I swear...actually I swear an awful lot. Sometimes I say fuck, shit and bollocks all in one sentence. It's a big part of my vocabulary.
I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that I can make with my mouth that ripple through the air and upon hitting the delicate ears of another human being will cause offence. I think people of the future will look back on this period of time and refer to all of us as crazy for being so sensitive when there are much, much bigger problems facing humankind.
I find it even crazier still that people write f-ck or c-cksucker and feel that by using hyphen they're protecting these same sensitive folk from the rudeness of the words. I mean come on. If I read f*ck what I actually say in my head is "fuck". Not "beep" or some other auto-censor in my head.
Just two minor caveats to all of the above:
If I'm meeting somebody new, or somebody with whom I do not already have a close relationship with (especially within the confines of business) I will tone down but not cease my swearing. It's just polite but if they then proceed to drop an f-bomb all bets are off and I'll revert to default swearing mode.
I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.
> I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that ... will cause offense.
I concur that people shouldn't be so sensitive, but I think your approach above is actually the "bizarre" way of looking at it. Ideas, words, sounds, images have meaning. You can tear people down with words, or lift them up. You can tell lies or truth. If I say "fuck you, you piece of shit" to a colleague, or to my wife, that has meaning ("I'm very angry and I hate you"). Swear words are strong for a reason, and if folks use them all the time they become weak and meaningless.
I basically don't swear, ever, but if I did, it would be in situations like this: http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html (see "The reason I forbid my children to use words like...")
See also the section "innocence" at http://paulgraham.com/lies.html for some counterpoint to your comments about children and swearing. What you say about how you swear all the time but would never do it around your kids seems pretty arbitrary. What you suggest doesn't seem common sense to me.
Your argument is based on the premise that I'm using swear words in reference to somebody, or to cause offence, which is not the case. I'm not saying that I've never sworn at somebody but I would do that wilfully and with intent and not by accident because I swear more than the average person.
I don't care if swearing is weak any meaningless as a result of overuse because I don't need to swear in order to drive home a point. As I said, I think swear words are not in and of themselves harmful. Furthermore I can be just as articulate without swearing.
>> I find it bizarre that there are certain sounds that I can make with my mouth that ripple through the air and upon hitting the delicate ears of another human being will cause offence. I think people of the future will look back on this period of time and refer to all of us as crazy for being so sensitive when there are much, much bigger problems facing humankind.
>> I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.
You should think about this contradiction, before you say people are sensitive, no?
This doesn't seem all that inconsistent. Kids are impressionable, and pay a much higher social cost for swearing when young (like getting disciplined at school). By contrast, most jobs worth a damn won't be childish enough to reprimand you for something as silly as swearing.
Exactly. Other people are the main reason you have to teach your children not to swear. Whether we like it or not, we live in a society where people get butt-hurt about swearing and some people are appalled at kids swearing. I don't want to have to put up with explaining myself every time my kid swears.
Yeah definitely this. People will judge my son for swearing but my son doesn't have the vocabulary, experience or social skills to defend his words. It's therefore my job to ensure that I don't leave him in a position where he can use a word that gets him in trouble.
1. They don't mind the repercussions they would face themselves for swearing.
2. Young children might copy this behaviour without being able to make an informed decision and face those same repercussions. Is it fair to decide for them? Probably not, default to safe.
And also imagine I swear in front of a kid and he goes home and says the word I used to his Mum or worse still perhaps to a school teacher.
The Mum/teacher/whatever is potentially going to chastise the kid for using the word that I gave him but bless him, he doesn't know any better and just enjoyed making the sound.
It seems most unfair that I should place the kid in such a predicament given he doesn't understand the wider context of language and where swearing fits within language and perhaps society.
> I swear...actually I swear an awful lot. Sometimes I say fuck, shit and bollocks all in one sentence. It's a big part of my vocabulary.
> I also do not swear, for obvious reasons, in front of my three year old or any children for that matter. Again, it's just common sense.
