So, it might seem that getting so much heat against this one component of your writing is just overreaction. Realize that I'm using the above comment also as a

So, it might seem that getting so much heat against this one component of your writing is just overreaction. Realize that I'm using the above comment also as a reply to the hundreds of people I see all over HN (and elsewhere) who align themself to one extreme or the other. Extremism is ruining the discourse in the public sphere. It happens in politics, but now more in tech too. Everybody seems to have an opinion and their goal is to push that opinion at all costs, including blatantly disregarding truths. How is this possibly a good thing for communication? Increasingly if I want to have any meaningful conversation -- one where I might get something from it (e.g. one where I will understand more sides to an argument, one where I might change my opinions, one where I might improve my philosophies), I have to go hunt down the people who I know are truthful. That almost always takes me offline, or at least out of the public sphere. And it seems like an oversight that all the real discussion of a thing has to happen in private. It feels like so many lost opportunities that could have benefited more people.