[seiji]

I don't get what the significance of this post is, and why it is at the top of HN.

It's a thoughtful and timely analysis about the most important company currently in existence which many people routinely fail to understand or simply dismiss out of hand due to preexisting prejudice or misplaced nerd allegiance.

[vacri]

"the most important company currently in existence" ... "misplaced nerd allegiance"

Having the most liquid assets does not mean that the company is the most important company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow, the world would go on without a hiccough. They are glitzy and glamourous and yes, influential, but there are more important companies out there - particularly in transport or essential services.

Edit: Updated for the benefit of eridius. The point does not change at all.

[eridius]

What op said:

> the most important company

What you said:

> the most fundamentally necessary company

You just changed the entire argument right there, and yet blithely went on as if your counterpoint had any relevance to the original assertion. "The most important company" could be taken a lot of ways, and I highly doubt op was intending that to mean "fundamentally necessary".

[vacri]

Actually, speaking of changing meanings, the OP said "the most important company in existence", which is a different claim to the one you're trimming it down to. Next time you're admonishing someone for changing the argument, don't do it yourself.

[eridius]

You're just being pedantic. Adding the words "in existence" to my quotation would have changed nothing at all about my argument. I left it off precisely because it wasn't relevant to the point I was making, which was that you were attacking a very obvious straw man.

[vacri]

Speaking of attacking very obvious straw men, you ignored that I was quoting two parts of the OP. I'm not here to rank companies in a line and award one as the winner, because that's a silly thing to do given the complexity of the human experience.

I was saying that the term "the most important company in existence" is the kind of thing that comes out of the mouth of someone with "misplaced nerd allegiance". That was the point of juxtaposing those two snippets. What makes an important company? It depends on what you're talking about, hence the reference to transport or essential services. And if we're talking 'in existence', then that really widens the field. But it's the 'misplaced allegiance' people that come up with phrases like the OP did.

Basically I was calling the OP a hypocrite, deriding others for the same thing the OP is doing. And now you've responded twice, committing the same sins as you accuse me of... changing arguments, straw men, and pedantry.

[eridius]

If you wanted to argue against what the op was saying, then you had no reason whatsoever for putting brand new words in op's mouth and attacking those words. But that's what you did, which is why your entire argument is a meaningless straw man attack.

And now you're trying to tell me I'm doing the same thing to you? That's preposterous. Stop trying to be evasive and just admit you committed a rather obvious and stupid logical fallacy and move on with your life.

(don't expect any more responses from me on this thread, since you only seem interested in being defensive)