This subthread is going down the toilet, which is unfortunate because it had the ingredients for an interesting conversation but then devolved into moralizing.
Something I've learned in 15 years of marriage: it's hard enough to maintain comity and charity in debates with someone who shares almost all of your values and principles, and with whose background you are thoroughly acquainted. A big part of that is that we use slightly different words and framings to convey ideas, but (I think perhaps due to combinatoric explosions) we can hear dramatically different things from each other as the little mismatches stack up. For me, this seems unsurprisingly to be especially the case in abstract discussions.
So I think there's little hope in sustaining a moral debate 3 comments deep on a thread with a stranger on HN, and I think we'd all be a little better off if we stopped pretending we could.
I regret the tone and the resulting loss of an opportunity to persuade bystanders who aren't mostly of the same opinion as me already. In future I shall aim to be more Scott Alexander and less Charles Clymer/Arthur Chu.
Something I've learned in 15 years of marriage: it's hard enough to maintain comity and charity in debates with someone who shares almost all of your values and principles, and with whose background you are thoroughly acquainted. A big part of that is that we use slightly different words and framings to convey ideas, but (I think perhaps due to combinatoric explosions) we can hear dramatically different things from each other as the little mismatches stack up. For me, this seems unsurprisingly to be especially the case in abstract discussions.
So I think there's little hope in sustaining a moral debate 3 comments deep on a thread with a stranger on HN, and I think we'd all be a little better off if we stopped pretending we could.