Google Reduce Prices For Online Storage (20GB for $5/year, etc.) - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/twice-storage-for-quarter-of-price.html

<comment><USER2> It seems that they can crush Dropbox anytime, they just need a cross platform "rsyncing" client and a UI

<comment><AUTHOR> As a dropbog alternative, I use Live Mesh from MSFT - 5GB storage and possibility to sync more folders.

Regarding the Google offer: It seems to me that the storage can be (currently) used only for photos (picasaweb) and gmail. It doesn't look bad, but I would still prefer to pay price for bandwidth per year. If I have to use this as a backup for all my photos in original res., 20GB is not enough, so the Flickr's unlimited storage for $25 still looks better.

For me, the OK price would be $5-$10 per 20GB upload bandwidth/year.

<comment><USER3> Does Live Mesh support Mac and Linux because if not it isn't so much a competitor to Dropbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just said that I use it as an alternative, since I use Windows. So it is a competitor for PC+Windows users, if you want me to be more exact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting development.

This illustrates one risk for companies built on the idea of outsourcing infrastructure to Amazon AWS (Smugmug, Dropbox etc). You better add much more value on top of AWS, otherwise a Google/Microsoft can undercut you big-time on price.

My perception is that they haven't dropped prices enough although hardware has become much better (1 GHz equivalent machine as baseline?, I built a quad-core machine for $600 and got a 1TB drive for less than $100).

Google's move definitely validates my hunch.

I was thinking about getting a Smugmug account, but now I will probably use a Google account.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty useless for anyone not using Picasa. I cannot "sync" my iPhoto library easily. The Picasa Web Album Uploader sucks.

Still hope they can give us gDrive ...

<comment><USER6> don't use the web album uploader; use picasa to manage your photos. it's as easy as clicking a button if you are using picasa 3.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know of a developer API you could use to take advantage of this offer? Ala gspace possibly?

</comment><comment><USER8> Does this offer have a trick? Can I host non-image files? API access for read and write?

</comment><comment><USER6> i like to think it was because of something i said: [http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=3081...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=3081a91ff730c29b&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER9> who has 16TB of email / photos?

<comment><USER10> I'm a semi-professional photographer, and I have around 3TB of photos. Pros can easily hit 16TB in a year or two.

HD videos are much much worse.

The main problem is how to upload all that stuff. Even at 20 mbit it would take 77 days to upload 16TB.

(16 terabytes) / (20 (megabit per second)) = 77.63 days

How many people have that kind of upload speed? I certainly don't.

<comment><USER9> Good point, with the newer slrs doing 720p video that would eat a big chunk ..</comment></comment></comment>


Have you successfully built a mesh wifi network at home? - <AUTHOR> I am in an urban environment with a lot of interference.
There are several products on the market, which should I choose? http://www.open-mesh.com/ https://www.eero.com/ https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/<p>And coming soon: https://getluma.com/ <comment><USER2> When you said mesh wifi, I thought you meant something like:

[http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/](http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/)</comment>


Google vs Microsoft vs Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.portfolio.com/images/site/editorial/illustrations/2008/02/cartoon-fish-large.jpg

<comment><USER2> It's actually Google vs Microsoft vs Yahoo vs AOL (small fish in the lower left corner).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes, I didn't see that small fellow :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: accounting resources for startups? - <AUTHOR> I launched paid plans for my startup last month and have started making sales. Was wondering if there are any resources for startup accounting? Tools, articles, presentations?<p>PS: the company is incorporated and based out of India. Even though accounting tools are country specific, I'm looking forward to some best-practices guides and tutorials on how to do accounting myself. <comment><USER3> In my sense, the only way to do it right is to have an accountant. It's his/her job. I know it doesn't sound "lean" (ho buzzword) but how would you react if a accountant would ask 'website resources for accountant?' and saying that he wants to make money out of a website?

<comment><USER4> You definitely want to hire someone for this, unless you have a business background or are comfortable with accounting already. Accounting is something you REALLY don't want to fuck up, as the tax and legal consequences can be ugly.

At the very least look into hiring someone for a "bookkeeper" role. Often accountants, or others with an accounting background, will moonlight doing the books for small companies. Search craigslist or the equivalent in India.

<comment><USER3> That's a fact, pay someone for bookkeeping and at the end of the year, you'll make big savings when it's time to make your taxes. All your numbers will be right and they will not have to make their way in them because they already know them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been helping out a friend's office recently and their books are a total mess. Some checks entered against invoices, some not, accounts receivable and accounts payable are totally unorganized, nothing reconciles...

So here's a recommendation - it's probably better to keep all your receipts in a folder system, along with records of your bank statements, and do nothing in software until you're totally committed, or can hire a bookkeeper. You can hand the receipts over to a professional a little later, but handing over a half assed mess in Quickbooks or whatever is much worse IMHO. Just don't wait too long to find that bookkeeper :)

Also, if being generally organized and fastidious is not one of your skills, bookkeeping is probably better handled by someone else, whether you have a great accounting tool or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of my receipts are online, I never print them. So I am fearing whether I will miss some when it comes to handing it over to book-keeper.

<comment><USER5> A bookkeeper will want to eventually categorize all your receipts by type, so if you're losing detail by going paperless (or losing track of things altogether), you may need to rethink that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like Ledger, an open-source command-line application for double-entry accounting. You can learn a lot about accounting in general just by reading the documentation and following the examples.

<http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger/>

It's available packaged in MacPorts, Ubuntu, and so on.

<comment><USER7> Previous discussion about ledger - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=872244>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most web based applications will help you manage your accounting through the year (invoices, expenses, etc), but you will still want to hand off your records to an accountant to sort out taxes and generally get counsel.

Xero, Freeagent, Less Accounting and FreshBooks ( <\- Disclaimer: I work @freshbooks) are all solid resources that - to the best of my knowledge - <USER2> work in India.

<comment><USER9> > you will still want to hand off your records to an accountant to sort out > taxes and generally get counsel.

Ditto. For instance, if I had talked to my accountant soon enough, I could have saved half of my company registration costs - he knew about a special, not too well advertised, local program, which my in-house lawyer did not know of. Also, tax legislation looks like a minefield to me - a competent[1] accountant is a mine-sweeper that may save your bacon.

[1] Horror story from friends: years ago they formed a company, didn't do much business, dissolved (which in itself may be hard, especially if someone moved away). Later had to keep paying fines because of paperwork improperly filed by their accountant.

