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Comment by jimjimjim | Hacker News Reader

so based on disagreement with a treaty, people are altering their brain state to be opposed to anything associated with protecting the environment?

I dislike broccoli therefore people saying we should eat fruit and veg are liars?

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People engage in political dishonesty to pursue their goals. It's not surprising. It's just like many well-informed feminists parroting deceiving statistics like "70 cents on the dollar" to claim that women aren't getting "equal pay for equal work" when they know it's not true. They know the disparity is largely due to choices made by individual men and women, plus the time consuming nature of child bearing, but they want government action to mandate equal outcomes. And there is a thoughtful argument to be made for such action. But they think they can better sell the idea by claiming pay discrimination.

Understanding and engaging with the underlying motivations of the opinion leaders is going to be more effective than just demonizing or ridiculing the people who follow them.

why did you choose to mention feminists?

Just an example from the "other side" to illustrate my point that we should engage with the most generous understanding of our opponents' positions, if we are really interested in persuasion.

Because somehow it always comes back to this

I don't think it's substantive to talk about dishonesty and say "they know", "they know", and "they think". The guidelines ask us not to do this kind of thing, so please try to do better when approaching controversial topics.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's pretty absurd. This thread is full of people mocking those who disagree with them, but this lukewarm comment is the one you took issue with?

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