[MichaelZuo]

HN users can write anything they want, but that doesn’t automatically imply what they wrote is credible or must be assumed to be true for all subsequent replies…

Hence why I wrote ‘side’ in quotation marks, because I didn’t fully agree with the original parent comment’s characterization.

e.g. HN user 1 can say X part of the population is on the ‘side’ of the moon being made of blue cheese and Y part is on the ‘side’ of the moon being made of cheddar cheese. But future replies by HN user 2 and user 3 are free to treat that as all meaningless gibberish.

[Retric]

If you disagree with what someone posted then add a counter argument don’t just pretend it didn’t exist.

It avoids this kind of pointless replies.

[MichaelZuo]

I read this comment a few minutes after it was posted and checked just now and you completely changed this comment to something else… I’m not going to engage with someone who does that without even putting an Edit: tag.

So yes please do not reply…

[Retric]

At first I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but upon reflection I deleted that comment as pointless.

Your behavior is simply unworthy of attempting an intellectual discussion.

[MichaelZuo]

Alright then leave, I’m not going to substantially engage with someone trying to deceive readers.

Edit: Consider yourself lucky I’m not requesting a mod to ban this account ‘Retric’ for deception.

[Retric]

That’s not how things operate here. Note how your complaint isn’t in the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The site encourages people to delete unproductive comments that haven’t been responding to as it improves the reading experiences for 3rd parties. Which is one of the reasons there’s a big old delete button and you can edit posts for a full hour.

Adding “Edit:” is important for clarity when a post has been responded to, without that it’s just clutter.

[MichaelZuo]

I’m not going to substantially engage with you. Period.