Being Offended Discussion

[...] How you view that as "elitist" escapes me. [...]

[...] And 'elitism' would include using "I don't see" as though you and your clique's personal experience is the measure of how desirable a feature is across domains. It isn't as though you often "see" into any domains other than the ones in which you are working.

I didn't want to make an absolute statement at that point. If that is "elitism" to you, then you are either over-sensitive or just want to complain for the sake of complaining. Do you train for nagging contests?

Certainly. Once a month, I exercise the deftness of my fingers and precision of my perception in determining how many nits I can pick in a day.

Anyhow, if you merely intended to claim a humble position of not being convinced, then you could use some serious help breaking your habitual way of phrasing things. "I don't see set-values as common enough of a need to make it a standard DB feature" is a statement of policy-decision, as though you were in the position of power to 'make' it a feature or reject it, and is implicitly a claim that people must convince you before they can or should move forward - as though your opinion is the most important. It isn't true, of course; your opinion is mostly worthless in the grand scheme of things, but the way you continuously state your opinion as though it has value all by itself (AdVerecundiam) indicates you believe otherwise.

I think you are reading alpha-male posturing into things that are just plain-jane statements. In other words, you read stuff with sinister-colored glasses on.

While there is such thing as a plain-jane statement, you're not providing very many. Not even the one you just uttered, or among those you make below. Besides, with your extreme arrogance and habitual statements formulated in elitist mannerisms, along with your tendency to closed-minded prejudices and selfishly rejecting any idea unless you can see how it helps in your particular domain ("how does that help with custom biz apps!" you often demand), you paint yourself in horrible colors; it takes a great deal of effort to view you any better.

Anecdotal evidence is evidence, it is just not strong evidence. Per EvidenceTotemPole, if I present grade-D evidence and you present grade-D counter-evidence, then we are at a stalemate. If you can present higher-grade evidence than mere counter anecdotes, such as formal surveys from an objective source, then please do. At this point, anecdotal observations are all either of us have with regard to frequency of feature needs. If my anecdotal observations are "worthless" as you claim, then so are yours. D==D and F==F.

Right. Except you're not even providing anecdotes. You're claiming that you "don't see" need for a feature while you're not looking for a need and also searching for any excuse to ignore examples. Absence of evidence only counts as evidence of absence IF you look in all the right places, but the only place you ever look is "custom biz apps". That makes you blind and bigoted. And it means you don't even have the grade-D evidence you now pretend to possess. Most often, you're just spouting claims off, never defending them, and state your opinions with arrogance as though you feel being arrogant enough means you don't require evidence.

But I don't understand why you call it "worthless". Is zero evidence better than anecdotal observations of frequency? How that can be?

Certainly anecdotal observations of frequency are better than zero evidence, but only if they are the right observations - ones actually useful for making a judgement. For most things outside your niche, it would be laughable to pretend that what you've provided useful observations. "There's no good reason to believe elephants exist! I never see any in my kitchen!" Anecdotal observations of frequency... but nigh "worthless" as evidence.

I suppose you may not trust the source (me), but I should point out that I may not trust you either. It is my opinion that you tend to blow things out of proportion. Generally if I say that A is more common than B in my observation and the other person says the opposite based on their observation, then we best just live with the stalemate and move on to other issues. It is not something to get stuck on. This is what happens with most people, but for some reason you read more into those kinds of things and I have to waste 20 paragraphs defending my action. I ignore most of them, but sometimes you go too far.

You can't reasonably use a claim that 'A is more common than B' to say that B should therefore be ignored - as you did recently regarding the use of set-values in SimplifyingRdbms. You stating your observations has never been a problem I've had with you. It's your arrogant and illogical conclusions that I bring you to task on.

A small tweak would have given you: "I don't see set-values as common enough of a need to promote it as a standard DB feature." This is much less haughty and elitist; it puts yourself in the same 'shoes' (so to speak) as the other person in the argument - those of someone deciding which features should be 'promoted' with regards (in this case) to SimplifyingRdbms.

