Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

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(Aside: You've started every reply you've written to me with some sort of "I don't even know what to say" or "I'm flabbergasted". I'm not sure if this is just a rhetorical tick you have, or if it means that maybe you should sit with what you've read for a bit and think it over until you know what to say or are no longer flabbergasted by it. I don't find what you're saying flabbergasting, I just disagree. I think you could perhaps reach a similar place with what I'm saying if you take some time to think about it.)

People don't need "breathing room" to care about a political issue. People care about issues that are affecting them. You clearly care about this issue because (from your comments today) it is clearly affecting you. You aren't going to suddenly care more about whether college administrators are or aren't incentivized to raise the costs of college after you've been freed from the clutches of your student debt and have more room to breathe. You'll move on to caring about the next thing that is affecting your life directly. That's not a criticism of you or anybody, it's just the natural reaction.

I’m done. You’re not engaging with what I was saying, and instead are talking down to me and others like we only care about ourselves. Please, please try to listen to the points people are making. Your entire first paragraph is literally gaslighting and talking down to me and others.

I have engaged you at every single point, and will continue to if you choose to continue making arguments. I have been listening to your points, but frankly so far they haven't been very good ones. I think what you're doing here is just throwing your hands up in frustration that not everyone just immediately agrees with what you believe to be the obvious conclusions here, rather than making convincing arguments for what you believe.

By my first paragraph, I assume you mean the parenthetical at the beginning? If so, that isn't what "gaslighting" means, and while I can see how you read it as talking down to you, it can't be talking down to anyone else, because it is solely responding to a particular style in a few comments you specifically have written.

You haven’t engaged me with research or data once, you just keep concern trolling. Please try to at least use something quantitative to backup your arguments

You post one article and claim it’s it’s “THE” study or data for hours and hours and post and reply constantly. Log off for a bit, take a break, it might do you some good.

My argument isn't quantitative, it's predicting how the policy will impact incentives and thus peoples' future behavior. Incentives matter in policy construction, but not everything that matters can be put on a chart or in a table of numbers.

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