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Comment by tomhow | Hacker News Reader

Please don't make grand sweeping proclamations on HN. We're here for curious conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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My comment is meant as a conversation starter more than anything, based on my observations of how both 1) the right (or at least MAGA?) and the left are against the Iran war AND 2) both the right (or at least some part of MAGA?) and left want to see the Epstein perpetrators locked up.

This hasn't happened, per my theory, because we are really in a top versus bottom fight where the top controls the narrative and shapes it to be a right vs. left fight amongst the bottom.

> My comment is meant as a conversation starter more than anything

Sure, but the guidelines ask:

Please don't fulminate...

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

There may well be a way to propose the idea in a way that can be discussed in a curious conversation. I'm sure there is. I think it would need to be more fleshed out hypothesis, and even better, some kind of potential solution. That's the kind of thing you can have a good conversation about. What you wrote works well as a rallying cry, but that's not what HN is meant for.

I think that this is ridiculous. The idea that grand sweeping proclamations cannot be curious is plainly false. We can look at numerous excellent works of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that produce grand sweeping proclamations that are nevertheless backed by years of archival or scientific research performed by experts.

While I don't agree with the poster that left/right is a distraction from class conflict, the idea that this idea cannot possibly be worth discussion or inspection is outrageous.

> I think that this is ridiculous

> plainly false

> the idea that this idea cannot possibly be worth discussion or inspection is outrageous

This is not curious conversation.

I have no idea what is going on here.

All you did is say that sweeping pronouncements cannot be curious conversation. I said that they can be curious conversation, and referenced situations where it is. My post is now not curious conversation, but yours is?

The point is that when your position is presented with these hyperbolic barbs and this enraged tone, it closes off the opportunity for discussion rather than opening it, and erases any opportunity for a curious conversation. This is a theme in much of your activity on HN, particularly in discussions about politics and the aspects of the tech industry that displease you, and also in the way you engage with the moderators. We need this to stop, because it's poisonous to the culture here. HN is only a place where people want to participate because others make an effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down. You're welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) if you want to discuss this further.

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