I dislike techcrunch and I dislike his writing, but I'm full of sympathy for the man. He should take the matter to the police and with any luck the contemptible coward who spat in his face will get a criminal record for their trouble.
Huh? You think that spitting on someone should be illegal!?
I don't understand what you mean, anyway. You don't like his business, you don't like his writing, but you have all sorts of cares for him? Er .. why? What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?
In my book, a man is but the sum of his actions. I can't stand Arrington's actions, therefore I can't stand him, ergo I have no sympathy for the hatred his actions have engendered amongst sum.
And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either. The coward would be writing spiteful comments anonymously on blogs. Walking up to someone and spitting in their face takes balls, IMO. Not exactly my preferred means of communication but it certainly got the point across.
How about that, it is illegal, at least in the US and some other places. I had no idea. I disagree, too; it's highly distasteful but shouldn't actually be criminal - but that's getting off topic.
Assault is punished by law according to physical consequence. If you break someone's jaw, you go to jail. If you break their heart by verbal assault, you don't.
There are no physical consequences to being spat on by a healthy person (if they are sick and do so knowingly to infect you, that is completely different). It is an insult, a grotesque one, but an insult none the less, and should be treated as such by law.
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as granted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its 9-0 decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine and held that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [which] the prevention and punishment of...have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
I am not a lawyer, but I believe this doctrine has essentially not been enforced in recent memory. The subsequent paragraph to the one you quoted steadily showed it being rejected by those who attempted to bring it before the court in the US.
If someone with an infectious disease knowingly infects another, whether it be by unprotected sex without disclosure or by spitting, then that is malicious intent to harm and is already well covered by law.
And what if they didn't know they had a disease? It doesn't matter - forcing someone to share your bodily fluids in such an aggressive manner should be a crime. And of course the punishment should fit the crime, but at a minimum, spitting is equal to minor physical assault.
I don't personally know why you got downmodded, but karma isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, it doesn't add anything to the conversation to add meta conversation about people not liking your comment. It happens sometimes, and it isn't any fun, but things work a lot better for all of us when we all just move on.
From the HN guidelines:
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
Also amusing that someone who seems to be fine with spitting on someone as legitimate communication, getting up in arms about a down arrow on a web page.
Of course not. And I'm not fine about it at all, it's a disgusting thing to do. I just can understand why people might be driven to do it, and don't think it should be an actual crime!
I'm beginning to suspect my writing style is prone to misunderstanding, though. C'est la vie.
I for one understand your point of view, and don't think you deserved any downmods either.
You've been bravely standing behind your words, even in the face of the "public shaming" of so many downmods. That's respectable.
Besides, should a downvote be used to express mere disagreement, or reserved for posts that one thinks are really inappropriate or maybe jarringly stupid?
In any case, I agree that insulting someone or calling them names should not be a crime, and that spitting on someone shouldn't be considered an "assault" (with the provisions you mentioned).
There can be a fine line between something you disagree with and something that is jarringly stupid. "The world is flat" and "The world is a sphere" are both wrong, but they both are also reasonable approximations at some level.
Under some interpretations of US law, a 22 year old taking nude photo's of them self could be prosecuted for creating child porn if they look 16.
I think if you asked a thousand people off the street:
Is that accurate? Is that moral? Is that a travesty of justice? Is that reasonable?
You would get yes, no, and sort of to all of those questions and it's not really a "major" hot topic.
Fair enough, I hadn't read those guidelines - thanks for the tip. Won't do it again.
I do wish those guidelines had something about why to mod up or down, though. Modding something down or up simply because you happen to agree, regardless of the quality or validity of the argument presented, will also lead to boring reading - the majority view, endlessly repeated, since it's the only "safe" thing to post.
It is somewhat unfortunate that this isn't in the guidelines, but it is a natural tendency and would be impossible to try to clean up by enforcement. Eventually, you will get used to the general group mentality. Some things can be said in a very few words and will be understood and accepted because they follow the way that most of us think. Other things have to be laid out logically so that a debate on your thinking can follow.
In defense of the site though, your initial downmodded comment was rather condescending and showed a lack of knowledge of the area. Responding to someones idea with "Huh? You really think that?" isn't very respectful and it shows a certain amount of arrogance. Arrogance is frowned upon pretty heavily here. It doesn't add anything to the discussion when you are correct and is just plain obnoxious when you are wrong. Be humble about what you know, ask questions about what you don't, and provide logical arguments for what you think. That's a big part of what sets this site apart from a lot of the other sites like it.
Yeah, I guess I'm more used to slashdot. I'll take some time to get used to the culture of the site before poking the nest with a stick again.
I assume you're a moderator - although they're much appreciated by myself, these well-written tips will just get lost in the noise here. You might consider adding them to the FAQ yourself : )
Just to chime in, it's generally counter-productive to meta-post about being downmodded, unless your meta-post is clarifying something that might be misinterpreted into a downmod.
For example, saying: "I can't believe you people are downmodding me." will most likely just cause people to pile on and punish you.
But saying: "To those downmodding me, if you think I meant this, I really meant that." or "Just to clarify, I meant it this way." will often defuse a misunderstanding and cause people to at least put you back up to 1.
Really the key is to be civil. It's rare that someone gets dogpiled just for dissenting. However, if you dissent in a rude manner, people are tempted to see how negative one comment can get.
I'm not a moderator. I haven't even been using the site for that long. I'm just aware that sometimes the system here can be a little hard on newer users who aren't used to how things work.
I disagree that the issue was "something that should be common sense". Every manner of trivial insults being criminalised in modern society is a huge, profound and controversial topic.
Spot on about the expedient solution to seeing something you don't like, though.
"You think that spitting on someone should be illegal!?"
As noted it is illegal in most countries.
"I don't understand what you mean, anyway. [...] What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?"
Something a great deal worse than writing articles that do not much interest me. I find it incomprehensible that someone could find a matter of mere taste to be sufficient justification for a crime.
"And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either."
Your definition of bravery is not one I have any respect for then.
Not "most" countries. I am not sure it is even "many" countries. And whether something is illegal is not an argument for whether it should be illegal - see Saudi Arabia.
I don't remember defining bravery anywhere? I simply said that in my opinion, most "cowards" don't consummate their cowardice by walking up to big guys (Arrington is a big guy) and spitting on them.
Anyone motivated enough to take an "extreme" action against someone else (eg spitting on them) could be argued that they are not necessarily in a right frame of mind and more or less going to do it regardless of circumstances.
Exhibit A - the guy who threw shoes at then President Bush.. there were secret service all over that place.
Without knowing who did it, or for what reason, I'd be fairly confident in betting that at no point did Michael's size come into the equation.
