One of my coworkers, my mentor and someone who taught me what it meant to be a good programmer, was murdered by his wife, who also murdered their two children and then killed herself.
It took place over a holiday, and I noticed he hadn't shown up afterwards. After a couple of days, I asked my boss if he was on vacation, and he said no, so I emailed him. His body and his family were found the next day by his neighbors. I actually saw his face on the evening news and my heart started racing, because they made it seem as though he was the murderer, but as events came out, he and his beautiful children were the victims.
It was really horrible because he was one of the star programmers at work and responsible for a lot of the success in the company. Everyone loved him and he deserved to be loved. It really hit our company hard, and we had things like counselling meetings but all that did was fuel our anger.
Basically there's nothing you can do. You just have to deal with it and move on. It's been 10+ years, but I'll never forget him though, he deserves at least that.
His parents flew in from Europe for the funeral. It was unreal to imagine what they went through, my coworker's entire family was essentially erased. I wrote his father a letter explaining what his son meant to me. I never received a response... I didn't expect one either knowing what they went through, but I felt like it was my obligation to at least let them know.
This is both mistaken and a distraction from a very important topic.
EDIT: It's mistaken that she was banned for her two comments. It's unreasonable to read her comments and conclude she was hellbanned for asking a question about Steam and correcting someone about her gender. There's also no way to know whether she was hellbanned, or simply posting comments via Tor. If a new account posts comments via Tor, those comments are autokilled. It's not till the newbie status wears off (i.e. until your username is no longer green in your comments page) that using Tor won't cause your comments to be autokilled. This is done for obvious reasons: spammers use Tor to spam annoying things. Lastly, there are plenty of nefarious things that one can do to be deservedly hellbanned on HN; bans are issued for more reasons than just writing comments. Oh, and, if you are hellbanned and are sincerely sorry for what you did, you can email info@ycombinator.com with a sincere apology and may get leniency. I know from experience.
Can we please get back to letting people unwind about their heartwrenching experiences with mortality now?
Bluekitten's still green, so it's unlikely to be the Tor issue you describe.
It's perfectly reasonable to conclude she was hellbaned for those things: given the available evidence, it's the most plausible interpretation.
Being able to apologise and get unbanned might be a reasonable defence of the system except the entire point of hellbanning is that you can't tell when you've been hellbanned.
The lack of transparency or accountability in the HN moderation system is itself a very important topic.
The meaning of "troll" has been diluted so much in recent years, that it's now largely used by the media, and people in general, to mean someone who expresses a view that you disagree with.
And it's used to describe people on twitter who harass or post abusive comments.
"troll" used to mean something. Now it's just a stock insult.
Luckily I haven't had such experiences so far. I guess people go through too many daily stresses, especially in tech life. As the only girl in my team, its hard for me to say no to unpaid overtime because most of other folks can't seem to say no to overworking themselves afterhours and on weekends, giving people others who don't a bad name.
> Sometime it is very difficult for human to understand GOD and his punishment !
OP isn't stupid. He has no problem comprehending the wrath of your imaginary friend, nor the imaginary nature of the aforementioned wrath. He lost a dear friend and mentor. The one who has trouble understanding reality is you.
A few months ago, I was on the losing end of a head-on motorcycle versus Jeep Cherokee crash and spent several days in the hospital. I had some pretty severe injuries but somehow managed to not smash my head in -- I don't wear a helmet and, although I had several broken bones, I somehow escaped with only had a few cuts and scrapes to my head.
Several of the doctors and nurses said (words to the effect of) "someone upstairs must have been looking out for you". I'm an athiest and I get really annoyed when people say such things but, at the time, the best way I could think of to respond was to simply keep my mouth shut and not respond at all, so I said nothing.
It was about the fourth or fifth person who made such a remark when I finally went off. "Oh!? Well why the fk wasn't he looking out for me a few seconds earlier? He could have stopped that Jeep from turning in front of me -- but he didn't, did he? Get out of here with your religious bullsh*t!"
I really hate to be like that or respond to people that way but I just couldn't take it anymore. Apparently, however, "the word spread" as not one more person said anything even remotely similar to me the rest of the time I was there.
(Similar/related: all the "praying for you" comments posted to my Facebook page. I responded to those with something along the lines of "I don't believe in God so don't waste your time praying but, if you must, pray for the doctors who are operating on me instead.")
> "Oh!? Well why the fk wasn't he looking out for me a few seconds earlier? He could have stopped that Jeep from turning in front of me -- but he didn't, did he? Get out of here with your religious bullsh*t!"
So supposedly you were the rational party to the exchange, yet you failed to see that people (although you don't share their exact worldview) were just trying to be nice and went full-on asshole in return. No wonder the word spread quickly.
I'm not religious, but I have enough empathy to understand that when someone says "god bless" or similar, it's meant sincerely, and I care much more about a world in which strangers are sincere to each other than one where everybody understands there is no god.