P.S. The "grumpy editor" at lwn.net occasionally looks at FOSS accounting software, and readers chime in; e.g. at <http://lwn.net/Articles/314577/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having studied 12+ credit hours of accounting in college, and done accounting for 2 companies, I would recommend hiring a part-time / consulting accountant.

While you are probably more than capable of doing basic double-entry accounting, it is a huge nuisance and a mistake can get you into trouble. Your time, as a founder, is better spent growing the business than dealing with the annoyances of accounting, reconciliation, reporting, and taxation.

The hired accountant will suggest software packages with which they prefer to work.

Lastly, India may present a different scenario, but consider having payroll and benefits handled by a firm like ADP or TriNet -- even if you hire a consulting/part-time accountant. The quickest way to get in trouble with federal government is to make a mistake on payroll tax withholding/reporting.

My 2 cents...

</comment><comment><USER11> Check out Pulse which has been working out nicely so far for my uses. <http://pulseapp.com>

<comment><USER12> +1 for pulse. It reduces accounting of your cash flow to simple data entry.

Just keeping in mind that at some point, you will have to hand over all the data to an accountant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the tools category, I'm a big fan of <http://freeagentcentral.com>.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am not affiliated with lessaccounting.com, I'm not even a user/customer but I have read fantastic things about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> LiteAccounting.com - easy to use. I say that because I wrote it though.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shoebox :-P</comment>


[Ask HN]Is there a ballpark on how much $ to allocate to build an MVP? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Ideally you can launch your "absolute minimum" while spending nothing except your own time. Put up a free landing page with some enticing copy, and/or set up a free blog and start writing about your subject. You'll end up learning how viable your product is before you even have to build it.

Once you're ready to get a "functional minimum" developed, check out a firm like Prontotype <http://prontotype.us/> that specializes in MVP development. You'll probably spend 5-10K at this stage, depending on how simple your idea is. You can also try the outsourcing or freelancing route, but the cost and quality can often vary quite wildly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agile sprints are 2-4 wks long. Work for 2-4 wks then put it in front of customers. Collect your list of changes/new features. Repeat. You don't have to release it but people other than the people working on it need to see it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes.. As little as possible. Read the Lean Startup for some examples of MVPs without even writing code.. As far as ballpark examples of cost, the standard can be expressed by this formula: Target Cost = how much you think you need/2; the corollary being Actual Cost = budget*4

<comment><AUTHOR> I ran a survey on some FB Startup groups giving a few number ranges. People gravitate towards <1000 $ (indicating as less as possible) and when I ask them what they ended up spending, they pick (5000 - 10000 $). People spend their way to realize that they could have done a lot better by defining 'minimum' and 'viability' in the context of solving customer pain!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does mvp mean in this context?

<comment><USER6> Minimum Viable Product</comment></comment>


The internet has made defensive writers of us all - <AUTHOR> https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.html <comment><USER2> A great quote from the article:

"The defensive writing style also encourages another sort of ugliness, which is that "avoiding saying something wrong" becomes a primary focus of the writing, rather than communicating or exploring ideas which the author might himself be unsure of."

One thing that's great about Gwern Branwen's writing is that Gwern's essays are accompanied by a "belief tag". That tag gives the ability to say "This essay is exploratory; I don't have a high degree of confidence that it's canonically true." Details here: [http://www.gwern.net/About#belief- tags](http://www.gwern.net/About#belief-tags)

Having the option to dissociate ideas from one's person can give a lot of freedom to put contrarian ideas out there and spark debate in search of the Truth without fearing personal attack. Indeed, one of the things that I consider to make a healthy company culture is that ideas can be criticized without the people behind the ideas feeling criticized themselves.

<comment><USER3> It's one of the surprising side-effects of the Internet that anything whatsoever you might say in a public forum can potentially offend someone, somewhere, somehow.

<comment><USER4> I recently watched Slavoj Zizek speak about how political correctness is a more complete totalitarianism.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tndXr- oQxxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tndXr-oQxxA)

I am optimistic the video has some relevance to this discussion.

<comment><USER5> Mises recently published an excellent article on this topic, titled "PC is About Control, Not Etiquette"

[https://mises.org/library/pc-about-control-not- etiquette-0](https://mises.org/library/pc-about-control-not-etiquette-0)

<comment><USER6> "PC is best understood as propaganda" what a bold statement! I like this critical exploration of the whole concept of PC, pretty fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find internet writing to be stimulating in its own way precisely because it is a sort of dash-off writing that does not need to be as precise or exact as would be needed if you were seeking to meet professional standards.

To wit, in law, even in formal contexts, lawyers dish off all sorts of slop in legal briefs, etc. but this really is sub-standard lawyering. To do your job right, you need to meet standards of excellence in making sure you have sound analysis, careful factual recitation, and skilled application of law to facts as you make arguments or seek to achieve some other professional writing goal. This is true as well in less formal professional settings such as writing emails/letters to clients. It may not absolutely matter what you say in terms of precision if a client is not likely to pick up the fine points but it really does matter in terms of maintaining a consistent pride in your professional work. Slop is slop and, when people will evaluate you by how well you are representing a client, it is critical not to be slipshod in your writing.

When writing on the internet, in contrast, you of course want to avoid putting out slop there as well but a lot less precision is needed to make your points. If you make a legal point, it is implied by context that you are making a statement that may not be accurate down to the finest level of detail, that you may be simplifying, or generalizing, or simply venting an opinion that the law may or may not support. Law in itself will vary, even greatly, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and this means that much of what you may be saying is really setting forth broad principles while avoiding a specific application to a given case. For these purposes, there is no need to be defensive, not in the slightest. And I certainly try not to be. Am I ever wrong? Of course, on occasion, yes - I have had a doozie or two in my time, perhaps a number of them. But you try to feel secure about such lapses, knowing that we all err occasionally, and try as a whole to conform to an overall solid record of being as accurate and insightful as possible. While you get the occasional harsh attack, for the most part I have found that people will be charitable knowing that you may have spent no more than 10 or 15 minutes trying to address a sometimes complex topic. Better to give people the benefit of your insights if it is an area where you can do so than it is to leave something in the internet conversion that is wrong or off simply hanging out there. That is a great benefit of the internet. Back in the day, you had to dig deep to find out what people with expertise in their field were thinking and access to this was severely limited. The internet has changed all that. There may be a lot of slop out there but there are also many gems that are there for the taking. As writers, we should be ready to share, if not gems, at least our best thoughts on topics where people might find them helpful.

