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Comment by akvadrako | Hacker News Reader

How is a commenter's potential conflict of interest not relevant?

A conflict of interest would mean that they have an undisclosed interest in pushing that narrative (say, that they have stock in Huawei, that they're a Chinese official or something like that). The parent comment discloses no such thing. Having an opinion is not a conflict of interest.

At worse you could argue that the poster is biased, but then in this types of geopolitical discussions who isn't? Certainly not me.

Everyone technically has a conflict of interest or premeditated motivation. An argument should stand on its own merit, regardless of who makes it. Analyzing anything other than the argument is immature.

Calling someone's argument or stance immature is immature.

With that mindset nobody should use that word. We should wipe it from the dictionary.

Analyzing anything other than the argument is immature.

Yet sometimes it leads to a better outcome than just analysis of the argument alone. Context is real. Context matters. Automatically disregarding real information on the grounds of "maturity" ideology can lead to a worse outcome, so it doesn't seem like the best course.

While context is important, I’ve found that the context of who someone is personally is rarely beneficial when being objective. If anything, this approach is anti-ideology, as you are not taking ideological bias into account...and there’s way too much ideological bias in discussions these days. I think that’s what I meant by maturity.

Subtract the OP's posting history. Is what they wrote still relevant and valid? Yes? There's your answer.

It's not because there may be a conflict of interest that he's wrong. He's mainly just explaining the legal background of this event.

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