"Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression."
Marion Milner, 'The Toleration of Conflict', Occupational Psychology, 17, 1, January 1943
It's not a sign about that project in any way. I had never heard of it and have no opinion about it one way or the other.
It's just a sign that single-agenda accounts aren't allowed here—no more, no less. That's why I said "We ban such accounts regardless of what the single purpose happens to be".
The most recent 60 (!) comments plus every submission of the last 6 months were all about the same thing. That's extreme. The posts didn't all mention that specific project, but there was only one topic and they were extremely repetitive. This is not a close call.
It's really bad. I found myself identifying with everything Jonathan wrote in the OP - so much so that I thought of asking to compare notes on mitigation measures.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Ugh, that is bad, and I'm sorry I didn't see it at the top of the thread yesterday.
Really, the deeper problem is the upvotes that cause such posts to rise to the top of a thread and stick there, drowning out curious conversation and giving people a bad impression of the entire community. Unfortunately, the upvote problem seems basically unsolvable - people don't do it consciously and it's very much a tragedy-of-the-commons problem. So we're stuck with moderation on the comments.
You broke the HN guidelines badly with this, first because of the name-calling and personal attack, and second because it is a shallow dismissal in exactly the sense we ask people not to post here:
On the plus side, your comment does contain some specific observations which could have made for a good comment—one that communicates interesting information respectfully. If you'd please post that way in the future, we'd appreciate it.
Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but some of your posts (like this one) have been getting classified that way.
I've banned this account because we don't allow single-purpose accounts on HN, and your account has been doing that for quite some time now.
We ban such accounts regardless of what the single purpose happens to be. Pre-existing agendas are not what HN is for and destroy the curious conversation that it is supposed to be for.
Parenting and being parented are, of all topics, probably the emotionally strongest and most personal that show up on HN [1]. When someone shares their experience in those areas, it's especially important to respond respectfully. The best way to do that is by sharing some of one's own experience, and the perspective it has led to.
Responding with denunciation, either explicit or implicit, degrades the discussion and is likely to hit the other person in a place that hurts.
Beyond that is the aggressive-internet-lashing sort of response, which is what the GP post did. That is abusive and against HN's guidelines. Saying "sorry to be harsh" doesn't mitigate that any more than it would mitigate a physical lashing.
I'm sure that the comment was posted with good intentions—people usually think it will help to post such things, which means their intention is to be helpful. However, (1) it's not helpful, (2) what matters is effects, not intent, and the effects in a case like this are bad, and (3) it's all too easy for unconscious aggression to seep into such remarks, even when the intent is to be helpful. In fact, the feeling of intending to be helpful is often used to justify such aggression. That's not a dynamic we want here.
Marion Milner, 'The Toleration of Conflict', Occupational Psychology, 17, 1, January 1943
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