Comment by tangled_zans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tangled_zans | Hacker News Reader

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But are you SURE you don't want to spend hours justifying your opinion to some random passive aggressive stranger?

Clearly you're not allowed to share your views without being ridiculed unless you cite extensive sources and make some flow charts or something.

[/sarcasm]

I enjoyed reading your insight so thanks for sharing that.

13thLetter: Do you think it's possible to tell someone to elaborate on why they believe something without being an asshole. I mean, if you ask nicely then he could've written something interesting about his experiences. If you act like a passive aggressive douche then you'll just get people defensive and they won't write anything. The whole community loses.

Besides, I think it's pretty pretentious to hold someone's views shared at a messaging forum to uphold to the same standard that they would need to get into a peer-reviewed journal disputing gravity. Do you even THINK before you write?

On the one hand, yeah, you're right, I tend to be too aggressive and rude and I really shouldn't do that, especially on a forum like HN. I genuinely appreciate you telling me that.

On the other hand, let's not forget that this is a very, very strong accusation. It's easy to lose sight of that, since it sounds like the usual world-weary complaining on a forum, but the gist of the statement is that the American government is deliberately making up false pretexts for war and killing foreign citizens and American soldiers, not for national interest or even crude financial gain, but in order to "test" warfighting doctrine. That's something a cartoonishly evil movie villain would do. I'm hardly a fan of the US government's current management, to put it lightly, but if this behavior was true it would make Watergate look like jaywalking and justify mass impeachment at the very minimum. If someone's going to toss it out I'd like there to be something to back it up.

Hey, I appreciate your erm, apology, I guess. You're right, you shouldn't be rude to people, or they will stop talking to you.

I don't know what you expect me to say to your second paragraph though. The guy making those "accusations" has already left the conversation, and I don't really feel like having this discussion with you either.

Anyway, good luck getting to the bottom of this!

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