[davidw]

> I thought, "We run a business," was a blanket excuse for intellectual dishonesty in general.

So, uh, what are you doing on a site dedicated in no small part to startups? Are you calling all of us who run businesses intellectually dishonest?

[cbs]

There is nothing mutually exclusive about running a business and being honest. What exactly are you trying to say about HN and/or startups that would make him out of place here?

[davidw]

> There is nothing mutually exclusive about running a business and being honest.

That's why his comment about "running a business" being a "blanket excuse for intellectual dishonesty in general." seemed offensive to me, as it paints a lot of people with a very broad brush. It seems like the kind of one-liner point scoring one finds on, ahem, other unnamed sites.

[cbs]

If it seems offensive, you're reading the directionality wrong. The closest thing to use as an example, but doesn't exactly fit this situation, is the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Like it or not, we live in a society where "because money" is a reasonable justification for a huge number of otherwise disgusting actions. Acknowledging that not does not imply that if your goal is to make money, you have to do such things.