[chaostheory]

> Then why do you ask me?

Because from my perspective it seems like you had an opinion and then you backed away once I challenged it. You dance around it enough to pretend that the author didn't make a clear opinion.

> I only mentioned one aspect (a question, not a conclusion by the way)

It sounded rhetorical. Like with other religious wars, we can agree to disagree. From my perspective, I still feel that your original point was that you felt Jackie Chan was wrong "to focus on the end result, his success as an adult" instead of contemplating more on his hard childhood. I'm not sure why you'd back away from that opinion. While I disagree with it, it isn't exactly controversial either.

[the_af]

> Because from my perspective it seems like you had an opinion and then you backed away once I challenged it.

From my perspective you made a mistake and now you're too proud to admit it.

What you "feel" I meant is wrong. I didn't even make a point. And I explicitly told you what I meant!

Interesting that you're now framing this as a "religious war". What I think is less interesting is that I have to defend myself against things you think I might have said according to what you "feel".

[chaostheory]

I did not make a mistake. I stand by my opinion as well as the accompanying rationale for making my conclusion.

Here's the anatomy of your initial comment:

1. Statement and rhetorical question echoing the article's main message

2. A conclusion using a summary of the article. The article only has one main conclusion.

Was that comment not an opinion or are you making comments that article summary bots make? Forgive me for making an incorrect assumption.

[the_af]

Yes, you made a mistake.

No, I do not forgive you for jumping to conclusions, and no, I didn't give any opinion in my initial post or echo the main point of an article with many points. When asked, I told you what I found interesting about the article and whether I found the cost Jackie paid too high (I do).

Did you even wonder whether I've read the autobiography the author of the piece is commenting on? (no, I have not). Then how on earth could I hold his same opinion?

Thinking that an incomplete summary of something means agreeing with it is such a naive assumption it's funny.

Let it go. You're wrong. Or you can pretend my opinion is what you "feel" it must be, whatever.

[chaostheory]

> and whether I found the cost Jackie paid too high (I do).

Then I clearly didn't make a mistake. This is the article's core idea and I disagree with it for reasons that I've already outlined in my previous comments.

[the_af]

Yes you did, because that's not the article's core idea (which is more focused on Jackie's refusal to say more about his past hardships, what the article calls his "blindspot" [1]), and it says nothing about whether I agree with the article.

Did you wonder why I even felt the need to write a summary? Why would I need to, if one could simply just read TFA? It's because at the time I posted, most people were commenting stuff like "I love Jackie Chan's movies, Rush Hour is cool!", which seemed to me to be entirely off-topic and likely written by people who hadn't bothered to read the article. So I summarized one of the ideas of the article -- the one I thought was worth discussing -- in hopes of getting the discussion back on track.

I succeeded. I just didn't expect your extremely literal and hilariously childlike interpretation of my post.

[1] Please don't debate this point with me as if it was mine. I know it's confusing because the words are there in my post, but that's not magic: it's called "summarizing what someone else said" -- trust me! If you disagree with it, I don't know, write the author an angry email.

[the_af]

@chaostheory

> Unless you're a summary bot, most people inject their opinion when summarizing an article.

That's not the purpose of a summary. My opinion is that it was "interesting" and wanted to move the conversation back on track, away from Jackie Chan's martial abilities and back on the subject of the submitted article.

> ok, let's pretend you didn't agree with article. It doesn't take away from the fact that my comments just strongly disagreed with the idea of Jackie "paying too high a price for success"

I've no problem with that. I can understand your disagreement. As I said, I agreed with parts of the article, disagreed with others, found other parts irrelevant, and found some interesting -- as in "meriting further discussion".

Do you see that I'm upset not about whether we disagree on Jackie Chan's life (why would that bother me?) but because you built a nice strawman, lumping my opinion with that of the author as if we were of a single mind, and proceeded to attack that? It's offensive and it's usually an underhanded debate tactic.

Had you answered "I disagree with the author because <reasons>", I wouldn't have had any problem. Instead, you wrote "I'm not sure what point you and the author are trying to make". I'm willing to believe that was a mistake, if you'll simply say "ok, I made a mistake. I was in disagreement with the author."

[chaostheory]

> Did you wonder why I even felt the need to write a summary? Why would I need to, if one could simply just read TFA?

Unless you're a summary bot, most people inject their opinion when summarizing an article. When they disagree, they will dispute points in that summary. When there's no dispute, such as your case, it's implicit that you're agreeing with the article's core ideas that you've summarized. It's as obvious and routine as a rhetorical question.

ok, let's pretend you didn't agree with article. It doesn't take away from the fact that my comments just strongly disagreed with the idea of Jackie "paying too high a price for success", which what you've espoused in your comments. (It is still one of the core messages of the article, in addition to Jackie's subsequent 'apathy'.)