I see very little difference between them. A promoter is merely somebody with insufficient influence to "make". My statement is basically a form of, "If given a choice, I would do X." How is that more offensive than "If given a choice, I would promote X"? It is difficult to predict what rubs you wrong because your morality weighing rules are quite foreign to me. It is like visiting an alien planet where things such as scratching one's own arm means "EFF YOU" (FakeCussWord) in their culture, triggering a battle. You gotta understand that I have no clue as to why you find one form significantly more offensive than the other. --top
I offered you an explanation, but you're not even bothering to grasp at it. I'll work with your effort: your metaphor is in error. Your statement is more accurately a form of "If given the power to make a decision that would affect you, me, and everyone else, I'd choose to reject X BECAUSE I don't see a common need for X (even though you just provided an example of a need for X, I just don't need X in MY domain)." This comes across as rather egocentric, petty, demeaning of the other person's experiences (in favor of your 'anecdotal frequency' stuff that doesn't even really qualify as evidence) - if you could at least demonstrate that X was harmful to your domain, it could be understood. The alternative is: "If given the power to promote an idea that would affect you, me, and everyone else, I'd not promote X BECAUSE I don't see a common need for X (even though you just provided an example of a need for X, I just don't need X in MY domain)." This comes across as honest and reasonable - you can't be expected to promote a feature that doesn't help you. Not promoting something is quite different from making a decision to reject it. Now, if you still have no clue why one is more offensive than the other, even with an explanation, I'm just going to leave you to your clueless ways.
Sigh. You have an odd, round-a-bout mind. A Venusian is trying to understand a Martian here. Your moralistic reasoning is as indirect as your thin-table reasoning. It jumps from step B to step W with nothing in between. At least that's how it comes across. Even the very first line: How are you objectively calculating that "Your statement is more accurately a form of..."? The steps leading to this conclusion are outright missing and you seem to have no problem with that gap whatsoever. There's other gaps, but lets deal with one at a time.
Sigh. I'll offer a explanation of the steps leading to the statement that your metaphor was inaccurate, just to help you peek into my mind, but I'm not keen on regressive questions: The context of your statement was regarding 'SimplifyingRdbms'. An RDBMS is a product and tool that will be used by a great many more people than just yourself. As a consequence, any hypothetical action to "do X" or "choose X" regarding the RDBMS (e.g. 'reject support for complex types') is necessarily one that (were you given the power) would affect a great many more people than just yourself. This is an essential property of the context; to pretend it was not both there and implied all along would be extremely misleading - you can't abstract out essential details without losing essence. Therefore, to be accurate, your metaphor must capture the fact that your decision wouldn't 'merely' be about what you would do: it is also about deciding the conditions you would (if you could) inflict upon everyone else. Decisions that affect more than you have different moral and legal and utilitarian and economic properties than decisions that affect only yourself. To that, I attached the reasons you had provided for your choice - ones that happen to be illogical, unreasonable, and quite egocentric when utilized as the basis for any decision that would affect other people. A more proper reason for rejecting complex-structured values as part of an RDBMS would have been 'support for complex types is harmful' - but only if you could defend the claim. Now, you're probably reading this thinking once again that I 'make mountains out of molehills', but I believe that conclusion to be the illogical one: only the power to make the decision is hypothetical; the reasoning you provided for it and the decisions you made were not. To be fair, you have since clarified your conclusion to be that you would not prioritize support for complex types, and we reached a ViolentAgreement on the subject.
Dude, you overthink these kinds of things. It's wasteful to speculate on what would happen if I were King of the World, because its not going to happen. I was trying to convey that the frequency of use should dictate DBMS features; instead you get bent out of shape over the social aspects of some exaggerated imaginary scenario. You cannot run a mental Sims(TM) over every little word. GetOverIt and move on. This all reminds me of the following video:
If you're going to patronize others on how it's wasteful to speculate on what would happen if you get to make the decisions, then why are you on this wiki saying what you would do if you happened to be the one who gets to make the decisions? Dude, we call that 'hypocrisy' where I come from. As far as your "frequency of use" argument: when considering features aren't used because they don't yet exist, it happens to be a terribly flawed form of reasoning - I don't, for example, see anyone using flying cars... so we must not have common need of them, right? Same goes for set-value support in RDBMS.
I will try to word such differently next time, okay? I did NOT INTEND to offend people. A lot of things written toward or about me I often find patronizing or offensive. If I stopped to complain about each and every one, we'd never get back to the topic. Now MoveOn.

Which did you actually intend, I wonder? 'TopMind' has admitted to soaring levels of arrogance before, and it wouldn't surprise me if he meant, consciously or otherwise, to act just as elitist as he sounded.

If you consider this mere 'nagging', you should consider just how many people get pissed off at you on a regular basis.

