Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by suture 1475 days ago
This is not an academic forum and so the standards are a bit relaxed. Typically people post their beliefs along with a snippet of the reasons for said beliefs. Then others who disagree sometime respond by presenting contrary evidence. No one has a burden as such. We are not academicians beholden to standards of thoroughness.

My suggestion is that had you responded by stating that there are contrary studies and that those studies are better then your post would have been a lot clearer. At least it would have put the idea that the evidence presented was suspect into my mind. As it is it came across as unclear who has the stronger position objectively speaking.

1 comments

Yes, of course, you're right. Unfortunately, Brandolini's Law often applies quite strongly. I simply do not wish to always subject myself to that and only wish to alert readers of the comment thread to think critically about the parent comment's contents. That is - the target of my comment is not the parent comment's author, but the reader of the parent comment. Generally, this is sufficient to meet my aims.
I understand that. I’m suggesting changing the wording. Your original post would have been a lot more helpful to people like me had it been of the form:

People should know that there are lot of studies and evidence to the contrary that is easy to find. The evidence presented above is flawed and you can look this up easily on your own.

My comment, as is, captures the tone I intended. Therefore, I will not edit it. Thank you for your kind suggestions. I will take them into account in future interactions where they are relevant.