Comment by YeGoblynQueenne
1 year ago
So what? People will see your sources and see what the other person writes and they can make up their own minds.
1 year ago
So what? People will see your sources and see what the other person writes and they can make up their own minds.
What I have observed is that you refute that actual bullshit with facts and then they come back with some other "whatabout" and new bullshit.
The trick is to realize that if you've made a good point, readers will be smart enough to notice that the other person is just coming back with new bullshit. You don't need the last word to win an argument; being first to walk away actually adds power to your argument. If you've said what needs to be said, no "whatabout" can cancel it, and you'll weaken your case if you chase after it.
I still suck at this in practice but I'm sure of it in theory!
(I'm working on a longer reply to you at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39158911, but I can't resist replying here too because I feel like I figured this one out after 15+ years of frustration.)
Agreed on both the advice and the difficulty of engaging in practice.
What I'll frequently do where a counterparty has looped back to an earlier position is to simply link directly to my earlier response to that point, with the implicit statement "we've already covered this ground, I'm not going to repeat myself".
Walking away from such discussions is still challenging as there's always a temptation to respond. This is where employing HN's thread-collapse feature is useful. I'll typically do this at some point above my final response. The threads remain closed until the post is about two weeks old per earlier discussions with dang.
Say whatever else you will about him but pg was really good at this.
1 reply →
thats a good indicator that you should stop commenting in online message boards. This (and a litany of other reasons) is why "internet comments" have a terrible reputation. Comment boards have been around 20+ years and no one has yet been able to create a system that doesn't encourage degeneracy.
While I guess it's not in HN guidelines I think humour can work sometimes.