| |
| ▲ | throwanem 3 days ago | parent [-] | | What am I meant to think the experience of providing IT support shares with that of the bodhisattva nature, such that quoting the ever tiresome Watts at paragraph length is meant to aid understanding of either? It's just a lot of self-aggrandizing humblebragging nonsense, "look whose name I drop and you don't." Good grief, in this millennium having had an encounter with Watts doesn't even really qualify anyone as being familiar with the literature. If one means to say it's not people's fault that computers suck to use and they shouldn't be blamed for exhibiting some emotional dismay when forced to do so anyway, then one may say so clearly and concisely, and without insisting on oneself even by implication. | | |
| ▲ | teddyh 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Your reading comprehension seems to be lacking. Maybe you should read more books? What I meant to convey, seven years ago, when writing that comment making the analogy to Zen Buddhism (as described by Alan Watts at least) was that there are those who come to understand technology and immediately go off and despise and belittle all the people who don’t understand it. There are also those who come to understand technology and can explain the relevant parts to those who don’t understand it, and help them handle technology to help them in their lives, without belittling them or even secretly/silently looking down on or feeling superior to them in any way. This dichotomy seemed to me to be very similar to what Alan Watts once described about Zen Buddhism. But sure, you keep berating people for daring to quote something by someone so plebeian as Alan Watts, in a seven year old comment. I’m sure it will help you get along with people. | | |
| ▲ | throwanem 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You're right. Seven years is a long time. I'm not the one who brought it up. Why do you keep using forty words where two or three would serve? | | |
| ▲ | teddyh a day ago | parent [-] | | I have no idea what you are talking about. I certainly did not bring up Alan Watts again; you did. It also takes a lot of words to convey my thoughts accurately to someone who seems bent on misunderstanding them. | | |
| ▲ | throwanem a day ago | parent [-] | | I restated them yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757634, assuming at the time that if you found any error there you would say so. Here's another chance to explain where I've actually failed to grasp your thesis, rather than that I'm pointing out you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication. But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him? Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets? | | |
| ▲ | teddyh a day ago | parent [-] | | > you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication. Well, possibly. What is interesting and subtle to some is obvious and clichéd to others. Much like how technology is mysterious and ineffable to some, but obvious and plain to others. > But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him? Now you’re being delusory. You brough up Alan Watts again, after I quoted him seven years ago. I simply responded to you. > Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets? I think that, outside purely literary criticism, criticizing a “needless” reference is useless unless the reference itself is incorrect in a way which invalidates the point which the reference is meant to illuminate. | | |
| ▲ | throwanem 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You [brought] up Alan Watts again I just checked again, and it does look like you posted [1] the relevant links. Are you seeing something different? My experience has been that people who use apps or scripts which purport to "improve" on HN's interface do sometimes run into such bugs. I bring it up because I feel like if we're not working from similar sets of facts, that would be a reasonable explanation for what otherwise is seeming very much like you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44753964 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