How often do you swear in public? Do you notice all the children around you? What if you're intoxicated? I find it more practical to always try and reduce swearing than in specific exceptions. Because that way you are used to not using those words.
I fucking love you. Actually, I try really hard to not swear in front of my kids, but I think I'm too far gone. My wife will chime in and tell me off - you know what, my kids don't actually swear as much as their peers, so I kind of think I'm doing them a favour.
I read through the study about which this article reports.
The first two experiments are not very robust. They present a _plausible_ association between cursing and honesty, but it's not especially convincing.
There is so much potential for confounding variables and sampling defects (e.g. self-reported data from Mechanical Turk users, a group who may not represent the population at large) that you could drive a truck through it.
There are likely many other plausible explanations for the results that don't actually depend on an association between cursing and honesty.
For instance, in the first experiment, participants were asked question such as "Are all your habits good and desirable ones?" If they answered, "Yes," it was considered a lie. But it might alternatively indicate several other things, such as poor reading comprehension, paranoia about how the answers might be used, poor self-inventory skills, etc.
As for the third state-level experiment, it's just silly. It's the sort of thing you might see on Buzzfeed or my own site, Correlated.org. Don't take it seriously.
Straight honesty isn't always a virtue. Plus cussing signals lots of other things, too.
I cuss a lot at work. But I don't cuss at people. I have a coworker that says things like "It's fucking ridiculous that X task isn't done" to the people who are doing that task. This dude is toxic to be around. I... think I'm not? We'll see how many of the people I'm managing still work here in a year, though. Hopefully all of them.
So yeah. In addition to signaling honesty, cussing can be part of aggressively damaging relationships, which is something businesses (and HN) benefit from discouraging.
I find this an interesting statement. Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue?
I often find that lying is convenient (for the person lying) in the short term but its damage can be far reaching and difficult to predict. If you want to have meaningful and effective relationships (at home or at work) straight honesty is always beneficial.
I do remember working with someone who had Alzheimer's disease. I stopped being honest with her quite quickly as I figured that repeatedly reminding her of her husband's death was wrong. But I can't think of any other examples of my life when straight honesty wasn't a virtue. What about you?
>I find this an interesting statement. Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue?
Umm, certainly.
The canonical example goes something like this—
Someone knocks urgently at your door. You open it to find your best friend on the stoop, bent over and panting from exertion.
He says there is some madman chasing him and for his safety he needs to hide there at your place for a spell.
You welcome him in, of course, and he goes to the smallest upstairs bedroom to lie down.
Moments later there is another knock on the door.
You open it to find someone you've never met before, only slightly less out of breath than was your buddy.
"Hello, is <friend's name> here? I'm here to kill him, you see. My rationale is rather not your concern, but as I'm in a bit of a rush, please do tell so that I may finish the job or be on my way."
--
The remainder of the dialog is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-D
/* Philosophy major, with emphasis on Kantian ethics */
Yeah. This is the classic example and obviously is interesting to think about. Some people still defend telling the truth if you're hiding Anne Frank and the Nazis are at the door.
We might go down a rabbit hole here but your example (mad man, Anne Frank, whatever) doesn't clearly demonstrate that honesty isn't a virtue. It's a clear example of a real life situation, sure, but it doesn't show that telling the truth wouldn't be virtuous.
Years ago... I managed a 1MM retail shop in San Francisco; worked too many hours. Needed that "mental health" day off. I informed my regional manager. Within the hour, he called me back and said "next time, just lie to me. tell me your sick".
I'm not entirely sure what transpired. I assume he had to report to higher-ups(and it didn't go over well?). But, that experience has always stuck with me.
Yeah. I understand that. But by telling your boss the truth you gave him a real gift in that he could trust you. If he (or the higher-ups) thought about that a little bit they would realise that your honestly was valuable.
You could come up with similar examples where you take days off to interview at other companies. Obviously telling your boss will probably anger them (and might be seen as a breach of your contract if you do it during work hours) but the moment your boss actually thinks about it they would realise that your honesty provides them with much better evidence about what to do next. That might include finding out why you want to leave, how to keep you, ending the relationship on good terms, hiring someone else sooner than if you lied, etc etc.
