[dang]

Come on you guys, when the discussion gets to this point, it's past time to stop. We want curious conversation here. Among other things, that requires a certain degree of relatability with the other person. If you don't have that, please just let go. Hammering on other people's words doesn't help.

There's a model of debate in which harshly countering other people's mistaken arguments is held to be valuable, because errors eventually get hammered out that way and the truth emerges as a sort of well-tempered steel. That model does not work in internet forums—for many reasons—the most important of which is the container can't withstand it. That is, the hammering destroys the forum itself long before the process completes (assuming it ever would). An entirely different kind of arguing is necessary to keep this place from destroying itself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html