[WalterBright]

> what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven?

Just do not take their behavior personally. So what if he insults you. It takes two to make an offense - one to give offense, the other to take offense. Don't take offense, and there is no offense.

> makes students cry

There's no crying in baseball.

If you live to be my age, you'll experience the death of people you love. Save the crying for that.

[throw3456548]

You're getting downvoted, but there is some truth to this. Many years later, when I was much more confident in my career, I took a very well paid but short contract gig with a horrible boss. I found that the best way to deal with his outbursts was to find them funny. Screaming at the team for not making an arbitrary deadline he never told anyone about -- there's something comical about that. HOWEVER I would never want to work with someone like that for more than a few months.

In the situation with Felleisen, I was around twenty, in a new city, new to the academic world. The student I mentioned was one of one or two female students in the entire class and already unsure of her place. Asking people in those situations to not take insults from their professors, famous people in the field, gatekeepers personally is to ask them to overcome human nature itself. I would describe that as a hard problem.

I want to distinguish between a hardass and an asshole. Some people are conflating them, and the middle section of their Venn diagram is not empty, but they are not the same thing!! There are more choices than cuddly "everybody gets a trophy" snowflakes and calling children worthless morons! Everyone should have a hardass professor or a hardass boss at least once in their life. These people have high standards and push you, they don't accept excuses. You learn to work. They don't insult you or throw a fit, though. Hardass professor: "This is not good work. These are the reasons your work is bad. I expect better from you next time." Asshole: "This is not good work. These are the reasons you are a stupid and worthless person."

On the other hand, there are drill sergeants and similar situations. I don't know how to work them into my model. Some people seem to thrive in an environment like that. I wonder what the difference is?

[WalterBright]

You bring up a good point - a third category. The hardass who pushes you to be your best. The other two:

1. the bully who enjoys hurting others

2. the socially inept person who means no harm

They're very different.

As for a hardass, there's a story about Chuck Yeager who was assigned to command an Air Force base during the Korean War. Upon arrival, he went out to the field to watch the airmen land. Afterwards, he laid into them for their sloppy landings. He got some paint and laid down two lines cross-wise across the runway, and said they were going to take off and land with the wheels touching down between the lines.

One of the pilots told him that was impossible and unreasonable.

Yeager then got into an airplane, took off, made a circuit and touched his wheels down dead center between the lines. He didn't get any more crap from the pilots.

Me, I'd want to work for a hardass like that. Yeager wanted his pilots to be successful, and that means demanding perfection. I don't want a cake and ice cream commander, I'd want one who was a hardass, and keep me and my buddies alive.

You might also want to read "With The Old Breed" by Sledge. He thought boot camp was unreasonable, the drill sergeants too harsh, etc. In his combat at Tarawa, which was horrific, he realized that what kept him alive was the hardass training he got in boot camp.

On a gentler note, one of my profs at Caltech was demanding and a bit harsh. Other students had a bit of a negative opinion of him, but frankly I thrived in his class because of that. Working with demanding and "no excuses" people brings out the best in me.

[aidenn0]

There is an incompatibility here between the set of people who act like Felleisen and the set of people who react like Butterick.

There is inevitably a message from the community to one side of "change or leave." Whether explicit from action or implicit from inaction.

There is both a pragmatic and a moral side to the decission. From the pragmatic point of view, a brilliant asshole might be worth more than the sum of all those offended, or not.

From the moral side of things, we can choose to set limits to behaviors even when the benefit of their contributions is net positive considering those who avoid the community.

Your argument seems to speak to the moral side of things; that Felleisen's behavior is not so odious as to cross the moral event horizon. What about the simple fact that there are people who will take offense at his behavior, and the community will therefore lose their contributions?

[tluyben2]

I used to think very much like WalterBright as I never took offense (was raised to just listen to what people try to say, not how they say it) (and if someone goes physical (some people, when they cannot hurt you with words, start shoving you etc) I punch them in the face).

But that way, usually, the bully just moves to someone else and, even though I am untouched, the person did not change. So now that I am older, I think both sides need to work on this issue: the abuser needs therapy and the victim needs to grow a backbone and thicker skin. It is very sad, but people who start crying from verbal abuse will always be victims: in school and in companies. Bullies sniff them out intuitively. If only to have a better life, I would recommend getting less sensitive through whatever means possible. But out the bully too: they need help or get fired imho.