It can lead to a very dangerous fatalism. If you think it's in God's hands whether you survive a crash, why wear a seatbelt?
More generally I get annoyed when someone says something false, even if I can't immediately see what mistakes it's going to lead them to make. My experience is that even the most benign-seeming of errors can cause problems sooner or later.
> My experience is that even the most benign-seeming of errors can cause problems sooner or later.
But of course you don't mean the mistake of mistaking a genuine attempt to be friendly for something to be indignated about. No, when someone speaks from their position into your life, that is not okay. If you speak from your position into theirs, it's super objective and correct, and to downvote them into oblivion is a perfectly adequate response. Who here would care if they're hellbanned? Just another peddler of religious beliefs, nuke them.
Oh, but as Bill Hicks said: Newsflash, you're dead too. Mistakes lead to a bad outcome, so does perfection. So I don't quite get the posturing.
We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. -- Charles Bukowski
Yet from what I can tell, not believing in a particular fairy tale doesn't mean that every single thing you otherwise hold true isn't a fairy tale as well. It doesn't take a lot of science or introspection to realize that, does it? When people say "Planet Earth" instead if exactly describing the configuration of all matter and energy in the universe, does that make you angry, too?
> But of course you don't mean the mistake of mistaking a genuine attempt to be friendly for something to be indignated about
Projecting much? I never said anything about being indignant; it annoys me, or maybe saddens is a more appropriate term, but that doesn't mean I respond in anger. Pretending you think someone's right when they've just said something wrong may be the easy way out, but being truly friendly requires being more honest (and sure, sometimes it turns out it was you who was wrong all along).
> Who here would care if they're hellbanned?
I think HN's hellbanning is a terrible practice, I've said so repeatedly, and if you have any suggestions for how I could prevent it then I'd genuinely welcome them. But I don't think "don't downvote anyone" is a good response.
> Yet from what I can tell, not believing in a particular fairy tale doesn't mean that every single thing you otherwise hold true isn't a fairy tale as well. It doesn't take a lot of science or introspection to realize that, does it? When people say "Planet Earth" instead if exactly describing the configuration of all matter and energy in the universe, does that make you angry, too?
I'm not perfect, and I never will be. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try to become better.
I am sorry, I expressed myself very badly. I didn't mean to jump at you for the votes etc., but the general reaction to that post really astonished and saddened me.
And when I said "posturing", I was not even just thinking of this thread, but general delusions about being objective. I can see being "more objective", but even that will always be vague, and I think "objective, period" is out of the reach of anything within the universe. Simply because it's in and part of it. Yes, I get that religious stuff can be annoying, but so is thinking you're suddenly sooo objective just because you're not religious... On the scale between subjective and objective, the needle doesn't even visibly move, so to speak.
When someone expresses genuine condolences in an awkward way, a huge drama over religion and calling that person basically evil and wrong is kinda tragic. Like petty fights at a funeral. But you shouldn't be the scapegoat for that, just like that Indian poster shouldn't be the scapegoat for pushy religious people they were mistaken for.
General idea: If someone says something that means something nice in their culture, but means "asshole" in the one of the listener, they still said something nice, it's just misunderstood. Each knowing the culture of the other better would fix that. That's how I see it, anyway.
Getting annoyed and telling people off doesn't result in fewer instances of dangerous fatalism, because that is not a very effective way of convincing people. It may as well have the opposite effect: "See, God is great, he even takes care of this smug bastard"
Similarly, getting annoyed when people say something false doesn't result in fewer problems, as you are unlikely to communicate in an effective way when annoyed and are unlikely to convince anyone of the falsehood. Again, it may well have the opposite effect: the non-occurrence of armageddon never dissuades a cult of their beliefs, but rather makes them stronger.
And if you say something like "Well, they should listen if they know what's good for them", then you show that the rationalization of your behavior is just a facade. Then you are not truly interested in preventing problems. If you were, you would try to be effective, not just right.
> it can lead to a very dangerous fatalism. If you think it's in God's hands whether you survive a crash, why wear a seatbelt?
This seems like a red herring. I'm not a religious person, but the notion that it's possible for a divine power to influence human affairs doesn't necessarily imply the absence of free will.
Do you have evidence of this dangerous fatalism? Other than the tiny percentage of fanatics who want to be martyrs, I don't consider religious folks to be an especially reckless bunch.
No, I don't have a study or anything, this is just personal experience.
> Other than the tiny percentage of fanatics who want to be martyrs, I don't consider religious folks to be an especially reckless bunch.
You see a more subtle form in the conservatism that goes with religion; many religions oppose positive social changes, and I think that's partly because of the assumption that nothing could be truly wrong with the world the way it is today.
> It can lead to a very dangerous fatalism. If you think it's in God's hands whether you survive a crash, why wear a seatbelt?
Hand-wavey answer: something about the devil tempting Jesus to jump from the top of the temple because why not ? since he's the son of god obviously big daddy will save him right ? Then Jesus says something about not "testing" God.
