properly maintaind roads. We have paid librarians, because libraries are one of the core community centers in the area. We have paid animal control workers because rabies is scary. We pay for ambulance service because sometimes you need medical attention asap.
And we have volunteer fire fighters, because stopping fires, in a rural, wildfire prone area is, what? Optional? Just a side gig? Something you do just for fun?
A big part of the confusion people have is that "volunteer" fire departments often include pay. It's not a full-time job, but they at least get paid for their calls. That's not always true, though, and it's weird. It's an artifact of history that our different layers of government have divvied up basic services amongst themselves in a way that leaves fire fighting as a local concern that may or may not involve paid professionals, while the sheriff and local police will be paid professionals, the roads will be maintained, and the school will have teachers, and principals, and custodians, and people running the cafeteria, and so on.
Why do we not have "volunteer police force"? Because we treat it as a full-time position for career police officers. It's weird that this one, very critical service uses "volunteers," while most of the others are full-time, paid positions, and I find it confusing and weird, despite having grown up in rural NC, just outside a town of under a thousand, and now live at the other end of rural NC, outside the limits of a different town of under thousand people.
Still less than renting the same amount of compute. Somewhere between several months and a couple years you pull ahead on costs. Unless you only run your lab a few hours a day.
My Pi CM4 NAS with a PCIe switch, SATA and USB3 controllers, 6 SATA SSDs, 2 VMs, 2 LXC containers, and a Nextcloud snap pretty much sits at 17 watts most of the time, hitting 20 when a lot is being asked of it, and 26-27W at absolute max with all I/O and CPU cores pegged. €3.85/mo if I pay ESB, but I like to think that it runs fully off the solar and batteries :)
That’s rough. What’s your progress on renewables? Wind has made electricity really cheap in my state and I would think Ireland would be pretty windy (esp offshore)?
Ireland has had hydro for a century[1], and wind and tidal are productive here. There are wind farms EVERYWHERE around where I live (mountains, Cork/Limerick border). There are solar farms, as well, but sun is not our strong suit. Trouble for individuals is that small, affordable wind turbines are basically useless, and most people don't have hundreds of thousands of Euros plus planning permission to erect megawatt-scale units, so solar is pretty much it.