If I were to stray from my professional topics, then maybe I would be more defensive as well. But the author of this piece emphasizes how the internet may hinder academic writing and I see legal writing as at least broadly similar. So, my experience differs pretty markedly.

Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the common methods people use to attack posts with ideas they don't agree with is to take the prose literally. This is much like the "work to rule" form of protest that unions use, and the "letter of the law" rather than the spirit of it, and of course all those "zero tolerance" policies.

<comment><USER9> One approach to resolving this would be to not make statements that are literally not true and to correct statements that are literally not true to not be literally not true.

<comment><USER10> That creates bland writing and the process of correcting every little deviation is so pedantic that it provides a strong incentive to stop writing. Both of these problems result in a world where we learn less, grow less, and take fewer risks with our writing.

What is wrong with truly being charitable, assuming the absolute best intentions and giving writers the license to deviate a little to let them make a point?

<comment><USER9> Nothing is wrong with being charitable. Some statements are just wrong, or there is no assumption of best intentions that can satisfy the claims being made.

What is wrong with not writing blatantly false statements or calling out wrong statements for being wrong (or, asking for a correction)?

There is a reason compilers cannot take arbitrary text and produce the program you are 'actually' thinking of.

<comment><USER11> "Perfect is the enemy of good", perfection isn't always necessary for effective communication, and the perceived intent of the writer usually matters more. If you think the writer is trying to mislead someone, or they said something that you think will lead to misunderstandings of something important, then call them out or ask for a correction. I took the post as being more about "the writer didn't cover all the edge cases" than about "the writer wrote something intentionally false/wrong/misleading".

<comment><USER10> Very nicely written!! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am fairly new to Y-Combinators Hacker News. Unfortunately, I've run head- long into this very issue on this forum. It ruins the experience.

There is value in communicating figuratively and/or with metaphors. When creatively solving problems, looking for trends or drawing a hypothesis out of the ether, it is often desirable to avoid specifics.

In my opinion, one's inability to comprehend and respond to any given statement at multiple levels limits their upward mobility.

<comment><USER13> I think that HN is one of the rare forums where this article doesn't apply.

Usually the top comment in a particular thread contains the least hedges and most enthusiastically espouses a particular opinion. The comment is not usually overly bombastic (though it sometimes is). The comment almost always adopts the majority opinion on HN.

Posting a comment not aligned with the majority opinion carries a risk of at most -4 points. I assert that downvotes more often correlate with disagreement than failure to abide by the standards of discourse. Since the penalty is limited, _that 's okay_.

Therefore, if visibility and replies are your goal (who wants to comment without interesting replies?), then it's best to write boldly and concisely with a minimum of hedges.

<comment><USER14> It's not just the downvotes. They don't help, but it's also the responses.

There is a major psychological effect from getting _attacked_ for stating an opinion you might hold to heart. As an avid reddit/hn commenter, I feel it often.

I don't really care if someone disagrees with me on something minor, but if it's something I truly believe is important and I see people disagreeing with it left and right and downvoting anything in line with that opinion, it makes me feel weakness and despair.

Weakness: I am overwhelmed by the people disagreeing with me. I can't answer everybody. Not because I don't have the arguments but because it's pointless, won't lead anywhere and will achieve nothing but make me look insane. The "hivemind" effects makes widely-held opinions even stronger and minority opinions even weaker. Alone, I am powerless to counter that.

Despair: Let's say someone thinks gays/black/women/whatever shouldn't [have some human right]. You truly believe that's wrong. If someone says to me "I think women shouldn't have the right to vote" and is impossible to convince, I feel pretty awful about it. I feel like that person is contributing in making the world worse, and I live in that world.

Now what if that's not about some minority-held opinion, but about something far more widespear? What if it's, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around that person, I feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I'm quite afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I'm looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it.

My fiancée is a muslim. This is empathy kicking in. Not everything affects me that way, but I'm far less likely to comment on something I don't hold to heart.

But yes, I do enjoy HN because the hivemind effect is far more limited. The hidden downvotes and sorting algorithms are a million times better than Reddit's. It's not ideal, but it's still an excellent place to have discussion and a "good enough" place to have debates.

<comment><USER15> Hey, thanks for opening up!

Yes, there is a psychological risk you take when you state an opinion on a topic that is important to you. The more important, the more disagreement hurts.

There isn't much one can do about opinions of others. We all try to keep things civil here, but it doesn't always work. Not immediately, at least. I remember the discussions after the last Paris attack; some comments were awful and literally heartbreaking, and I too was feeling a mix of anger and despair.

> _What if it 's, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments > about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around that person, I > feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I'm quite > afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I'm > looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it._

I recognize that feeling. Frankly, I prefer hanging on HN so much because it sometimes seems like one of the last few bastions of sanity on the planet. Back after Paris, my Facebook feed was _literally_ breaking my heart, and it was HN that reminded me that not everyone holds harmful beliefs.

Anyway, when you see knee-jerk attacks and hurtful behavior, I recommend judicious use of the downvote and flag buttons. That's what they're for, and they seem to work pretty well at keeping the discourse at proper level.

Best wishes to you and your fiancée. Stay strong!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is another perspective to this, which is to appreciate when others have put forth a well-considered argument, and to sometimes relish in the challenge of anticipating the rebuttals and shoring up leaks in your reasoning. Often I will write something out that is somewhat critical, and then I'll think about where people might attack it, and it ends up with a more measured position. I love David Foster Wallace because he was the king of considering all facets of an argument or idea so thoroughly that you can't tell which side he's on (and neither could he).

I would say that the people with the problem that this article describes are the good ones, and they are outnumbered and drowned out in our society by "loudmouths" who don't obsessively consider their statements and who do present their own thoughts and beliefs as factual and/or morally correct, so I would say please do keep qualifying everything and even promoting that type of "defensive" thinking. (The caveat is: don't cater to trolls and the willfully uncharitable, and you have to decide for yourself whether someone is trolling or genuinely trying to make an argument worth responding to [or both], it's tough these days!)

I often think about qualifications like "I believe that...", "It is my opinion that...", "I think that...". Some people argue that they're not necessary, it's implied and obvious, it makes you seem weak, etc., but I disagree. I see so many conflicts created by people communicating their beliefs as facts, and it's not at all obvious that they acknowledge the viability of other opinions.

