I think there’s a lot of value in negative comments.
They tend to offend me, but I tend to learn from them.
It’s a form of feedback, from which I can grow.
Sure, if a comment is a personal attack, or it doesn’t use polite words, I’ll delete it, but, generally, if someone tells me something bad, I try to learn from it, although that’s not my initial reaction (which is to feel offended, even if that’s not the case).
One guy on an online forum, long ago, told me something similar to: “Olivian, you wrote above that reading books helps with intelligence. Everybody, does it look to you that Olivian says smart things?”.
Boy, that comment really hurt me, I got so offended for it. But it was true, on multiple levels: I wasn’t a big reader (so I wasn’t speaking from direct experience), and I didn’t practice thinking about tough subjects that much. When I look at various messages written in those times (this happened almost 20 years ago), I feel rather ashamed on how silly I used to write.
That person was right.
Did the message motivate me? You bet.
I don’t think that there’s an upper limit on how much you should learn (Why You Don’t Need to Be Exceptional – YouTube).
You always need to learn a lot of things, there’s always a need to grow.
Still, since that message was posted, I tried to improve myself in various means.
It may be paradoxical, but I don’t think that just by reading books you can get very smart. So, I tried various means.
I’m not saying I’m a genius/wise man, I’m just saying that I think I’m a bit smarter than in ~2004, when that message was posted.
And the message was a motivating factor to me, all these years.
