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by busterarm 4532 days ago
I know, but it seemed such a ridiculous request. It's a really weak attack on their argument that it's in your personal interest to cooperate with police. It drew the attention to something that wasn't really up for debate and looked more like a troll than anything. Also, these events aren't something that everyone is aware of, so it's more for the public attention than your own.

Basically I was just asking for you to say what you just did.

1 comments

The request was in my initial question.

If someone makes an argument that asking for legal counsel has a reasonable chance of leading to being killed or imprisoned for life, I would expect them to backup that assertion with some evidence upon request.

Stories about people being killed by police in other contexts don't provide any evidence to support the initial assertion.

Their point wasn't that asking for legal counsel caused folks to be killed, it was that they think cops are hotheads who will kill you if you don't do as they say. They're saying that someone being questioned by police doesn't have any power so best not to piss the cops off lest one be killed or jailed without trial.

They said "for less" in their statement and you acknowledge that it happens, so it doesn't attack their argument to ask for that, it just attacks how they worded it.

"citation needed" is just about the most useless thing to contribute to a discussion and based on the other comment I'm not the only one that feels this way. This isn't reddit.

"citation needed" is just about the most useless thing to contribute to a discussion and based on the other comment I'm not the only one that feels this way. This isn't reddit.

I though the same thing, until I actually needed the citation myself on a topic I cared about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7043314

So at least "citation needed" is legitimate sometimes. (I totally agree that most of the time, it seems merely argumentative, not knowledge-seeking which is what is the good thing its being concealed behind).