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Comment by titzer | Hacker News Reader

> I think pointing out flaws in other people's reasoning is perfectly valid.

Frankly my knee-jerk reaction on some of the above comments was to start picking apart their reasoning and thinking of ways to explain why they're wrong. I was gearing up to drop some bombs. I have done this a lot. The internet is full of it. And it sucks.

There's so much of "I'm just pointing out the flaws in other people's reasoning". It's more than just snootiness; it's exhausting for everyone, even the out-pointer and out-pointed. It saps energy and....damn it...I'm doing it right now. The end result is just a cloud of bad feelings.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could write something on the internet and people would just listen....fuuuuu...and maybe some people would agree, and you wouldn't have to have an argument? What a world!

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Different people want different things. I hate when people feel that harsh criticism isn't nice. It starts to make everything feel like fluffy bullshit.

I wish HN was way, way harsher with its commentary. I understand your perspective and realize I'm outnumbered here, but basically we fundamentally disagree (and that's okay!).

I'd rather see more arguments about controversial topics from people with differing perspectives who bring data and logic to make their points. I hate that many things feel heavily censored on this site.

The older I get, the more I realize that endless nitpicking just sucks the joy out of life. 25 years online and I forget what life was like before every thought and attitude I or anyone ever had was raked over the coals. Constant peanut gallery. It's a chilling effect that you can't even measure. Endless criticism doesn't make everything better. It just puts everyone on edge, and it's absolutely asymmetric between those who want "fluffy bullshit" or whatever and people who can't for the life of them keep their commentary to themselves. I regret my own arguing more and more; I never feel better afterwards. Hell, I don't even like bringing this up because we gotta discuss it to death.

     I hate when people feel that harsh criticism isn't nice

Kind of a bad-faith strawman objection, TBH. I don't see anybody saying the issue is that the post wasn't sufficiently "nice."

I'm extrapolating here, but it sounds like you may often have this misconception w.r.t. metacriticism?

IME the issue people typically have with unnecessarily "harsh" criticism -- at least in engineering circles -- is that such unnecessarily harsh criticism is often counterproductive or at least wildly unproductive. I mean, what was the desired outcome here? Is criticizing some rando's spiritual practice supposed to benefit somebody, somehow?

I'm 1,000% in favor of speaking out or better yet, acting out when folks' religious beliefs interfere with others' freedoms. But I think that pretty clearly is not what was happening here.

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