Questioning people's HobbyHorses tends to tick them off. That is a given that one has to live with if they pursue such. Firefighters sometimes get burned because they are near the fire, not because they are firefighters. When they are mad at a critic about say challenging their OOP claims, they tend to also see *other* things from the critic in a bad light. That is human nature. For example, it is common that if somebody who is otherwise physically attractive is rude to a person, that person stops seeing them as physically attractive. The anger "leaks" into other issues. George Bush's gaffes used to be seen as "cute" and "folksy" to many. Now that he is unpopular, they are often seen as further evidence that he is "dumb".
If it were just that much, you'd receive responses more akin to those people who question HobbyHorses and actually get a reasonable discussion in response. Attacking the HobbyHorse is usually just one offense in your many-pronged offensive behavior.
People have been listing complaints against me in ObjectiveEvidenceAgainstTopDiscussion for eons. Almost all of them are subtle, small, non-existent, or just everyday miscommunication. Compared to all the bad things that others can and do on this wiki, like directly call people names and delete their content, my sins seem very small in comparison. (I usually only call people names in retaliation.) I too have a lot of nits about others' style. I ignore about 95% of things that bother me because ComplainingAboutComplaining gets tiresome. I only dug into this issue because I wanted to try to figure out your puzzling moral system that generates so many odd complaints against me.
You ought never judge your own sins, or how 'good' you are. You're almost certainly too biased. Know Thyself, and try to be the change you'd like to see, but do not Judge Thyself.
I'm pretty sure a court of random peers would find your rankings out of step with theirs.
That depends on what means a 'peer'. Anyhow, you're free to judge others, and others are free to judge you, but you probably cannot do a fair job when comes time to judge yourself. After all, you rarely get to observe your own behavior the same way you have learned to judge that of everyone else. Some people ask stupid questions like: "Who are you to judge me?". The correct answer is: "I am a person with a brain. That's what brains do - brains judge things."
I judged it based on an estimation of what the "average person" would think. You are not average (for good or bad), and that seems to be at least part of the problem. You are either overly sensitive or "differently" sensitive than the average. (And no, I don't have any formal surveys.)
- A programmer shall not be an "average" person, nor should anyone on this wiki be "average", nor should anyone aim as low to be "average". Average people don't know their head from their tail.
- This is not about intelligence, but about what offends people.
There is no such thing as "the" average person when it comes to ways of thinking, though you're free to draw arbitrary lines then observe the people that fall on each side. (What is your MBTI?) Anyhow, I don't really care for another fight, but I will note that I'm hardly the only person who reacts to you negatively; in my observations on this wiki, most people do. You seek excuses to blame entirely on the other people, such as claiming it's all because you target "hobby horses" or that the other guy is "overly sensitive". But, scientifically, there is exactly one element that is common to all interactions where people react negatively to you. Don't be so quick to dismiss that element as the cause.
It is not realistic to tune my style for each personality. And again, the reason I generate "enemies" is mostly because I criticize their sacred cows, not my interaction style itself. (Related WikiSinRank).
- [No, the reason you generate "enemies" (or more accurately, opposition) is entirely because of your interaction style. What you do could hardly even be considered criticism of sacred cows, because your self-styled "criticism" is invariably weakly defended and superficial, and typically amounts to little more than a slightly technical version of "because I said so!" or "your way is crap!" That is what raises the ire of your correspondents, rather than the subject itself. Most proponents of an approach or experts in a subject -- whether it be OO programming or type theory or high levels of normalisation or functional programming or whatever -- are delighted to defend their views in rational, equal, and considered debate. What you do cannot be considered any of these, and indeed often reflects such a poor level of education, superficial (mis)understanding of the subject, and disrespect for rigour that it's merely frustrating. In short, you come across as a HostileStudent.]
- I dispute that I use ArgumentFromAuthority any more than my detractors. The biggest point of contention is my view that TheoreticalRigorCantReplaceEmpiricalRigor. In that sense, you are correct that I have "disrespect for rigour", or more precisely I feel that some of you overemphasize theoretical rigor, perhaps because it is the only thing you are good at. And again, I am not your goddamn "student", and treating me like one is patronization in my eyes. You are (or should be) an evidence presenter, not a teacher. (And even when the topic is empirical metrics, such as "significantly less code volume", you guys still trip over yourselves and flunk after insulting the hell out of me, as in ChallengeSixVersusFpDiscussion.) --top
  - [You probably don't use ArgumentFromAuthority any more than your opponents (I'd hardly go so far as to call them "detractors"), but that doesn't address the fact that you've demonstrated no empirical rigour that I've ever seen -- even citing peer-reviewed studies done in "soft" computer science (e.g., survey-based research, detailed case studies, etc.) would be a good start, but I don't recall you doing that. Okay, I can hear you saying it already: "My "detractors" don't do that either!" Fine then, but you're still left with your poor level of education and almost invariable superficial (mis)understanding of the topic in question.]
  - Such empirical studies are simply an uncommon species, and the few studies there are raise more questions than they answer. Given that environment, we are all working pretty low on the EvidenceTotemPole. We suffer DisciplineEnvy. --top
  - [You still have not addressed your poor level of education and almost invariable superficial (mis)understanding of the topic in question.]
  - Red-herring to hide the fact that you suck at empirical evidence. If you cannot turn your alleged elegant theory into empirical metrics, then the problem is you, not me. You are being intellectually dishonest here, not me. You are the bad-guy, not me. Rockets must fly to prove themselves. Blueprints and models mean shit until it flies. In ChallengeSixVersusFpDiscussion about 12% of the way through, somebody accuses me of "not understanding the evidence" (paraphrased). However, the claim at hand is "significantly less code" (FP-fan's metric claim, not mine). One does not need to understand one shitdust about FP to recognize "significantly less code". Further evidence that you guys are trigger-happy with that accusation. It's a f8cking cop-out, you anti-scientific mathturbators. --top