</comment><comment><USER17> As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick. Coming up with counter-examples is the default response. Instead, I try to say a supporting example first. This helps me learn from other people's point of view.

Edit: Though I admit I don't do the best job on HN. :/

<comment><USER18> > As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick.

This is just not true. You are not 'hard wired' to react in such a specific manner, and being an engineer does not mean ripping things apart.

You may be an engineer and choose to make a joke about something. You may be an engineer and something may make you go off and learn about something you didn't know about before. You may be an engineer and react in all sorts of ways to soemthing, nitpick is only one possible outcome.

<comment><USER19> Your comment here rather illustrates the point, I think. :)

<comment><USER20> Interesting. So to convince people to disagree I should voice agreement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Context is really important in communication. When speaking with someone face to face, you pick up on vocal intonations and body language to give you context to their speech. As well, knowing someone personally gives context to what they are saying.

On the internet, you have none of those things, only text. I think we are hitting a wall with our written languages because they can't adequately communicate context. Emoticons are a great evolution in this respect, because I can assign emotional context to some writing with a simple set of characters :).

<comment><USER22> I liked this exact comment when I first read it back in 1985. At least now I can upvote it. That's progress.

<comment><USER23> How about more voting dimensions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I get the feeling a reactionary effect has been an increase of traffic on anonymous image boards like 4chan. There the only value you have is in your argument; there is no profile to judge.

People can say whatever they want there - and they certainly do - but if their argument is invalid or poorly constructed it is shot down or ignored, which serves as a lesson about the strength of a point made in a sterile environment. Of course there are plenty of trolls and people who argue the opposite point for the lulz, but that's just a cost of the medium.

There is no perfect form of communication. If there was, we'd all be using it.

<comment><USER24> Even though I have long ago given up imageboards, this is basically what I came to say. If you think the problem of self censorship due to judgement is the problem, publish anonymously and go hog wild.

I would much rather we have an anonymous set of opinions (because to be quite honest, I will never meet most of you, or be able to connect on a personal level, even if you are awesome) than a people looking to appeal to the crowd.

Unfortunately on 4chan et all this ends up making certain ideas the same as an established figure, ideas(memes in this community) which propagate whether or not they are good, just because they are established.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those interested in the Steven Pinker article, "Why Academics Stink at Writing", and are looking to avoid the paywall, here's the direct link to PDF from his website: [http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_sti...](http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_stink_at_writing.pdf?m=1412010988)

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel compelled to write about race issues because I am a person of color. The issues directly impact my life. But I'm afraid because readers might be pissed off enough to get me fired. :/

<comment><USER26> Excuse my ignorance but do Asians "count" as people of color? I thought that usually referred to Latinos and African Americans?

I know that university admissions PoC _don 't_ include Asians, in fact most admissions standards are stacked against them.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I am a person of color. The dictionary definition of people of color is any non whites.

Edit: There is a long explanation of why Asians are sometimes excluded. The short answer is racism against Asians.

<comment><USER26> It sounds like you're saying it's fine to be racist against whites, but offensive to do the same thing to your personal "in-group." Little ironic, lol.

<comment><USER27> Often, when people are referring to racism, they're referring specifically to Institutional racism. As a general rule (because everything is naturally full of gray areas) it's considered to be impossible for whites to experience institutional racism in countries where we're the majority. So while a PoC could certainly be bigoted against whites, it wouldn't be accurate to say that they're inflicting institutional racism on them.

<comment><USER28> " As a general rule (because everything is naturally full of gray areas) it's considered to be impossible for whites to experience institutional racism in countries where we're the majority."

Sorry, what? Considered by whom? Because we should have a word with these people about how unimaginative they are.

For one thing, there are plenty of ways a member of group X could experience institutional racism in an X-majority country. Perhaps they live in a Y-dominated region of the country, or work for a Y-owned company, or group Y has more political/economic/cultural power in society despite being a minority, or they work for an organization whose policy is to hire and promote Y preferentially.

More generally, I don't see the purpose of desperately insisting that institutional racism _can never_ affect group X. To say that group X can be harmed certainly doesn't mean that group Y isn't harmed _more_. It's a weird and pointless linguistic game that harms the purpose of achieving equality of opportunity by gratuitously driving away allies.

<comment><USER27> I know it's lazy to just link to a Wikipedia article on the subject, but I'm going to anyway, because I'm too lazy to address all the things in your post when you can do your own research.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism)

The fact is, the occasional inconvenience on whites in America (as a convenient example) from occasional pockets of bigoted blacks is fundamentally different from the regular impact on blacks from the institutionalized racist tendencies in society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Every YouTube creator has to do this now as well. They "apologize in advance" or qualify just about everything they say to make sure they don't get eviscerated in comments in case they make a mistake or were even just slightly wrong. It's becoming so common, I see it seeping into every day conversation in younger (like 13yo) kids. Not that everyone should go around spouting ignorant opinion, but being terrified of being incorrect isn't good either.

</comment><comment><USER30> Different perspective: The cost of being wrong is overstated. The cost of offending someone is overstated. Being told you're wrong isn't the worst thing in the world. Being told you've said something offensive won't set you on fire.

I used to be afraid of being told I was wrong or offensive. I took it personally. Now I try to shrug it off and take it as legitimate feedback that doesn't compromise my self-esteem or integrity. Being told you're wrong is better than being wrong and never told you're wrong. Being told you're offensive is enormously better than never being told who you're putting off with your behavior. This holds _even when you take into account the unjustified negative feedback_.

I try to avoid thinking less of someone for thinking I was wrong, or being offended by what I've done. If I do that, I'm distorting my social reality: I am penalizing people for telling me negative things. I am penalizing people for caring that I'm wrong. I'm penalizing people for telling me that my behavior hurts them. By protecting my ego, I would be hurting my relationships with my peers and social groups.

This is not to say I'm not emotional about the responses I receive. I am quite emotional. If I'm writing in a dry tone, I probably just woke up and don't have access to all my senses yet. In fact I think writing without emotional color is a form of defensiveness: It is yet another way for a writer to hedge and separate themself from their opinion and their reader. I'd rather be close to my words and my listeners than safe from criticism.

</comment><comment><USER31> The phenomenon of the nitpicky someone-on-the-internet-is-wrong type comment is so prevalent, I thing we need an acronym like tl;dr for it.

