Comment by gompertz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gompertz | Hacker News Reader

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Going to reply on this comment since it's a thorough response to mine.

Look; I'm seeing a lot of reasoning across comments from non-native language, keyboard input, autocorrect, and so forth.

None of this changes the fact that the usage is just flat out wrong. Have we become so soft in society that nothing can be pointed out because of speculative reasons?

If it's a 2nd language, learn the language. If it's the keyboard, get a better keyboard. If it's autocorrect, double check what you write. Stop making excuses for everything.

All these cries for why we should accept there/ their/ they're uncontested is no doubt a reflection of the frustration Carmack must have experienced, if HN is any indicator of the FAANG workforce. John is known to be very direct and unapologetic himself, and here y'all are losing your mind on a slight criticism. It's no wonder.

I would suggest that it's not necessary to speculate too much about why they made a grammatical error. There are many possible reasons. For instance, I suggested that they may simply be less pedantic/careful about grammar. They may simply care about the form of their expression less than you or I do.

I think judging a hypothesis by its form/expression is not a great way to get at the truth. If a heuristic has to be used, then probably tone, coherence, and even-handedness are better than grammatical correctness. Those are at least closer to the substance of the argument.

I suggest that evaluating arguments on the basis of form/expression will not help you get at the truth.

It is your choice whether to be aesthetically dissatisfied by grammatically incorrect English. Many would consider that pedantic, though I might have a modicum of sympathy for you. However, I think the error you've made is to promote aesthetic displeasure into distrust for the OP's reasonableness.

I do not know about others, but I do not think I am losing my mind about anything. I suspect that most direct and unapologetic people have faith in the substance of their arguments, and would be frustrated to be judged using low-signal heuristics like grammatical correctness.

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