Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by red-iron-pine 732 days ago
"Anything I don't agree with is a strawman"
1 comments

Not at all, but I would absolutely argue pretty much all instances of "List of single-sentence heavily polarised and editorialised talking points" are. You're not looking to engage in a good-faith discussion by throwing out a pile of points and hoping nobody puts in the effort to actually engage with every single one - look at the sibling thread to my comment and the disproportionate amount of effort it takes to respond without just being pulled aside to debate the minutiae of specific events.

Of course, that is all assuming they actually have some level of familiarity with what the topic being discussed and the talking points they are using. They could simply be uninformed, but trying to engage in rhetoric before learning more at that point doesn't seem like it would be in good faith either way.

(That is not to say that one should never respond to an argument that takes way more rigor than throwing it out there took, but it's definitely not "should always" either :p.)