That's not what they mean when they say empathy. They misuse empathy when they mean compassion.
I think they do it because even they understand it's indecent to say they pity all of these people.
empathy: The ability to identify with or understand another's situation or feelings
compassion: Deep awareness of the suffering of another accompanied by the wish to relieve it.
Ask for empathy in a preface, or an introduction, if you have to. Stay the fuck out of Dahl's work. You don't have to like it, but changing it is obscene - Dahl is not alive to permit these changes, and would probably be horrified. They're his fucking words.
You, GP, and anyone else seeking justification for silently altering beloved works into newspeak ought to grab a hold of yourselves. That isn't empathy, it's Orwellian censorship to an obvious and absurd degree. As pointed out all over this thread and elsewhere, this is worse than burning books in some ways.
And no, shrill isn't "gendered" any more than "screeching" is. For fuck sake. Every word an author chooses is chosen with care for flavour and tone. Leave them the fuck alone.
Again: none of this --- nothing I've said, and nothing about the comment you've chosen to angrily respond to --- implies that these changes are good. Maybe the previous commenter believes that; I don't know. But I can't read that out of anything they actually wrote.
I understand the urge to find someone, anyone, to take the other side of your argument. It's no fun to yell at the clouds! But you have to wait for someone to actually make the other argument. You can't just attribute it to people and then hammer away at them.
Since we just asked you to stop doing it and you've kept doing it, I think we have to ban this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I made a point of turning off the flags on this submission—I don't have any problem with the article and you can see from my comments in the thread what I think of these edits to Dahl. But you still can't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how provocative someone's comments are or you feel they are.
FWIW, while tptacek's comments to you were probably slightly edgier than usual and maybe a bit over the line, 'gaslighting' seems like a big exaggeration to me.
Moreover, when I feel empathy with someone who feels different and unrecognized by society, something still keeps me from advocating for the censorship and misrepresentation of a writer's ideas and internal logic.
I think what's stopping me is the knowledge that if I'm fortunate enough to write something that lasts beyond me, I sure as heck don't want anyone updating it for the sensibilities of 2053. Putting myself in someone's shoes, I think there's a word for that
Come on guy, it's not that hard to see. People have been pointing it out to you for hours now.
What is your relationship to tptacek? Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up.
I didn't see personal attacks from tptacek. Some of his comments in this thread were edgier than I would like but I didn't see any that broke the site guidelines badly enough to warrant a scolding the way your comment did. Based on what I saw, this isn't a borderline call and (in case you're worried about this) it has nothing to do with disagreeing with you—just look at my posts on the actual topic.
> Every time I see him winding people up, you're there behind him, threatening anyone who stands up
The active ingredient there is "I see". What people see, and fail to see, is basically determined by their passions on a subject. If all these years of moderation have taught me one thing, it's that.
Re "twisting of people's comments" - that's your interpretation based on your priors. People make these judgments all the time—in fact they come up in nearly every argument as soon as emotions get activated. You're overestimating what moderation can do if you think we should impose our own such interpretations. And they wouldn't agree with your interpretations in any case (how could they?) so you wouldn't get what you wanted even if we did. No one would! In fact it would amplify the complaints about moderation by many orders of magnitude.
If someone is wrong or you think they are, the helpful thing to do is respectfully provide correct information. If you can't or don't want to do that, please just chalk it up to someone being wrong on the internet and walk away. The one who stops posting first in tit-for-tat exchanges is the one who wins anyway.
Also, HN conversations are basically never good once people start arguing about what each other is really saying, so when things take that turn, it's a sign that it's time to stop.