I am very real

This submission could not have come at a better time.<p>Over the past couple of weeks, I've been contemplating making a submission urging HNers to be <i>human</i>, and to recognize that everyone else who comments here is also a <i>human</i>, and that stories about startups and notable figures are essentially about <i>humans</i> - humans who all have families, friends, ambitions, desires, flaws, struggles.<p>All too often I see people here forgetting about that. I myself have been guilty of it in the past too. But there's something about the negativity and criticism here that grates on me more than on other sites. I think people here tend to assume that being an engineer/programmer means that not only must they treat their code with utmost logic and rationality, but that they should look at life in the same manner - that to be an empathetic and emotional person puts them at some sort of optimizational and productive disadvantage. All that leads to is cold, harsh discourse and criticism without considering the more abstract, but very real ways humans feel and behave. It's sad to see.<p>So, I guess this is that submission. Next time you write a comment, ask yourself if you're being human and remind yourself that whatever you're about to say is directed at another human.<p>Stop being robots, and just act human.

While not nearly as important, the idea that authors are real makes me immediately relate to my own experience that customers don't seem to understand that software is made by real people too. People with feelings, who are fallible. Several comments on blogs or reviews on the app store show to me that people don't feel they are being insulting or rude if they aren't facing the person they criticize. The more I wrote this comment the more I started to seem the Internet as a whole falling victim to anonymous words that cut deep. We've had to develop unnaturally thick skin.

My favorite part:<p>&#62;Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.<p>Thanks again, Vonnegut.

Burning a book (good or bad) is the lowest form of expression humans can stoop to. If people understood the fact that a book is simply a personification of ideas, and ideas good or bad, cannot perish in a fire, the will realize the folly of engaging in a futile act like burning a book.<p>One of the inevitable consequences of the digital revolution will be that, there will come a time, when a controversial book will be published exclusively in digital format with no physical copies to burn. I don't know if this necessarily good or bad, but the fact that idiots can't burn a book will provide me some amount of pleasure.

"And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake..."<p>What happened?

For some more background, the local newspaper looks back on this story 35 years later:<p><a href="http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/519549.html?nav=5576" rel="nofollow">http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/519549....</a>

Is there even any logical basis for the idea that banning curse words or otherwise offensive language "protects" children?<p>The word itself causes no harm. Tell a child a curse word they don't know and they aren't stricken back as if you had slapped them. It has no meaning or value until you describe what it means and when to use it. Then once it's explained to them, assuming they weren't harangued by their parents into fearing the word itself, there's the use in a book such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:<p><i>"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see..."</i><p>Contrast this with a book like Where The Red Fern Grows, where a boy's dog (who he loves dearly) is disemboweled in front of him and he has to literally stuff his intestines back into the dog's bloody carcass.<p>If the high purpose is indeed to protect children they should be taught about the world so they'll know how to deal with it. Sure, there's ugly things about the world and for the most part we try to isolate ourselves from it, but burning it doesn't make it go away. The end result may be it enforces in the child the idea that they can choose to destroy any part of society they dislike, regardless of anyone else's opinion and without a reason other than their feelings. Personally I can't think of anything more frightening.

I'm curious, how, if "... no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands." is true, how is it reproduced on this site?

Every time I read a story like this, I'm reminded of Dunbar's number and David Wong's excellent (and very funny) summary: <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html</a><p>The "Monkeysphere" explains a huge amount of silly human behavior.

I've been obsessing a little bit over Ready Player One over the past couple weeks. Not that it is an amazing piece of literature, it surely is not that. But it is highly entertaining and an incredible work of meta fiction. It is a fiction about a fictional world in which essentially all other fictional worlds co-exist, and they all celebrate each other. I would recommend it to anybody at all without reservation (if you don't read speculative fiction you'll just ignore my recommendation anyway, even though I think this book would have the power to open some doors to you).<p>I have not read Kurt Vonnegut, but was intrigued by the specific reference to him as the main character's favorite author, a certain kind of twisted high praise in the context of the book as a whole. I have not heard much about Kurt Vonnegut beyond recognizing the name and the Ready Player One reference. But reading this letter, and with the added bonus of the implied recommendation from Ernest Cline, I've heard enough.<p>Where's the best place to start?

I was curious how this document was released, if only one copy was distributed to a person who was probably not inclined to share it. The first newspaper reference on Google I could find is dated June 1982.<p><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L6pNAAAAIBAJ&#38;sjid=rfsDAAAAIBAJ&#38;pg=2734,3598967&#38" rel="nofollow">http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L6pNAAAAIBAJ&#38;sjid=r...</a>;<p>Anyone have access to Factiva or LexisNexis?

Everyone seems to be confused by the "I am sending you the only copy" aspect of this letter. I'm sure he kept excellent records, and keeping a copy (or the original) for himself would be a standard business practice for someone in the communication business.<p>It is no different than you sending an email to someone saying, "I'm sending this note to you alone rather than posting this publicly, ..."<p>As for why he would keep a copy: no different than why you keep copies of your emails. Should the recipient respond, he'll have his original to reference if the person responding takes items out of context, attributes statements not actually made to Vonnegut, amongst other benign or nefarious mistakes.

This is very weak. We should not burn books because it might hurt the feelings of authors? Surely that means it's ok to burn the books of dead authors?<p>The reason why we should not burn books is because<p>- it deprives potential readers of the benefit of reading them<p>- the free circulation of ideas is the cornerstone of a free society, and trying to restrict it is the beginning of tyranny<p>- arguments should be fought with arguments, not fire<p>But the feelings of authors really don't have anything to do with it. KV shouldn't have felt insulted that someone burnt his books. He should have been ashamed for the human race that anyone would burn any book (and not just his own). He should have punched the guy in the face.

Do people burn books online? Is there a correlative action to tossing vilified literature in the fire? The attitude characterized by McCarthy's response to Slaughterhouse-Five retreats from reality to the ideal. As media channels have diversified and the input streams exponentially increased, can I burn something by choosing not to consume it? Obviously we cannot take in everything, but I think the filter bubble, both imposed and self-manufactured, creates a sort of insularity and a disconnection from the broader human experience. If I only read what I like or relate to, it makes me less real.

This is exactly why the 6th Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the right to face your accuser.<p>"in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him"<p>It's harder to accuse someone, or even insult or disparage them, when you have to face them. And that is something that should be hard to do.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause</a>

I am curious for more. Does the source book have more on this story? I'd like to know whether the letter was ever shared in the community.

To me the key sentence is:<p>&#62;You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.<p>A great way of saying that if you don't learn on your own to discern good from bad, you will never learn to do it, and learning requires exposure to all sides.

"If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own."<p>Tell me you don't buy this?

<i>And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands.</i><p>ahem.

I still can not believe how awesome this man was. This is exactly how all people should be.

I wonder what the school board would have done with Fahrenheit 451.

This was an amazing letter. Great lesson for me on so many levels.

isn't government actually run by people too?

<i>Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.</i><p>I was depressed for weeks when he died.

<i>If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.</i><p>If Kurt is an American, Kurt must allow book burning.<p>If you are an American, you must not down vote.