Now, it's very difficult to tell the truth in these situations and people aren't expected to do so. But honesty is still a virtue, perhaps even more so, in these situations.
> Would you mind providing some clear examples of a real-life situation where honesty isn't a virtue?
In most negotiations, you are usually at an advantage if you have more information than other parties. Lying/lack of transparency tend to work to your advantage in such situations. Of course, it depends on what, and there's context to that...
1. An acquaintance on facebook recently posted about how he thinks obesity is a disease and he finds obese people gross. This cost him some friends and the esteem of some other friends. Being honest that you hold positions which are repugnant to other people can generate needless conflict. There's also the moral question of being an asshole towards a large class of people needlessly, but I'll leave exploring that as an exercise to the reader.
2. Recently I ran into abberant behavior with our database that freaked me the fuck out (it shut down saying it recieved a ctl+c, but none was given), and disclosed this to my superior. It freaked him the fuck out. Now I'm being provided pressure in a way that doesn't help, and somewhat hinders, my ability to do effective work. Omitting this when giving a status report until I had more information would have been better.
3. I recently spent a lot of time with an ex, a relationship which has longstanding fractures. I made a passing comment that made her hoppin' mad, and she brought it up with me pretty maturely (+/-), but then devolved into a lot of "you always _____ and I hate it, who even does that!" statements. I saw very clearly that I could respond: "this is a bullshit way to talk to me, you haven't seen me in three years and you have no idea what i always do or don't do, and fuck you and your high horse." That would've been the really authentic, honest response. Instead I bit my tongue, managed the conversation back to the specific thing I had done and how I could avoid doing it again moving forward. The next day I was able to say (also honestly) that I appreciated that she'd gotten better at articulating ways in which I hurt her, but I really didn't appreciate the way she did it. By not disclosing how I felt in a timely manner, I saved my vacation.
These are all examples of when substantially less disclosure either did or could have improved outcomes.
Outright lies I tell on a regular basis:
"Hey, it's good to see you!" (read: I want you to find this interaction pleasant.)
"Yeah, things are going well." (read: Things are objectively terrible right now I'm not interested in talking about it)
"I'm really excited about this sprint, I think we're gonna get a lot of good work done." (read: I'm getting yelled at because our work isn't done yet but stress doesn't effectively motivate good intellectual work.)
"If you need help, please feel free to ask me questions at any time, I don't mind at all." (read: It stresses me the fuck out being interrupted all the time but it facilitates my team being able to do their job, so I'll deal with it, and lying about it keeps other people from being responsible for my feelings.)
> I cuss a lot at work. But I don't cuss at people. I have a coworker that says things like "It's fucking ridiculous that X task isn't done" to the people who are doing that task. This dude is toxic to be around.
This example has nothing to do with swearing, which is just adding emphasis. The sentiment being expressed in the first place is toxic.
Compare: "it's absolutely absurd that this isn't done" and "it's fucking awesome that this got done so fast".
Swearing at people like that takes it to a different level. And it's not the swearing that's bad, saying "It's ridiculous that X task isn't done" is bad too. Swearing just adds emphasis and makes it worse.
This might be something you say right before your about to fire someone as an explanation why. But if you are saying things like this on a regular basis, you're an asshole.
I've watched every single one of my submissions to Stackoverflow that I contributed in my own free time slowly cleaned and all my character purged from it until it more or less sounds like an American infomercial.
And when I complain about this American cultural belligerence all I get is a bunch of blithe, hollow muppets who have been drained of passion and love telling me that I'm unprofessional and not swearing is empirically better because.
Fuck that shit. I have to pragmatically accept it as a fact of life but I _really_ despise it.
There is a line somewhere between being "colourful" (and using some "bad words" when they are really needed) which may be "unpolite" or "inappropriate" according to the British and being NOT "politically correct" according to the Americans.