How about "willful misinterpretation; doesn't justify response"?

Wm;djr

<comment><USER32> or bf;wr (bad faith; won't respond). i prefer the term "bad faith" since it covers more cases than "wilful misinterpretation"; i've been using it to good effect on facebook to disengage with malicious arguments, though i didn't think of acronyming it.

<comment><USER33> I like the ;wr part (won't respond) better than the ;djr (looks complex).

But we should make sure to decide on a single one* to use, I like a bit of both: wm;wr cause of symmetry.

*maybe it would be more effective to have multiple and see if any of them catch on but I feel like it'll just cause unnessecary confusion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been thinking about that quiet a bit lately. My two random thoughts:

1\. I don't think it's strictly bad. More pressure to build coherent and precise arguments is good. It can indeed yield unnecessarily verbose language but I don't think it has to? Inserting qualifiers etc. everywhere is just the most naive way of approaching it, like a newbie programmer using too many nested if statements.

2\. We should assume all comments are charitable as well. They are no different, they're just as likely to be misread.

<comment><USER35> I do agree with 1. 2 is optimistic.

Depending on the situation, some "weasel words" (may, could, probably, etc.) or other ways of adding some fuzz to your arguments are appropriate. But formulating cogent and precise arguments with defensible data and references is better when possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I find this whole line of reasoning to be dubious, unimaginative, and sad.

Few people would call me a drab or unopinionated writer. Yet I write in a way that I believe protects me from those who would seize on any misstep to disparage me or even to sue for libel. And I've only slightly relaxed the safeguards I used in my earliest business writing, when I was a stock analyst subject to SEC regulation.

The keys to safe and ethical writing are:

1\. Don't lie or deliberately mislead. 2\. Be clear about the support for your stated opinions -- including doubts or lack of support.

Or, equivalently, adhere as best you can to The Golden Rule of Opinionated Non-Fiction Writing:

Give readers the tools to make informed decisions as to whether they should or shouldn't accept what you say.

Beyond that, I'd say -- and this is something else that goes back to my experience a stock analyst:

A. Your job isn't to tell readers what to decide. B. Rather, your job is to make the best contribution you can to your readers' decision processes.

Ultimately, their decisions are their own responsibility -- and if they forget that fact, then bad on them.

</comment><comment><USER37> It comes back to what Marshall McLuhan said, "The Medium is the message": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)

I've come to realize is that the expected audience is a crucial aspect of the communication requirements. On the internet, the audience is quite wide, and disagreement / outrage usually leads more responses / activity than does agreement and acceptance. I should say, in fact, that agreement leads to further sharing, whereas disagreement leads to comments. Thus, an article that some people agree with and some disagree with, gets re-shared and exposed to a lot of controversy. That eventually finds its way into other outlets, whereby each compelling article has a counter-article somewhere else in addition to all the substance-free vitriolic comments.

What the internet has really done is stop letting us get away with echo chambers, by breaking the walls between them. I think that is a good thing.

I should write a blog post on that :)

PS: This is not new. I think Bertrand Russell said: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Now, those doubts are reinforced by the threat of being shown wrong. I think it's quite an art to articulate compelling arguments out of factually true statements, and even more of an art to think several steps ahead, choose which statements to focus on in order to draw certain reactions from an audience, and thus build receptivity to your next statements. Daniel Dennett said: You should be able to understand your opponent's arguments so well that you can say it back and they say "I wish I had put it that way". And of course, to do that, we shouldn't just write, we should also read, and all be exposed to the other arguments, instead of the echo chambers that social networks make money off of:

[https://sealedministries.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/3-reasons-...](https://sealedministries.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/3-reasons- you-should-read-those-with-whom-you-disagree/)

</comment><comment><USER38> As an analyst, I perfected the art of defensive writing. We had to. Everyone has a vested interest in everything you say. Every way that situations were described, every opinion of what approaches or technologies will/won't work, every product rating, every everything. If not a financial vested interest, then an affinity interest. In the editorial process, we often talked about "hardening" or "bulletproofing" the writing so it could withstand the slings and arrows of relentless criticism.

</comment><comment><USER39> We have conversations like we're bickering over the interpretation of a specification, and it's every bit as painful sometimes.

As the author says, wilful misinterpretation seems to be the name of the game, and we almost all seem to be guilty of it from time to time.

It's easy to be a dick when you're not looking someone in the eyes.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why I don't have comments on my own blog. I love discussion and appreciate it where it belongs, like hacker news and reddit, but if I'm writing it is my own outlet and I really don't want other people to see what other people think about what I write. I prefer people come up with their own opinions. If they want to discuss, they can message me.

</comment><comment><USER41> The way I see it, defensive writing is also a kind of self-indulgent, narcissistic behaviour which seeks gratification from always being "correct" and never being proven "wrong".

It requires a certain dose of humility to admit that something you've said was wrong or to accept some parts of the opponent's opinion.

<comment><USER42> What if you don't know something for certain? Isn't some discretion needed? Humility is being open the possibility of being wrong.

<comment><USER41> One could say "correct me if I'm wrong" and continue with his thoughts instead of precluding the possibility for outlining an interesting point of view because of a small uncertainty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think I have come to the conclusion "Don't feed the trolls". His post reminds me of everyone who would correct grammar mistakes and try to make your whole point look null because you missed a comma. I am not against correcting grammar but when you try to paint an idea/person as ignorant because of that I think it makes the attacker look foolish.

I engage the ones who have actual points to discuss or critique and just ignore the trolls. I want to engage with educated people anyway to enrich my own understanding, not bother defending myself from trolls. I figure and educated reader will see through the troll anyway.

They hate lack of attention and will starve off or be seen by the masses as annoying. I think the age of the troll is coming to an end. Society or at least the more educated are starting to see it for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER44> So absolutely true. 2016 needs to be about taking it back a notch. Let's write how we want to write and say what we want to say and start ignoring the loudly offended. I'm serious here. Marginalize them instead of giving them power.

And I don't mean important things like racial or gender sensitivity, I just mean the fringe little things that people pick apart and whine about.

I decided a while back when I write opinion pieces for my blog, you're getting my opinion. Whine and complain, flame me in the comments, I don't care. You'll get over it.

<comment><USER45> > And I don't mean important things like racial or gender sensitivity, I just > mean the fringe little things that people pick apart and whine about.

