[armada651]

I don't get this mentality. I don't get why people think living through an experience makes them such an expert that any outside opinion is immediately offensive.

An outsider can always offer a new perspective and they could be more knowledgeable than the person who went through the experience.

[Applejinx]

It's a Chesterton's Fence situation.

An outsider is just as likely to be an arrogant fool, and an arrogant fool is more likely to find skepticism offensive than a normal person. There are plenty of people, even on Hacker News, who assume that they are by default more knowledgeable than anybody else, and therefore are obliged to look at any given situation, opine, and set the record straight. Other people don't matter, and certainly their 'experiences' won't count. So, it's not surprising or offensive to run into the 'water squirt bottle of correction', where kitty gets unexpectedly hit with the message 'opining on experience you've never experienced disqualifies you as a first class advice giver'.

Chesterton's Fence is of course the idea that, if you encounter a fence and you don't know what it's for, you don't take it down until you do know what the fence was for. People tend to get worked up about the things they see that, to them, seem to be there for no reason, and advocate all the more vigorously for removing such things when to them, the existence of the thing is obvious nonsense with no possible justification… they would rather think that a thing was done by a total fool who's so inferior to them as to be hopelessly incapable, than consider the idea that their superiority might be questionable.

[omegabravo]

It's nice to learn there is a name for something that took me a few years to discover. If something doesn't make sense to me, it's probably because I'm not realising the whole scenario.

I've learnt not to critique other peoples designs without a full understanding. The designer probably would have changed a few things if they had a second attempt. Unknown and usually silly requirements can play a big part in design that you as an outsider are unaware of. I've learnt to assume competence rather than incompetence. At the time, there was likely a very good reason for such a decision.

[seanp2k2]

And sometimes the requirements that a thing was built on aren’t meant to make the best possible product, e.g. budget, repairability / maintainability, compromise due to integration with other systems, etc etc

In the same vein as “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”, “never attribute to engineering that which is adequately explained by finance” :)

[feteru]

Great comment, feel like this puts into words what I see in interactions on here sometimes that puts me off. I might say that especially on Hacker News there are people who assume they're by default more knowledgeable than others.

[couchand]

Well this isn't exactly a currently-standing fence, so the metaphor falls down.

It's more like someone coming upon their neighbor complaining about a mutual neighbor and their fence and offering them advice for the next confrontation with the neighbor.

[TillE]

It's a really simple allegory that warns about the dangers of approaching a situation from a position of ignorance.

[couchand]

Yes and misusing simple allegories and therefore misunderstanding the situation is very common.

[WastingMyTime89]

It’s not offensive. It just makes the replier looks like an idiot.

Who do you think had the best perspective on the situation? The person who went through the litigation, had lawyers, knew all the details of the case and made the decision of the poster sending a canned five lines reply based on a paragraph?

It does take much awareness to realise that sending an abrasive reply when you are in no position to do so might be ill received by the community (well at least the quickly diminishing part who wants to have an interesting discussion).

[stingraycharles]

It wasn’t my intention to claim to be an expert on the situation, as much as it was mostly to share a story and point out that there’s a large grey area here.

The parent definitely was factual and correct, but the tone made it sound a bit as if they thought my reasons for doing so were incorrect. That would be a bit of a stretch, and I think that’s what was bothering @naikrovek

[armada651]

Didn't mean to imply that was how you felt. My response was aimed at the mentality @naikrovek was stating, which is definitely a wider held belief in some communities.

[fenomas]

> An outsider ... could be more knowledgeable than the person who went through the experience

If the outsider is making general claims about similar sorts of situations, then sure. If they're predicting the behavior of someone unknown to them, but well known to the OP, then not so much.