The first can easily be "fixed" for the more sensitive audience by using synonyms or some asterisk/hyphen substitution, or more generally toning it down a bit, and is - if I am allowed to use the two words together - substantially formal only.
The second is instead IMHO a bigger issue, because it implies a form of (self or coming from the society) imposed censorship on the "concepts".
The Americans that have in theory the most permissive (thanks to first amendment) Laws on the right of expressing one's opinion have seemingly in practice a lot more "forbidden" topics (in the sense of topics on which your opinion "must" conform to the society accepted take on the matter).
in the 70's perhaps. Not so much anymore and definitely much less so in the workplace. The:
> thou shalt not swear
on the internet programming community is really coloured by corporate and most corporate is American. The big argument I get is about corporate firewalls preventing access to any StackOverflow page with a cuss in it.
When meeting with clients or other teams in a big organization, it's obviously discouraged.
When speaking with colleagues, it's discouraged only when there's people who are trigger-happy about complaining to HR. Fairly or not, women in particular have a reputation of running to HR when someone says something offensive or crude, which leads to them being excluded from office banter, which leads to them feeling left out of the group. Tough problem to solve.
It makes sense really. You let the profanity flow when you feel that you can trust people. You're also most honest when you feel that you can trust people.
It reminds me of the famous article by Joel Spolsky about his first Bill Gates review [1]
>In my BillG review meeting, the whole reporting hierarchy was there, along with their cousins, sisters, and aunts, and a person who came along from my team whose whole job during the meeting was to keep an accurate count of how many times Bill said the F word. The lower the f*-count, the better.
God bless Bill. I've also heard great stories of chairs being thrown (not at people, of course) in high-level Microsoft meetings. Can you imagine him getting away with it today though? Someone would have tried to sue him for creating a "hostile workplace" or something like that.
If I have to consider what I'm saying. Then I'm considering what I'm saying and I have a opportunity to spin it or outright lie. Straight off the cuff I can speak faster but don't have that chance.
I was raised in a home that didn't allow any swearing, swearing just really isn't in my active vocabulary.
I totally swear when I stub my toe, when I forget something and I'm half way to work, but I never feel need the need to interject swears into common sentences.
People comment that I don't swear often -- usually uncomfortably checking if I'm against it-- I'm not, I work in finance where there is a lot of swearing done and don't mind. Its just not part of the vocab I use.
Interesting twist for me is that now that the kids are all grown up my mother swears and said she swore a lot before kids but 'gave it up' to make the rule real. Totally hard for my brain to handle.
> Fairly or not, women in particular have a reputation of running to HR when someone says something offensive or crude, which leads to them being excluded from office banter, which leads to them feeling left out of the group. Tough problem to solve.
Actually, it seems really easy to solve: Stop cursing so much at work and stop excluding women from your conversations. If you can't see the value of inclusiveness over cursing, you're the problem in the situation.
This is not a slippery slope. All I'm saying is that you should prioritize making people feel included over using whatever vulgar language you want in the workplace. Do you disagree with that?
I didn't argue women do that. I've never encountered a woman who has done that.
People can be made uncomfortable though by vulgar language. It shouldn't be used in an office setting to the point that it's making other people uncomfortable. Read those around you and try to be accommodating. This is basic stuff.
Friendship is not fair. Friendship is freely given and freely withheld. Who you choose for your social circle, and why you choose them, is unassailable.
Also, it's not a purely gender thing. My mother, of hispanic upbringing, finds that she cannot banter the same way around American-raised women as she can with other hispanic women. It turns out that getting easily offended and trying to ruin people's careers over it is not innate to women, but has for some reason arisen out of American culture and also afflicts many men.
Workplaces are supposed to be inclusive environments. It's fine if your mother talks in a way that American-raised women don't like (whatever that means) with her friends. It's not fine if she does that in an office setting.
I'm not saying you need be friends with everyone. I'm saying part of your job is helping ensure everyone on your team feels included and feels like they fit in. I'm not suggesting this will always be possible for every last person, but it's hardly the tough problem you seem to think it is. Read people around you and be empathetic and accommodating. That's it.