  - {I'm willing to bet a burrito that the 'significantly less code' claim wasn't supposed to be the completely unqualified fisherman's-tail of a claim you blew it up to be; it seems that the claim was aimed at some sort of loop-code in particular. Anyhow, it seems you're retreating to an FP example that I never participated in as your shining bastion of intellectual high-ground (wherein you were rolling around in the mud while duking out who-claimed-what with a few hypothetical FP weenies). Really, I don't plan to follow you there.}
  - Either way, it's an overused claim by every bloated web ego out there such that nobody pays any attention to it anymore. Present your empirical metrics, and THEN we'll deal who understands what. Otherwise, cap your braggings and insults. Show, don't claim. Show, don't claim. Show, don't claim. Show, don't claim.
  - {I, being the humble and practical 'mathturbator', prefer to deal with proofs - e.g. the proof that a particular error can't happen, or that one cause for it has been fully eliminated, or that a random double-bit-error will be caught with some probability. You demand statistics-based empirical observations, but I'm still unconvinced those are actually useful. So: cap your bragging and insults, TopMind. If you're going to assert that statistics are useful in a field where everything is controlled by mathematics, then I'm going to demand you first prove this claim. Show, don't claim. Show, don't claim. Show, don't claim. You're such a goddamn hypocrite. I don't believe your 'science' is practical; observation is important, but you cannot properly and legally construct a laboratory setting that controls for experience and other combinatorial factors across a wide array of problems. Short of having a few trillion dollars and a bunch of fresh young humans to train in a clean-room, the only rational choice is to use observations, user-stories, and examples to direct which provable qualities deserve attention. And, frankly, your astonishing lack of education and refusal to improve it makes you incapable of following or performing the only rational choice. I.e. when people 'show', you can't see it. That sort of leaves you as a rather arrogant ignoramus.}
- We've already had this discussion: If you ask a question for explanation or clarification when you don't already know the answer, you're a student. Period. Saying otherwise is just you being dishonest. Believing otherwise is just you seeing yourself through rose-colored glasses, as though you believe being a 'student' was a bad thing (a very foolish belief, in my opinion). Aiming to attack the answers rather than learn from them is just you being hostile. You are, indeed, often a HostileStudent - no matter what or how often you say or believe otherwise. If you don't want to be a student, then do your homework: gain some goddamn competency in the fields you are criticizing before you start criticizing them so that you don't require explanations and don't make invalid assumptions. Besides, it is you, TopMind, who is in the role of evidence-presenter (or should be) when you criticize anyone's 'hobby horse'. If you're just expressing doubt about a particular claim (in context), you don't have BurdenOfProof... but an expression of doubt is not a criticism: if you criticize you've made a claim and, therefore, BurdenOfProof is yours.
- We could LaynesLaw about "student" all year. But I am not hostile (other than retaliation). And your "homework" is about "slick" models, not about the empirical evidence. The empirical evidence should come first, per BookStop comment. And the line separating criticism and "expressing doubt" is fuzzy. --top
- If you're going to criticize a model, your understanding thereof had darn well better come first; any other possibility makes you (by definition) prejudiced and ignorant; in addition, you'll likely be incapable of tracking the language and end up coming up with gross misunderstandings - something I've seen from you repeatedly in practice. And you're wrong: the "homework" I am accusing you of not doing includes your failing to review case studies, history leading to certain approaches, and example problems readily available in texts: it isn't just about "slick" models; the BookStop is filled with evidence that already exists. You seek excuses to remain ignorant about the subjects you 'criticize', often even as you demand clarifications and explanations and definitions; it is one of the most frustrating and thereby offensive things about you. And you are far too biased to judge yourself; your claiming "I am not hostile" carries almost zero weight with anyone except you especially in the context of 'HostileStudent'. Your actions speak far, far louder than your words.
- And "the line separating criticism and 'expressing doubt'" may be fuzzy, but no more so than the line dividing 'day' from 'night' - as with most 'fuzzy' things, it is still usually quite clear which side any given comment falls upon. Shitty excuses for your fallacies won't fly with me.
- And I find your treatment of people, including me, as though they constituted some amorphous mass of 'my detractors' and 'you guys' to also be offensive. I, for one, would never have supported FunctionalProgramming for the creation of EventDriven applications proposed in ChallengeSixVsFpDiscussion?. FP might or might not reduce code size for certain tasks (if it does, it is likely only moderate and due to the reduced need for naming and specialization of operations); what I like about FP is that it enforces SeparateIoFromCalculation, makes some high-powered optimizations much easier to prove safe (partial evaluation due to referential transparency), reduces need for names (though any system with anonymous procedures or functions or closures would do that much), and also makes AI backtracking and search easier to do (since one doesn't need to 'back out' side-effects) - though even these properties exist only where 'pure' FP is used.
- If you don't sign your content, you don't have much room to complain about identity confusion. I'm not suggesting you don't have a right to do so, but merely pointing out certain benefits you *forfeit* by doing such.
- "Identity Confusion" is not an excuse for "Identity Amalgamation". The former I could understand.
- I apologize if it bothered you, Mam.
- Sure you do, presumptuous brat.
While it would, indeed, be unrealistic to tune your style for each different encounter, it remains entirely feasible that you could tune your style on a much coarser level and still net far less antagonistic results in discussion. You blaming it even "largely" on the content of your statements is just your excuse to resist change: you certainly can't (honestly) tell me that you've empirically proven that "largely" statement, and I very much doubt you've experimented with other approaches and gauged reactions in any significantly rigorous manner to reasonably make that judgment. My own impression, after three years of observations on this wiki, is that top's approach to argument is far more culpable than top seems to believe... not that I can go into details here without top (based on my estimates) becoming super-defensive then failing to hear the more important statements above.

