[jrm4]

I've worked in government and large institutions, and frequently deal with people who think like this.

Let's just say I'm perfectly comfortable with the ad hominem.

Literally 100% of the people I've encountered with this attitude either soften it once they're actually in, or they come in and break things.

Any time someone comes in with a "clean house" attitude," I know I have to get ready because they nearly universally have no clue of what they're talking about.

[intended]

Pardon my French. - You need to be sharing a fuck ton of examples.

People make sense of things in many ways. One of the most fundamental are stories.

Share every example or story you can, or your friends can. This is one of the things conspicuously absent on HN, which is surprising since there should be many people with personal experience dealing with governments or complex systems.

It may seem simple, but they matter.

[jrm4]

Right, I mean the fundamental problem here is that the sort of person who actually does this sort of real work -- much more than I do -- doesn't have time to screw around on here. :)

[intended]

This is a weird realization, but everyone has their bit to play. Sometime that bit is because you happen to be the one at the table or the scene, and others are not.

[geoelectric]

I respect your experience, but your message added literally nothing to the conversation besides “you probably suck because people like you generally do.” It was nothing but a personal attack.

That’s considerably harder to respect, and it put me in the position of feeling like I needed to defend the parent of your comment.

Being more direct, since you seem to value that: consider keeping that sort of thing to yourself unless it has an actual constructive point beyond insulting the person to whom you’re responding. However true it might be per your subjective experience, posting it here only makes you look bad.

If nothing else, choosing a straw man of not understanding Chesterton’s Fence, when that was already directly contradicted by the parent comment, comes off as you being the ignorant one.

You may be comfortable with the ad hom, but maybe you shouldn’t be so comfortable with that.

[jrm4]

Nah. This place is a bit of an echo chamber; as I said above -- it is unfortunate but the people who do (much more than I) this good real work of keeping stupid overdoers like this away don't have time to, e.g. post in places like this.