Comment by sokoloff

To add onto the prior poster (and also motivated by a reasonable likelihood that you are earnestly trying to explore precise and non-mainstream discussions online and getting frustrated that you can’t seem to without triggering <whatever negative reactions you get>).

My sad experience is that you just can’t do what you want, if what you want is most people to treat your language with the high precision you intended or to pause their emotional filters and explore some philosophical “what ifs”. You might be able to find some pure and deep thinkers in real life or private settings to explore questions highlighted in the fourth post in your link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38699727

But in public settings (including online) you mostly can’t.

You also can’t even use some words online, despite them having a very precise and innocuous meaning.

As an example:

Try to guess the reaction to something like: “when I realized Colin didn’t leave a tip, I didn’t confront him as I knew that he wasn’t going to change since that was just an inherent part of his niggardly nature.”

A human compiler, equipped with the correct dictionary definition of “niggardly” will process your sentence one way. A random person on the street, online, or in a pub is highly likely to take offense. If you insist that people are obliged to treat your sentence as if you’d said “stingy” (the definition of the race-connotation-free word “niggardly”), you’re going to be confused when many refuse.

Similarly, if you ask some of the questions from the link above among strangers in a public forum: are they asking in order to deeply explore all valid philosophies concerning them? Or are they placing poop into the pretty nice punch bowl we have here?

Many will assume and treat you as if it’s the latter, because their experience is many people do do that online, and treat you as if you’re doing that as well.

You know your intentions. Other people have to guess at them. If you communicate in a way that matches you to a pattern they have a negative reaction to, you’re going to get that reaction.