Isn't the common argument that certain aspects of racial or gender sensitivity are considered "fringe little things that people pick apart and whine about"? Like mansplaining, manspreading, halloween costumes about other races, the recent World Fantasy Convention change from HP Lovecraft busts as their trophies?

EDIT: If I'm actually doing exactly what is being argued against please let me know. I'm actually just very curious where the "line" is between too-PC and not-too-PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Excellent bit of reflective writing and I'm certainly in agreement. For a moment I thought this might be the basic gist of an article I'm working up (re: message boards vs. article/content comments and notions of "community") but glad to see it's a different angle, and complimentary. Guiding over to Pinker's article is an immense help as well, because I'm really digging the term "intellectually unscrupulous" as a nice description of some behaviors I've seen online that are maddening.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm not sure I buy this argument at all. I've certainly heard the argument enough times that it's less critical to get everything right on the first pass on the Web because you can always update it. I'm not a particular fan of this mindset but it's out there. And I'd note it's the offline pubs that are far more likely to still have people in a fact checker role--however vestigial. And making errors of fact too many times was more than frowned upon at traditional newspapers.

Having said that, a lot depends on the person and the context. I'm sure we could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in being controversial than in being correct; some predate online publishing though. On the other hand, there are some contexts where you don't to state bald opinions that you can't back up. I'm not convinced any of this has to do with Web or non-Web.

<comment> squeaky-clean > I'm sure we could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in > being controversial than in being correct

I can't name any, so your comment is wrong, and I don't care to respond to the rest of it, or even acknowledge that I read it. Of course I don't really mean that, but I feel this is the kind of pedantry the article is talking about, and not true factual incorrectness.

The Twitter account linked to only has 36.2K followers, not 39K, so that paragraph is incorrect and stupid. ...Except the important detail here isn't the exact number of followers, just that there's a large amount. If this were a scientific paper on the number of followers various humor accounts gain, then yeah, I would be all for ripping this apart. But it isn't, so it's irrelevant.

Writing defensively is more than just being factual. It's being overly factual where it doesn't really matter, because a vocal minority will likely yell at you otherwise.

<comment><USER35> A vocal minority will always yell at you. Fuck 'em and ignore 'em.

Edit: I've written in a relatively public sphere, albeit not at politics level, for long enough to have a pretty thick skin. I realize not everyone is in that position.

<comment><USER47> Saying fuck'em and ignore'em is overly simplistic. Some people can do it. Most can't. Even athletes who earn millions of dollars and have hundreds of thousands of fans can get riled up by words from a single hater.

At a Social Anxiety meetup, I remember one person who could in great detail recall a racist incident years back when a random person called the person a racially derogative word. Sure, he could've just shrugged it off as it was just a stranger and all. Yet it had a profound effect.

Just as much as words from strangers can inspire us to commit profound change, so can words do great damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Defensive writing is the straightforward consequence of increased exposure to assholes. While in real life assholes are marginalized, and mainstream discussions involve only reasonable people, Internet media enable assholes to masquerade as normal people (they hide behind an ordinary appearance, with little chance to know they will become irritating), increase their reach (they can pick on anyone, anywhere and at any time, rather than irritating a limited circle of acquaintances) and reduce social defenses against them (for instance, they can easily return with a pseudonym after being banned from a forum, which in itself is a much milder consequence for antisocial attitudes than, say, being beaten up or losing their job in real life).

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm unclear on whether the author is yearning to become blase about whether his ideas are valid, criticizing his own writing, blaming his pandering statements on imbeciles, or being cleverly ironic.

He laments having to tone down something he thinks might be interpreted "uncharitably", and in the very next sentence blames it on those who commit "uncharitable actions".

> At times I've been tempted to just turn off comments entirely on my blog, > and just flat out avoid participating in comment threads on the web

I can relate to internet commenting frustrations, but this conveys real issues with hearing any dissenting opinion. Turning off comments altogether on your blog is like fearfully plugging your ears with your fingers to drown out anything that might be valid criticism.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's sort of tangential, but knowing anything I write can be found by Googling my real name has certainly made me write defensively. It's why my main Twitter account is not public.

<comment><USER51> It's why i occasionally send replies to facebook posts via IRC. Technically quite the opposite of private, but there's a bit of a social convention that it's OK to be a jerk on IRC and that is not only liberating, but also surprisingly detrimental to the xkcd:386 pissing contests that are the root of the defensiveness pchiusano is complaining about.

(disclaimer: IRC is any number of very different places so your experience may vary - oh, how meta-on-topic! And while we're at it: "on IRC, all talk is offensive, not defensive, IRC is part of the internet, therefore the whole post is wrong")

Personally, this whole idea that excessively hedging arguments can be seen as a bad thing is completely new to me. I do it all the time, from a simple AFAIK to explicitly stating all the givens that might be attacked, just in case. I state my opinion, or even just a write a little devil's-advocate "please try to understand how it looks from that perspective" piece, not a properly deweaselified wikipedia entry. But i do like to think of my usage as an enabler for posting bold, speculative ideas. In scientific terms (i'm not a scientist) i would rather be wrong with an outlandish causality hypothesis than with misinterpreted correlation noise. Maybe the knowledge that i am a linguistic offender will help me making the use of defensiveness more deliberate and to the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Since integrating shutup.css [0] in my browsers, my experience on websites with comments sections has been much more pleasurable. It's very good at recognizing comments sections and completely removing them.

I wish more sites disabled them and instead opened their blogs up to well- thought out letters to the editor.

[0][https://stevenf.com/shutupcss/](https://stevenf.com/shutupcss/)

</comment><comment><USER53> In regards to hedges and weasel words: I never used more weasel words and hedges than when I sold computers at Circuit City. I knew what the policies should be and how we should be able to help customers, but I had no power to actually make that happen so I used tons of should, may, probably, likely, etc.

I hated it and it took me a while to unlearn that way of talking.

<comment><USER54> I use a lot of what are called weasel words because the reality is that they are the most accurate words. For example, someone buying a lottery ticket will probably lose. I have trouble saying they definitely will because I know there is a slim chance they will win. And if 1 in a 100,000,000+ is enough to make me avoid saying definitely, imagine what chances such as 1 in a 1,000 or 1 in a 100 do to my word choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The internet has made offensive writers of many.

