I don't even know if Hacker News provides a way to see people who reply to you or the chances of this conversation continuing. I'm a little confused. I can see two main claims in the argument:
1) If people did a certain thing, it would fix most problems.
2) Certain people knew of this solution but did not share it.
Which of these is the "very big claim"?
I may also be misinterpreting this:
>clear causal connection
Are you saying that if there was evidence that the listed individuals did know of it, that you would share it?
If one of them that's still alive told everyone about that idea, then you would see it as a reason to use that idea?
As for the "doing this would fix most problems", how much explanation would convince you to fix it? If it was (arbitrary units) 3 pages of text, that all made sense, would you share it? What if it was 15 pages of text, that you found to be consistent and logical after reading through it? Would you share it, and expect other people to share it?
As the original link is no longer visible, I’m not going to go into specific details. I advise against reposting something that got flagged in order to try to continue this thread.
However I will say this as a general piece of advice on communication. You seem to presume:
> that all made sense
The problem is that it didn’t make sense to most of the people on here. Communication is not a place of maths-like absolute truth where convincing yourself is sufficient, rather it’s impedance matching of your mind to other people’s minds where the arbiter of success is the people you’re trying to share an idea with. For example, if you’re not familiar with impedance matching, that previous analogy would be a mistake on my part.
>If you turn it on, you'll see all the stories and comments that have been killed by software, moderators, or user flags.
Responding to you,
>The problem is that it didn’t make sense to most of the people on here.
>For example, if you’re not familiar with impedance matching, that previous analogy would be a mistake on my part.
I can think of vague things about reflection of signals and gold-plated electrical connectors.
That particular argument deliberately gave only the barest minimum of explanation. To quote it,
The reason this works is that some people want to work more than 24 hours per week, so people would not be able to agree on how much a normal person should work.
Most people would not understand how this lack of agreement would be beneficial. In short, it was an argument where people could say that if they shared it, this action was implying that they were smart. An argument that includes many pages of explanation does not imply that someone who shared it was smart, only that they don't give up easily.
It's the style, especially in social media, to share something that implies you understand something complex. Just look at 'memes' or even 'hashtags'.
1) If people did a certain thing, it would fix most problems.
2) Certain people knew of this solution but did not share it.
Which of these is the "very big claim"?
I may also be misinterpreting this:
>clear causal connection
Are you saying that if there was evidence that the listed individuals did know of it, that you would share it?
If one of them that's still alive told everyone about that idea, then you would see it as a reason to use that idea?
As for the "doing this would fix most problems", how much explanation would convince you to fix it? If it was (arbitrary units) 3 pages of text, that all made sense, would you share it? What if it was 15 pages of text, that you found to be consistent and logical after reading through it? Would you share it, and expect other people to share it?