[coldtea]

>i would flag this comment as egregious, but i don't have enough karma.

For censorship? Because as we all know society gets better when questions are stomped.

The parent is making a legitimate question -- and does not seem to be "trolling".

Aren't hackers supposed to be open minded people that believe that nothing should be taboo and everything should be open to rational examination?

That doesn't mean that everything should be advocated etc -- but this is an open discussion.

A similar attitude (flagging a comment as "eggregious") is not that far from the spanish inquisition.

[charles2013]

>>i would flag this comment as egregious, but i don't have enough karma.

>For censorship? Because as we all know society gets better when questions are stomped.

the comment in question (asking for the difference between "vanilla assault" and rape) was in shockingly bad taste.

more than a few people i know and care about have been raped, and since i don't have enough karma to flag submissions i took the bait and complained in a comment.

i know the rules and accept the downvotes, but a logical fallacy wrapped in thinly veiled sarcasm hardly seems an appropriate response.

i would expect better from someone with 14500+ karma.

[gizmo686]

>the comment in question (asking for the difference between "vanilla assault" and rape) was in shockingly bad taste.

Why? While we are discussing why asking the question is in bad taste, can we also address the question: what makes sexual assault substantially different from regular assualt.

[charles2013]

>>the comment in question (asking for the difference between "vanilla assault" and rape) was in shockingly bad taste.

> Why? While we are discussing why asking the question is in bad taste, can we also address the question: what makes sexual assault substantially different from regular assualt.

if you don't understand why it's bad taste to tacitly equate sexual assault and vanilla assault in the context of an article about a 14-year-old rape victim, perhaps you simply haven't given it enough thought.

and if you truly don't understand what makes sexual assault substantially different from regular assault, but want to find out, there are much better sources of information than hn.

you could always ask a close personal friend, or if you don't have one of those, just use a search engine.

[coldtea]

>if you don't understand why it's bad taste to tacitly equate sexual assault and vanilla assault in the context of an article about a 14-year-old rape victim, perhaps you simply haven't given it enough thought.

Notice how this is not an argument, but "if you have to ask, you would never know" response that closes the door on objective discussion.

There's also an appeal to sentimentality "if you don't understand why it's bad taste to tacitly equate sexual assault and vanilla assault in the context of an article about a 14-year-old rape victim".

He doesn't ask you to compare it to something trivial, like stepping on a lego or having a flu. The real comparison from what he wrote, would be to compare it to a "14-year-old assault victim" -- which is also troubling and problematic.

[coldtea]

>the comment in question (asking for the difference between "vanilla assault" and rape) was in shockingly bad taste.

Citation needed. Is rape to be singled out and put to some mythical taboo status and not questioned or compared to other forms of assault?

[mreiland]

No, "hackers" are people which means they're no better, or worse, than others.

Why are you trying to make the subculture out to be something it isn't?

[coldtea]

>No, "hackers" are people which means they're no better, or worse, than others.

Obviously everyone is people (fallible, etc). That doesn't mean each subculture doesn't have standards and ideology that its members ascribe too (even when those are not 100% explicit in the "10 commandments" sense).

>Why are you trying to make the subculture out to be something it isn't?

Because the very notion of a "subculture" means members share some specific attributes.

If they didn't, then a site like "Hacker News" wouldn't even make sense to follow, in the sense that it would be exactly the same as any other mass culture social voting site, e.g. Digg, Reddit's front page, etc. You might argue that the only shared attributes are an interest in hacking and computers (and startups). Then again, others would argue.

[mreiland]

well today you learned that isn't an attribute of the hacker culture.

[charles2013]

editing/updating your comment without noting the changes can make it difficult to follow the conversation.