</comment><comment><USER56> on the other side, that guaranteed exposure to unexpected and harshest criticism is a great beauty of the Internet (it is like street fight with no rules vs. strictly regulated fights under rules of some league) - if you're not afraid (which is easily achieved by for example staying anonymous :) you may explore many ideas much more boldly, deeply and widely and be able to hear arguments and criticism of them not available otherwise elsewhere. As a result, Internet taught me that i may be sometimes [fortunately very infrequently] not right and/or just plainly mistaken. That was a huge personal discovery :) , a bit painful, yet it is percolated even into offline life - whenever i hear some crap at the meeting, etc. i now sometimes give myself a second or even 2 to entertain the very improbable idea that that crap may be worth something what i just don't see right at the moment :)

</comment><comment><USER57> Programmers do, because you are exposed to ambiguous, badly written specifications for features all the time.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is a startup opportunity and can be solved through UX and richer moderation tools. UX influences user behavior. One small example, a richer moderation system that captures _-1 because violation of HN guideline #6 "avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them_ could short circuit entire flamewar threads. I think a psychologist could probably build the right UX to get top 1% expertise to generate incredible discussions reliably and funnel the 99% peanut gallery off to the side where they can happily contribute too. I would have liked to see reddit build this but they have had years and years to do something interesting, i guess they are too big to innovate now

<comment><USER59> good rules and UI can help, but good UI won't change the way people are, and for any given set of rules, people motivated by strong emotions will find creative ways to break the rules to get their needs satisfied.

the only 100% reliable solution is to completely remove their freedom of expression (eg, with an all-powerful moderator, whose interpretation of the rules is law).

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I notice this the most on tech people, I think it's related that we read a lot of stories about people getting fired for a tweet or a post...

</comment><comment><USER61> I dunno, man. I write defensively as a default and consequentially nitpick every argument made for a position.

On the other hand, I am not adverse to changing my mind on a flip of a good argument.

If I get offended or defensive, it means that my beliefs aren't as ironclad as I thought.

There are some areas that I pretty much don't pay attention though.

Anything concerning creationism, global warming denialism, pro-smoking, god, etc.

I won't waste my time entertaining obviously wrong arguments.

<comment><USER62> The article's message is that non-defensive writing traditionally presumed the author's openness to (in your case) changing their mind, and that today we have all become defensive writers because there is now an expectation that someone will use nitpicks about inconsequential points to discredit the entire piece.

<comment><USER63> > today we have all become defensive writers because there is now an > expectation that someone will use nitpicks about inconsequential points to > discredit the entire piece.

Even such inconsequential things as, for example, pointing out the parent's incorrect choice of "adverse" instead of "averse," which has no bearing on the argument.

There's almost always a mistake, overgeneralization, or convenient shortcut in anything a person says. Holding people to an impossible standard just adds stress all around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> There should be a tool to which you could say: here's an idea, please rewrite it into defensive form.

</comment><comment><USER42> Another possibility is that the writer doesn't actually know if something is certain or not.

</comment><comment><USER65> So, about a week ago, I wrote a piece that I feel has a solid point and I posted it on Hacker News. It hit 39 karma and had 54 comments. Not impressive for Hacker News overall, but, hey, decent for my own personal blog's track record.

The top voted comment on it is incredibly dismissive, completely dismissing my 6-ish years of college, more than 5 years working in insurance, etc. over one detail that wasn't thoroughly researched and was, in fact, framed to admit that it was kind of hand-wavy. I don't think what I said was entirely wrong and stupid, but it wasn't 100% accurate.

(HN item in question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819091))

But I think I have two choices here:

I can be completely bummed that one person chose to completely dismiss everything based on one not perfect remark in the piece and others upvoted that. Or I can value the upvotes the item got, the amount of meaningful discussion it did generate, the page views it got, and the constructive feedback that tells me that if I want to write more on this topic, I need to do a bit more research and firm up my ability to defend my points or random asshats are going to say "Well, based on one single detail, nothing she says can possibly have any merit."

But, hey, I have done similar things myself: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828054) So, maybe people doing that isn't all asshattery. Maybe it is more complicated than that and when someone tells you "x detail makes me not read/believe/whatever any of it", then that is constructive feedback that you can choose to try to learn something from so you can improve your writing -- or not, as you see fit.

I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to express myself effectively online. I think part of the challenge is that a) your audience is incredibly diverse, so lazy writing habits that are rife with unquestioned assumptions which may be racist, sexist, etc are going to get called out online even though your personal circle of friends wouldn't have a problem with it (because they are also kind of racist, sexist, whatever) and b) you are talking to people who may know more than you about some piece of it and/or can google up info, either to fact check or just to rebut because they don't like you, don't agree with your point, just got dumped, are IUI (Internetting Under The Influence) or for any damn reason.

So, in addition to readers perhaps needing to try to "find the insight, not the error," authors can also try to focus more on the metrics that make them feel positive about having written it rather than focusing on the comments that make them cringe.

It took some self control at first, but I am finding that my experience of the Internet is much better now that I focus more on counting the positives and, as much as possible, ignoring the negatives. It does involve some judgment calls. You can't just turn the other cheek on everything. There are situations where you need to correct people or clarify your meaning or defend your statement. But if you are getting traffic and getting comments, even if some of them are ugly, then you accomplished something.

I am trying harder to decide what I want to accomplish, keeping my eye on evidence that I am moving that goal forward, and not expecting some "perfect" experience (for lack of a better way of saying that, as I have other things to do and this comment has gone on long enough).

<comment><USER66> Is there a way to use comments as an editorial device? A wiki-like solution, combined with a MS-Word Track-changes features, where you can make changes, and leave comments and it all shows up on the same page? Like with the health care article example, the first 90% of that seems like pure fluff (when it isn't making a false or misleading or questionable statements), essentially padding added to a high-school report to meet an arbitrary length requirement. The real meat and the potentially interesting content is then almost lost in the shuffle. A professional editor would request a complete rewrite. You should be telling us more about DPC, which is new, interesting, and potentially very valuable.

<comment><USER65> I have no idea if there is a way to use comments as an editorial device.

Why do you think 90% seems like fluff? Based on comments on Metafilter where all I did was talk about DPC, I felt the background info was necessary.

But I do hope to write a more professional version and I am in talks with a publication that may take it. So I am keenly interested in feedback.

Thanks!

