"Offending people" isn't "being honest" or vice versa. If they seem to go hand in hand, that's failure on the part of the communicator almost 100% of the time. There are tons of people who are totally honest all the time, who somehow manage to not offend random people when interacting with them. It can be done, it's not magic.
Being offended is one of those really weird states of mind.
It is purely one that is created by the person who becomes offended.
For example, in some cultures crossing your arms while someone is talking to you can be deemed offensive. In other cultures burping is perfectly fine while in others it is not acceptable.
Leaving cultures behind, people, individuals, become offended for a huge variety of things and it varies from person to person.
The difference here (and other fora) is that those who choose to be offended pile on and engage in down-vote wars that are utterly meaningless. Being offended serves exactly zero purpose and does nothing whatsoever to the facts.
The facts in this case are that a national reduction of hours work --for everyone, not just someone's wife-- is a nonsensical and destructive an idea as can be. You can't force something like that without severe consequences.
The "hippie on dope" comment was merely a colorful way to describe the state of mine someone would have to be in to think that this is a good idea at a national level.
It's not about "getting offended". I told you to tone it down because your comment is unnecessarily hostile. If you, as you say, didn't intend it to be hostile you should take my comment even more seriously: You're coming across as increasingly hostile and rude in each new post you wrote.
Calling somebody a hippie with hippie logic just because you disagree with it? That's not a reasonable thing to do. It's not something I, or I'm sure even the person you were talking to, got offended about - it's just unnecessary and veers the discussion from "friendly chat" to "argument where everyone has their guards up".
That's not ok, nobody wants HN to be that.
If you think this isn't a reasonable think to ask, then what are you doing here?
Please stop. You are reading what you want to read and not what was written.
Where did I call someone a hippie?
I called it "hippie logic". This is what I said:
> What kind of hippie logic is this?
I did not call a person a hippie.
And, besides, since when is hippie a pejorative anyway?
It's like saying "drunken logic". You are not calling someone a drunk.
Geez.
Nah, people are just choosing to be offended because that's a thing today and piling-on with a holier-than-thou attitude is easier and if feels good.
Funny thing about choosing to be offended --and it is a choice: Nothing happens. Your head does not explode. You can still walk and chew gum at the same time. It's one of those empty things people seem to love doing these days. They also believe they have an inherent right to never be offended by anything. Pretty funny considering the times we live in.
It's OK. I get it. Still doesn't change the truth of the argument one bit. It is a great way to not have to argue facts though. Get a dozen people to be offended and very soon we are talking about that and nothing more.
Do you know what would have been a far better response? To completely ignore the utterly insignificant "hippie logic" part and actually go after my argument.
Don't know what vouching is. It sounds like I should thank you for it. Thanks.
Reflecting upon these various exchanges I had a feeling that there's something odd at play. You see, people such as yourself have consistently misconstrued or misunderstood what I've been saying, both in tone and content. Your last comment is no different. At first I thought it was just people choosing to be offended for a truly silly comment intended more as a joke than anything else. A friendly jab, if you will.
Yet, I did not say or mean what you say I said or meant. Not once. And so I wonder if there's a language barrier of some sort at play here. Either that or a simple case of text-based communications being imperfect enough at times that it can lead to people reading something very different from what the author meant to say.
I have a feeling it's a bit like this scene, where two people almost come to blows due to a misunderstanding in language and intent:
Your comment was flagged by users due to the reasons I mentioned. Vouching makes it visible again.
I'm fairly certain there is some form of language barrier at play here which is why myself and many others have been trying to engage with you rather than dismissing your messages.
You have a lot of people reacting negatively to the tone and language you used in your post; insisting on phrasing such as "hippie logic" and just generally taking a negative stance in the replies.
I want to highlight this: nobody here is getting offended at your posts. Likewise, nobody talking to you about tone is calling out the meat of your argument.
You replied to a post further down saying "The validity of an argument is absolutely independent of the messenger". Yet, that post did not question the validity of your argument. It questioned the language you used, which is entirely dependent on the messenger.
MaulingMonkey already tried explaining this to you: this is a super ineffective debate technique. You're getting people to flag your post instead of getting them to read it. HN is not a community that rewards "who speaks the loudest".
I also understand you may genuinely think it's "hippie logic" and in your view, you're just "telling it like it is" by calling it so. Let me put it this way: In my view, believing in an all-knowing all-loving deity is crock. But if I'm engaging a theist especially if I'm going to debate with them, I'm going to respect them and their viewpoint even if I don't believe or disagree with it. And here, you may well be engaging with people who believe in that hippie logic; if you want to convince them otherwise, not using that language will go a long way to get your point across.
You can email me (it's on my profile) if you want to discuss this more in private.
I think the difference here is that my "hippie logic" term was taken completely out of context and translated into a negative tone. And, yes, I got defensive because that's not how I meant it at all and nobody seemed to want to discuss the real points being made at all. So it quickly got completely twisted into a version of that scene in the video I linked.
If we were talking face to face and I said "man, that's just a silly argument" or "you must be drunk to think that way" you'd know it was offered in a friendly tone not in a negative aggressive one.
My mistake: I should have added a happy face.
Thanks for your patience. Be well.
PS. I've pretty much given up debating theists. Not enough hours in a day (there's a pun there somewhere).
It doesn't matter. None of it matters, even if this is all correct. Which it isn't, obviously. But it wouldn't matter even if it was.
If you can't communicate your ideas to people without muddying the waters with random stuff that distracts from whatever you are trying to communicate, you have failed. And if you don't care whether or not anyone understands you, then there's no point in even attempting to communicate with other people.
It doesn't matter if everyone else on the planet is brainwashed, or if you aren't as wise or articulate as you think you are (only one of those explanations are true, we can let Occam's Razor decide). It doesn't matter. It's your responsibility to read the room and communicate in a way that conveys whatever your meaning is without distracting from it. This applies just as much to Real Life as it does to Internet forums. This is never going to stop being a socially and professionally stunting problem for you; the rest of the world is not going to wake up one day and suddenly find you charming and insightful.
Everything you're saying could be 100% true, but you'd still be the person screwing up whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.
