It's Not About The Nail

It's counterintuitive to logical-thinking programmers, but you almost never want to tell a grieving person any of the following: 1. "Things will get better." 2. "I understand your loss." 3. "Here's how we can fix the problem." Some insight into why can be gained by watching the short video, It's Not About the Nail : [this video] In many (but not all) cases, if the grieving are willing to communicate at all, they want their cries of pain heard and listened to. They would rather that you cried with them instead of trying to tell them that there is light at the end of the tunnel or that there is a 'fix' for their 'problem' or that we must accept that life is hard and unfair and suck it up.

> You can actually ask, if they talk about the same thing more than once: Is this something you want me to work on and try to fix, or you just want to talk about? Agreed! Asking helps me clarify to myself the possible goals (and make it explicit that "just" listening is a valid goal). Even if you don't ask thinking about the question is a nice way to remind yourself that you don't need to solve it for them. My experience has been that women appreciate this question - I think that most men tend to jump into problem-solving mode and actually being asked is a nice change (here in the U.S.) And of course there's this 2 minute video to memorably highlight the idea :) [this video]

Well said. [this video] [1:41 "It's not about the nail"] The video is about women, because as men we like to take pride in the idea that we're "fixers", but if we're honest about it we'll have to admit that when it comes to the important things in life we're just as full of crap. No amount of talking, hand-holding, support groups and nods of understanding will amount to any kind of personal progress, until you are willing to answer the question "What do you really want?" You want to be productive? Have a successful startup? Million dollars? Improve the lives of others? Sure. But why? What's behind it? We like to look for an objective meaning in things, but what is meaning other than the belief in a cosmic points system that will bestow rewards upon us if we play our roles right? Whether you are a startup founder, career person, scientist, devout christian, philanthropist, volunteer or whatever makes no essential difference here - pretty much everyone chases some ill-defined ideal in the hope that somehow some ill-defined someone or something will save us and make everything alright when we reach some ill-defined goal. And when you do succeed, what do you really have to show for it? Years of sacrifice gone that you'll never get back, even more expectations than before, because now you're supposed to act like a successful person, even more anxiety that you'll disappoint the people who idolize you, eager to believe in the fairy-tale that you've made it and everything's happily-ever-a

I don't know who "we" might be. Do you work for ycombinator? Are you an official moderator? Otherwise not sure why you would say "we". Just wondering. That said, if we are talking about antagonism and HN, well, when it comes to topics outside of tech it is almost a sport to down-vote or berate anyone who does not align with a certain ideology. In the over six years or so I've been reading HN I have yet to see any "we" coming down to say "We'd appreciate it if you wouldn't post like this here" in any of those cases in defense of being accepting of alternative points of view. I go back to USENET days. HN is definitely better than any of that, by far, however, there's an underlying accepted ideology that is promoted here and everything else is rejected and attacked in various overt and and not-so-overt ways. That aspect is not very different from the kinds of things that could happen on USENET. Granted, public discussion boards are horrendously difficult to run. I get that part. Discussions on HN are thoughtful when it comes to matters of technology. Outside of that HN is very intolerant of alternative points of view. People can find themselves defending from personal attacks instead of engaging in discussing the issues. Something like this: [this video] HN is the person with the nail on her head. She is happy for the split second the guy comes in to alignment with her point of view. Outside of that, when an alternative point of view is offered, not happy at all. Before anyone says a