Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by MrLeap 2519 days ago
Sometimes your requests for rigor on a freeform discussion board don't carry the weight of law, sometimes people just respond with what they're thinking instead of doing what they're told.

I stand by my handwaving as relevant, common experience that indicates an erosion of intellectual discourse. It should be patently obvious that I didn't have any sources for what I said specifically. There's no parenthetical or APA formatted links anywhere!

Edit: Okay, I'll go run an experiment and come back with the data. Maybe that's a compromise.

1 comments

>>Sometimes your requests for rigor on a freeform discussion board don't carry the weight of law, sometimes people just respond with what they're thinking instead of doing what they're told.

Well, you made a claim, and people asked you to prove that claim. I think it is quite reasonable to expect you to carry that burden regardless of medium. Otherwise, you should retract the original claim.

Incidentally, what you said about "people just [stating] what they are thinking" and then not backing that up with evidence is a huge problem in today's public discourse. If we don't hold those people accountable, then what we have is not a discourse, but a cacophony of random voices.