Sure, there are arguments. But there are arguments for a lot of things in the Bible, and very smart, very knowledgeable people still disagree about what it prescribes. My experience is that if you base your decision-making on reading the bible and doing what you think it says, sooner or later you'll do something bad. (If you follow the advice of a major church you're less likely to do obviously bad things, but IMO the social/political policies religions tend to advocate are also bad, though in more subtle ways)
As a fellow atheist and motorcyclist, may I suggest that you start wearing a helmet? I mean, when there's no afterlife to look forward to, you should probably wear the appropriate safety gear.
"God and his punishments" == "bad things that happen, life being unfair" etc.?
I read this as someone trying to give their condolences the best way they know how, according to their beliefs, in a language that is not their native tongue.
I reread what he wrote and I have to say on reflection you're probably right and my first reaction was probably too harsh. However, there is something wrong with expressing sympathies for a person's death by saying something that amounts to "yeah, that's because my imaginary FRIEND punished him". It implies the dead person was killed by an all-knowing supernatural force as a response to a transgression.
I am not rude against GOD and i am not complaining. Here i was trying to express my views as i seen many-time that good people are suffering and bad people are enjoying !
The word "punishment" does not mean what I think (hope) you want to say. Punishment implies a crime, ie. something you knew to be wrong, could have chosen not to do, but since you did do it, you're being punished. That sentiment, of course, is offensive.
That said, I think the bulk of the vitriol fueling the down votes is the mention of God - that's also what the comments are all about. It's sad how the inclusiveness and tolerance of the modern rationalist ends abruptly at religion.
A quick scan of jigneshg's past comments reveals that they are definitely not a native English speaker, and as was pointed out above, in Indian culture, this is a perfectly polite way to empathize with another's suffering. The irony that this apparent cultural misunderstanding has caused jigneshg's karma to plummet gives me no end of mirth, but the clearly anglophile Western (and perhaps white male) reaction to jigneshg's statement is no more accurate for it. There's plenty of self-righteous indignation to go around this holiday season, so maybe a little forgiveness is in order, after examining the situation?
As an American male who is white, my first reading of
jigneshg's comment led me to a negative reaction, similar to those expressed above. So, for my part, race and gender had a great deal to do with my initial reaction, and I felt it important to bring that to light in my comment, because many of the reactions to jigneshg's comment insist that his language says something that, in the Indian context, it does not say. That insistence is unapologetically Eurocentric, since the West holds no monopoly over the English language or its use/meaning in India. Furthermore, those reactions are consistent with the racism I have witnessed among white males on a self-righteous power trip. It's a simple misunderstanding, blown wildly out of proportion because the parties reacting aren't taking the time to acknowledge that a misunderstanding has taken place.
Also, to make it abundantly clear, adopting another culture's religious concept and using it as a gamified point system – karma – is kinda shitty. Karma isn't a point system, except in the most limited Western view of the concept, and here HN deploys it synonymously with points, and jigneshg, who is likely SE Asian (based on their use of English) is getting nailed to the cross according to a Eurocentric, stripped down definition of Karma. That power dynamic (abstract though it may be) is what makes this racist.
My point was that you reaction would not have substantively changed if you happened to be a white American female or a black American male.
Even taking into account the fact that Africans Americans are more religious as a group than their white counterparts, I don't think religiousity (except in the most extreme examples) would affect one's initial distaste upon reading the phrase
> Sometime it is very difficult for human to understand GOD and his punishment !
in that context.
My initial negative reaction was due mostly to the fact that I'm a native English speaker - which is where the misunderstanding stems from as well.
That's totally true. In fact, because I'm atheist, the theological tune of the comment is what really raised my hackles, initially. I can't speak tot he reaction that black Americans might or might not have, so like I said, I just referenced my own reaction and experience, which I believe should have been more accommodating. But like you suggest, reacting as a native English speaker is totally natural, because we're all just reading words in English. Other than a wonky turn of phrase, there's little that marks the comment as being given by a non-English speaker. For my part, I'm just bitching here in the comments, b/c I'm not entirely sure where I can send a message requesting that people's karma points be restored. For me, that feels frustrating, and so instead I lash out at a kind of privilege that is more ready to correct than understand. Ultimately though, I think yours was a good quetsion to aske.ll
It took place over a holiday, and I noticed he hadn't shown up afterwards. After a couple of days, I asked my boss if he was on vacation, and he said no, so I emailed him. His body and his family were found the next day by his neighbors. I actually saw his face on the evening news and my heart started racing, because they made it seem as though he was the murderer, but as events came out, he and his beautiful children were the victims.
It was really horrible because he was one of the star programmers at work and responsible for a lot of the success in the company. Everyone loved him and he deserved to be loved. It really hit our company hard, and we had things like counselling meetings but all that did was fuel our anger.
Basically there's nothing you can do. You just have to deal with it and move on. It's been 10+ years, but I'll never forget him though, he deserves at least that.