[WalterBright]

Nobody here is excusing bullies.

[tluyben2]

I know you are not, but if you shrug off their bad ways, that will sustain them instead of stop them.

[r-w]

Going back to MB’s article:

> what all bullies crave: the silence of their targets.

[dTal]

What's the point of this comment? That crying is wimpy and that it's fine to abuse multiple young adults to the point of tears because it's their fault for "taking offense"?

We are not talking about whether tears are a sensible and productive response. We are talking about whether it is reasonable to tolerate someone who consistently provokes them. Perhaps both sides need to take some responsibility, but redirecting the conversation like that seems to me to be making excuses for bad behavior.

[WalterBright]

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

2. Be forgiving of people who do not mean offense, but are simply inept at the social graces. It's not that hard. You get to choose whether to be offended or not. Choose the not.

BTW, sometimes I listen to celebrities when they deal with hecklers trying to get under their skin. It's fun to watch how they parry the verbal knives. I recall Prince Phillip once being interviewed by "60 Minutes". The reporter really tried to get under his skin. Prince Phillip effortlessly and deftly turned the dagger away each time. He's evidently had a lot of practice :-)

Howard Stern was fun to watch, too. He knew how to get the goat from his interviewees. Except Paul McCartney. McCartney was a master at this game. Watching those two verbally duel was great sport. McCartney got the better of it!

> making excuses for bad behavior

Not at all. I've had to ban people a couple times from the D forums for unprofessional behavior. Not because they made me feel bad, but because I have no interest in running a sewer. We've been fortunate that it's only been a couple, and usually a private word can set things straight.

[dagw]

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

Isn't that a lot like curing depression by saying "why don't you just stop being depressed?" Different people are wired differently and humans are on the whole really bad at consciously controlling their psychological state.

You even said in the previous post that crying and being sad is OK in some situations (like when a loved one died). Why didn't you choose to control your feelings and not be sad then?

[steve_g]

I agree with your rules generally, but they're not workable when there's a big power imbalance between the offender and the offendee. Professors and grad students, in particular, have a massive power imbalance. A grad student's success in their multi-year quest for the degree is heavily dependent on the whims of the professor. The student must care about what the professor thinks. Escaping a tyrannical prof could set back the student's career by years.

I considered graduate education after I got my BS, but the risk of ending up as some professor's dog wasn't worth it to me.

[dTal]

That's all well and good but you're still directing your comments at the students. When there's multiple students all complaining about a single person, that's misdirected. Apply some systems thinking here.

[RogerL]

In your comment, in response to what should be done, you replied "just [stuff the victim should do]'. That strongly implies that that is all that should be done. Very different message then is you had started with "One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is [the rest of your message]"

I suspect you are being misread due to that word choice, but to be honest I am not quite sure.

[TomSwirly]

> Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

1. You offer this as an excuse for profound hostility and rudeness from someone in a position of power.

2. Every human has buttons that can be pressed and you are no exception.

3. Bullying behavior by someone who has power over others logically causes fear in the target of the bullying.

4. Bullying works. That's why people do it, even though it's a cheat. You are literally blaming the victim.

"Don't allow other people to control your feelings" as a response to a man with a career of bullying shows a profound and perhaps pathological contempt for the well-being of others.

[WalterBright]

It isn't blaming the victim any more than taking a self-defense class is blaming the victim.

Nor is it making excuses for bullies any more than locking your door at night is excusing thieves.

[jolux]

I mean you said that behavior that offends is partially the fault of the person taking offense, I don’t understand how that’s not blaming the victim here. Having a thick skin is important but I question your priorities when your response to somebody not wanting to be woken up by a screaming phone call at 3am is “there’s no crying in baseball.”

[WalterBright]

> you said that behavior that offends is partially the fault of the person taking offense

I did not say that. Please read more carefully.

[bryanrasmussen]

>There's no crying in baseball.

I think at that stage in the movie Tom Hanks' character is not the best guy to look to for life examples.

I mean if we have to accept that some people are difficult and hard to get along with and we should try to accommodate them then I guess we should accept that some people are easily hurt and will cry and should try to maybe help them when they are hurt.

[soco]

I notice there's still that fairly common trend in blaming the victim. They could have dodged the bullet, right? Well, I'm happy the society starts to point the abusers out - to their dismay and ironically also victimization.