[archduck]

On the other hand, some contributions to a conversation are simply beyond the boundaries of common sense in such a way (blindingly obvious, unacceptable, dangerously naive, etc.) that ridicule is appropriate. Even if the contribution was made in good faith. Ridicule has numerous powerful social functions: it helps social groups self-govern, transmits knowledge from one generation to the next, enables social groups to circumscribe what is acceptable in a bottom-up way, and so on. Sometimes a little public skewering is exactly what's needed to give everyone something to think about. It's an online comment. Real names weren't used. There appears to be an overwhelming consensus as to the quality of the contribution (it's so light I can barely read it). No one's suffering any undue injury.

[acjohnson55]

I personally don't think ridicule is ever necessary or appropriate. Even if it results in compliance or submission in the moment, it's very likely to produce resentment. In an organization, it produces a culture of fear, rather than curiosity and initiative.

[archduck]

Ridicule can absolutely produce resentment, no doubt about it. It can cause workplaces to become toxic, cause people to shut down (or worse: cause people to _learn_ to shut down), cause people to cope in unhealthy ways like projection, bullying, etc.

However, consider that _satire_ is, fundamentally, ridicule. And it's very public (or at least intended to be). Often satire is one of the only ways that unaccountable power can be brought to account, or institutions which have overstayed their utility can be mobilized against.

It really depends on who's the butt of the joke. On HackerNews, we're mostly anonymous as to our individual identities, but at the same time, any one of us could unwittingly end up playing the part of a public archetype, representing anything from a naive and harmless misconception all the way to a rotten, spiteful ideology that nihilistically boasts of its intent to destroy everything. Some of those ideas need to be challenged. And the people that amplify those ideas need to be challenged too. Bad faith and ill intent warrant ridicule, if not outright invective and contempt (not very often to this degree, but as a history enjoyer, I'll die on this hill). But sometimes even a genuine, bona fide contribution _ought_ to be ridiculed, if it stems from a misunderstanding which amplifies a terrible idea - especially if it's a terrible idea with actual supporters. In this case, the bad idea was _technocratic solutions to complex social problems._ The context is important too: it's HackerNews, which has some of the most brilliant minds, willing to share deep, detailed insights into complex, systemic problems, glomming onto some of the most simplistic, reductive tropes about human needs and behavior. It's a kind of paradoxical, radically individualistic groupthink, which, taken to its logical end (or even just considered half-seriously with a modicum of self-awareness), would smother the social and economic conditions for a healthy society. A small set of shallow, rote answers to complex human problems, coming from defenders of “second-order thinking.” It needs to be challenged in a way that an overclocked galaxy brain can't intellectually weasel its way out of.

[acjohnson55]

I love comedy and satire for my personal enjoyment, but I'm not at all convinced they've been at all effective at stopping some of the most harmful ideas of our time.

[dnissley]

Why was this instance a good use case for ridicule?

As you admit, the question asker might very well have been genuinely curious. The answer to their question doesn't seem blindingly obvious to me (although I can certainly speculate about good reasons that grading isn't automated). I can't tell what you mean by "unacceptable" (perhaps there is some cultural taboo you're referring to here?). And it also doesn't seem "dangerously naive", which might apply where someone asking this question had decision making power in a critical situation, but clearly doesn't apply here.

By the very criteria you lay out, this doesn't seem like an instance in which ridicule was necessary or good. To me, it feels like a weak justification for bullying someone who thinks differently about something you obviously feel very strongly about.

[archduck]

I don't believe this was a case of bullying at all. It was a light ribbing. It also aligned with an archetype (of being able to engineer our way out of human problems) that's especially salient for some people on here, yet totally lost on others. The contradiction is funny, too, because it's classic human folly. Whether or not the commenter is anything like that really doesn't figure into the calculus of how necessary or good this instance of another commenter's snarky side comment was: there are no material consequences, no damage to anyone's reputation (except for some votes), and no one was even the butt of a joke here - it was the idea of the smart engineer with the engineered solution to a human matter which doesn't need solving. That's what we're laughing about.

Regarding all the talk about ridicule, it was intended as a rebuttal to the idea that humor at someone's expense is _never_ appropriate. It is appropriate and even healthy for a society to be composed of individuals who can withstand a bit of a ribbing when they unwittingly find themselves representing human folly in one of its many forms, and who can stop and ask, why did that happen?, and potentially learn from it, if it came from a moment of lacking self-awareness, or if it was just bad luck (everyone - everyone - winds up in the crosshairs sometimes.)

Truly no ill will meant, just wanted to defend the social function of ridicule. It probably ended up being a lot more of a well, actually thing than I intended. Which I do get teased for sometimes.

[dnissley]

I think the issue here is that I fundamentally disagree with the direction of this particular ribbing. I think we should be sensitive to this kind of naive questioning, which comes from a good place (wanting to make teaching easier and more effective) and can lead down productive paths where our priors are deconstructed such that we change what we think of as possible. We work in an industry where rabbits have been pulled out of hats and geese have laid golden eggs, by which I mean people have put their minds to hard problems and have come up with solutions that before seemed impossible and would have faced the ridicule that you're defending. To the extent that ridicule causes people to be less curious, we should be very careful about deploying it.

[archduck]

I'm certainly no fan of shutting people down for asking questions. I think we may be interpreting the context of the question differently though. The parent poster was recounting having worked as a math teacher, stressed out every day from the planning and grading demands of the job, working in excess of 12 hours per day, earning a salary low enough that colleagues without a spouse's income to help out had to work a second job - and who still has nightmares about being back in the classroom. And then moving on to a software job with double the salary and half the stress. I read it as saying teachers should be appreciated / paid more and the response as why are teachers still doing unnecessary grunt work, making lesson plans and grading papers? Isn't that dumb work that a software engineer could just solve for them?

(Also, following through on this, if such a solution - computers planning your lessons for you, so all you have to do is what the smart computer tells you to - were to become reality, the lack of teacher appreciation / salary, which was the main point of the parent comment, would not improve at all - it would likely get worse, with teachers getting paid less for fewer available jobs. The deskilling of labor would probably follow, reducing teacher roles to individual, specialized, repetitive tasks, since it saves an enormous amount of money if low-skilled workers can simply be swapped out if they don't work out.)

[acjohnson55]

FWIW, as the person who raised the criticism of the snark, I also am a former math teacher. I have experienced just how much more valued I am as a software engineer. I have experienced how vastly better my work-life balance is. I, too, have observed how folks in the tech startup scene can approach complex social problems with overconfidence in tech solutions. So I have a similar claim as the OP to feeling insulted and entitled to snark back. I just don't think it's the right thing to do, from the standpoints of how I aspire to treat people and from a pragmatic standpoint of seeing the changes I want.