Hmmm... even if there were an "average person", there is much evidence that said person shouldn't be making decisions associated with an expert's field. I'd really hate to drive across a bridge designed by "the average person".

When you, consciously or otherwise, demean other the experiences and opinions of other people while promoting yourself, people react. I, being quite introspective, generally know both when and why I am reacting, but even that doesn't prevent me from reacting. You have claimed before that repeatedly shouting "I am great!" isn't all that big a sin, but what your words actually say is "I am better and more important than you!".

I rarely ever do that directly. If it comes across that way, it is not intentional. And my statement about such was comparing it to claiming others are "bad". In other-words, claiming you yourself are "good" is less of a "sin" than claiming others are "bad". I did *not* say bragging is a good thing in general.
You come across that way unintentionally, then. But you still do it a great deal of the time - especially when your feelings are agitated (as tends to happen after the first response to anything you say). It wouldn't really take much more effort than, say, holding back responses for several minutes, and revising them, aiming at greater neutrality and less presumption for you to obtain much better relations with people. Even I'm extremely forgiving, if not forgetful.
I already am pretty careful about how I say things (except a few occasions where I lose my cool), knowing that human beings in general are sensitive. I will strive to improve my writing even more and feel I do get better with time.
Then I wish you the best of luck in your efforts.

And you repeat them - over and over and over again. If you've ever been serious in your search for an understanding as to why people are so often rude to you, the answer is here. They consider you to have been rude first.

See above about anger leaking into other issues.

MayZeroEight