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Comment by badcppdev | Hacker News Reader

I was trying to write a reply to call out the use of that word. People need to be more careful with their language.

It’s difficult to talk about some subjects online when people are so keen to mince other people’s words like this. They obviously meant nothing by it and you’re letting pedantry invalidate the point they were making. I’d prefer if you’d lower your editorial expectations for casual internet discussions more than I’d prefer everyone edit their word choices so carefully (unrealistic expectation honestly).

Not meant to pick on you, this is a common thing I see when certain topics are discussed but it does not benefit the discussion at all.

Maybe the point was that they should have meant something by it. We're talking about death and misery on an immense scale, and certainly many of the people reading any comment here will have been affected, will be sitting alone reading this when they otherwise wouldn't. Is it so awful to ask people to consider that, to weigh their words carefully, given this context?

Or yet another possibility is “simply” meant that the concept of people dying earlier than they otherwise would have is just an easy to grep concept most laymen can understand and thus a simple concept to discuss. If only.

This is a leaky medium for communication. It’s fast and casual and only text. Over analyzing each word is fine, but if you don’t like the word choice just move on. Trying to educate people to communicate how you want them to is a losing battle.

Also this node of the conversation is about data and analytics and now pedantry more than the underlying topic of death.

Pedantry is about minor errors. I think it is careless to refer to millions of deaths like that.

But we might be coming with different expectations. This might be a serious discussion or it might be a casual internet discussion. Do you agree that if it's serious then people should be more careful with their words?

And if it's casual then are you complaining that I've strayed off topic?

All causes of death “simply” accelerated another subsequent cause of death.

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