<comment><USER66> Here's a version that I commented on in Libre/Open Office (an *.odt file), but I assume you could probably open it in a modern version of MS-Office, and have the comments come through fine):

[http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=62873318985673539567](http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=62873318985673539567)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'm seeing way, way, waaaaaay too many commenters here who apparently came away from this thinking that "defensive writing", as described by the author, has anything to do with not offending people. That's totally orthogonal to what the author is talking about. He's talking about the tendency some people have to take everything as literally as possible, finding some logical hole in an argument based on a very literal (and often wrong) interpretation, and then start stupid inflammatory debates in comment threads about it. As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with political correctness, although people saying so really deliciously proves his point.

The root of it is sometimes that an author didn't express something very well. In general though, it's because some readers are predisposed to find the most literal and uncharitable interpretation of something they read, which they then use as an excuse to try to show up the author in the comments. These types of commenters are the types of people who don't assume good faith on the part of other people, and when they see something that doesn't make sense to them their first thought is that the person who wrote it is an idiot, rather than to step back and take a moment to think about what the author might've meant. These types of commenters are looking for excuses to publicly disagree with someone, they're not trying to participate in an exploratory discussion in which the participants don't automatically assume the worst about each other.

For example, what if someone made an offhand comment about C being the de facto standard for systems programming for the last few decades? On certain forums, it is pretty much guaranteed that someone will chime in about all of the various kernels, research OSes, etc. that have been and are currently being written in languages other than C, and proceed to argue with the poster about this fact. Of course, they're right in a sense- it's true that C accounts for < 100.000% of systems programming. But it's pointless to argue about as it's based on a strawman from an overly literal interpretation of the original statement.

And it pretty much goes downhill from there. Overly Literal Internet Guy #2 then has to chime in and attack Overly Literal Internet Guy #1 over some other strawman based on an uncharitable interpretation of what #1 wrote.

Point being, the entire discussion gets derailed by a handful of people who refuse to give each other the benefit of the doubt and just really want to argue. We could have been talking about why C is such a juggernaut in the systems programming world, or what other languages might make sense for systems programming, or any number of other interesting digressions. But noooooo, we can't have nice things because a few people just want to scream at the author and each other about willful, overly literal misinterpretations of what was written. As a result, many writers will warp their style to put hedges and defensive qualifiers around every single statement to avoid all discussion getting derailed by Overly-Literal-Internet-Guys-Who-Think- Everyone-Is-Else-Is-An-Idiot. By the time all of those qualifiers and hedges go in, it's possible that the point of the original statement is diluted or lost entirely.

And of course, in what I've just written, I myself am no doubt guilty of assuming bad faith on the part of other people and am just as guilty of the behavior I'm complaining about. I get it, I really do. This is a type of cognitive bias that everyone has, including myself. There are no easy answers when it comes to understanding human interactions or our own mental processes, we can only try our best. I only take issue with people who think they are infallible and don't even try to play devil's advocate with themselves when thinking about things they care about.

<comment><USER68> There's a trick one can pull if you decide to engage with literal thinkers head-on, and that is to give them bait by inserting a "great error" somewhere in the text, for example:

> ...this method is justified, because we know the earth is flat.

This is one of the core techniques in esoteric writing. What the great error does is intentionally push the dynamic of the conversation away from agreeability on the surface towards "picking apart and puzzling". People who aren't inclined to think about things will miss the great error entirely and go on without feeling the need to remark(since the essay's surface will usually be framed towards an audience's status quo), but once the error is discovered, the rest suddenly falls into doubt, and then literal thinkers are suddenly confronted with an essay that is far more challenging, because your error was not just an error, but a trap to force them to think about the other statements carefully in order to "prove you more wrong". It is their thinking, and not yours, that becomes warped. To pull this off the essay has to hold a tension between truth and falsity where some statements hold true even under inspection, while others don't.

This also makes the resulting comment threads much more lively since they will consist of smart people falling over themselves to show how wrong and stupid you are, only to find their minds are changed by the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Not me.

(please no downvote)

<comment><USER70> I assume this is a joke that people aren't getting?

<comment><USER69> Well, low effort one liners are frowned upon for good reasons so I don't mind the downvotes but I couldn't resist. I just wish the same treatment was also applied to non-joke useless comments. _" I too have a baby and I love him"_, ok great.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most developer-friendly VR headset? - <AUTHOR> I see a lot of opportunity for VR, especially given the global pandemic we're all living with right now. What headsets would you guys recommend for someone who wants to develop VR apps? I'm interested in creating virtual concerts, happy hours, whiteboard collaboration meetings, etc. <comment><USER2> Was just thinking about the same question. Reviews I looked at seem to indicate Valve Index is currently the state of the art. Planning to get one but I'm curious to hear what people have to say about the other headsets.

Like you I think the future of tech work involves giving people money to buy their own VR headsets like how most startups give people money to buy monitors and desks. It just makes sense to buy programmers VR headsets. The cost relative to everything else is negligible just like the cost of monitors and desks.</comment>


Unknown FB ad account owns my business page - <AUTHOR> Would love any advice here. Am in a new position at a university and in setting up an ad account for the university FB page, I realized we're not able to add the page to our ad account. Apparently, someone out there somewhere already has the page on another ad account, so when I try to include it on our ad account, it says "request pending" but none of the admins on our page are getting the request. This leads me to believe the request is going to whomever set up the ad account that is connected to our page. I have tried every one I can find to see if anyone has said ad account, to no avail. I have tried troubleshooting through Facebook, to no avail. Does anyone out there know how to get anyone at FB to help remedy this OR any kind of backdoor workaround I could do to reclaim our page into my ad account. Eternally grateful for any help!!! <comment><USER2> Only Facebook customer service can help really.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my fear. Just can't my hands on anything helpful from them or a human to speak to. Thanks for the reply!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking back on the last 5 years, what's your biggest personal milestone - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> After a ten year battle I graduate a arts politics/business management degree this Friday. It's been a long battle but I'm stoked to have stuck to it! However disheartening the knowledge has been it's definitely worth it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Getting married.</comment>


HN for Climate News? - <AUTHOR> Can we make a hacker news specifically for climate posting? September 20 would be a good day to start. <comment><USER2> That would be great!

The tech platform shouldn't be too sophisticated. HN uses Arc, a Lisp implemented in Racket ([http://arclanguage.org](http://arclanguage.org)). I'm not sure about the DB, though.

However, the difficult part, as in every online community, would be in keeping the conversation reasonable (which includes moderating zealot climate change deniers, for instance).</comment>