I should also say your talk about women ruining careers by going to HR is ridiculous, but it's so ridiculous that I don't feel it needs further addressing. I've been in the industry a long time and I've never heard of anyone filing a complaint with HR outside of clear instances of sexual harassment.
It's not really. Coworkers engaging in banter is friendship. But yes, there's no doubt that friendships between coworkers affect how things get done. That's just the human condition. If you want to change that, you'd have to run your office like a Stalinist dictatorship, and that would be terrible for getting things done. Which is, you know, the whole purpose of a team.
The situation is different, in that you don't necessarily have the right to choose your coworkers or teammates as you would your friends.
And no, I'm not promoting a Stalinist regime by suggesting that people be considerate of the feelings of others.
As an aside, and probably why I replied in the first place, is that I feel people are just too extreme nowadays. Everything is offensive to everybody, including getting offended of others being offended. People can't swear freely without eventually offending somebody, but people can't object to offense without being belittled. The extreme component of this is that nobody has chosen to pick their battles, instead further entrenching themselves in an ideology of moot points rather than a focus towards conflict resolution. I feel many of the comments in here are representative of this.
I'm hopeful that people realize that there's a middle ground to all of this, but folks on both sides don't seem to care.
Personally, I've found the following heuristic to be very accurate: if you wouldn't do it in front of a toddler AND allow them do it themselves, then you probably shouldn't do it, ever. There's likely no value in doing it (I intentionally say likely and don't claim an absolute. There are exceptions, e.g. having sex).
You must be fun at parties.
That's a great means of clean living but as a rule for everyone to follow I think its a touch strict.
Also our culture has some curious ideas about children and what about the world to shield them from. The dastardly lie of Santa and the general premise that innocence should be preserved instead of teaching them the truth of the world is one clear example of our strange interactions with our progeny.
Often concerns about swearing especially are very redundant around children and arguably selfish. One doesn't swear around children because they might use the word with frequency and embarrass the parent not because there is any detriment in the child being exposed to swearing.
> The dastardly lie of Santa and the general premise that innocence should be preserved instead of teaching them the truth of the world is one clear example of our strange interactions with our progeny.
It breeds them so they get ready to accept the lie of [a] God (and a prophet).
I, for one, want to raise my children to think critical of such folklore, religion, and cults (pretty much the same to me anyway).
Can you explain this "you must be fun at parties" comment I see often? And I am very fun at parties. I fail to see what cursing, drinking, smoking, etc has to do with being a fun person.
The youthful idea is that parties are to be debauched to an extent. So being strictly straight laced makes people less comfortable about being debauched.
Ultimately though it comes down to your post:
> then you probably shouldn't do it, ever.
assuming (somewhat, not much but a little, the "personally" at the start saves it) that people should be like you. Conversely I feel that everyone should be everything they want to be. Drunk, smoked, high, clean, religious, atheist, etc.
There is no "better" because there is no one objective context, there is just different and many.
I assume you are referring to drinking alcohol. Are you saying we should never drink alcohol? Of your list, drinking alcohol in moderation is the one thing which is accepted in our Western societies. How do you do this on birthday parties? You quickly hide the booze when John & Mary with their 3 year old enters the party? I call bollocks. Drinking in moderation is the right example, even for young children. The amount of joy is worth the slight age/health loss. Keyword is moderation.
Number 6 is not like the others. The other ones cause harm to yourself and/or others and have actual consequences. Cursing is just bad because society seems to think it's bad. The only negative consequences that come of it are because some people get offended for some reason.
I think this is a bit of spin being put out to make the next president's profanity seem like a good thing. Reminds me in a way of "the Emperor's New Clothes"...
And tomorrow someone will find links between depression and happiness. There are 10's of thousands of studies published a year, in which case most are completely unfounded or ridiculous.
With the right test group, right questions, and correctly controlled environment, you can create almost any conclusion.
Maybe so, but please don't post generic dismissals to HN. It takes discussion in predictable directions, which is not interesting. Better comments find something specific to engage with.
