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A comment on Show HN: When my builds fail I pay money to charity. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: When my builds fail I pay money to charity by fouc on Monday May 07, 2018 @01:10PM (#17014424)
OP and yourself are perhaps engaging in what could be termed as "semantic trolling"

Fortunately it isn't working because as others pointed out, "penalize himself" and "donate to charity" concepts aren't directly tied together. Where the donation actually goes is immaterial, so it's not possible to argue that "punish himself" implies "donate to charity" is punishment.

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Re:Show HN: When my builds fail I pay money to charity by tnegoshi on Monday May 07, 2018 @05:32PM (#17016633)
The only misuse of semantics I see is where an attempt to obscure a concretely causal relationship occurs:

mistake > punish himself > donate to charity to punish himself

Donating to charity as a method to achieve the punishment goal is precisely material in this case.

GP is asking if this method, which contains both a gain and loss, actually results in a punishment with an intended loss.

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Re:Show HN: When my builds fail I pay money to charity by zumu on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @02:08PM (#17023143)
The punishment isn't donating to charity. The punishment is losing money.
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