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From the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good
by mindcrime 6y ago
From the HN guidelines:
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- Dylan16807 6y agoI'm not sure what you're implying, because both interpretations are valid to downvote.
- mindcrime 6y agoI'm saying that this statement especially when your "question" is an argument hidden behind a question mark, is not consistent with the suggestion to "assume good faith" espoused in the guidelines.
- Dylan16807 6y agoAh, I see. I will note that people make arguments via questions pretty often in normal conversation, so that's not necessarily an accusation of significant bad faith. It could be more of a complaint about rhetorical technique. But let's treat it as an accusation of bad faith. In that case, we have a deeper issue. Assuming that it's a real question asked in good faith is actually the weakest plausible interpretation, because the link makes it a self-disproving theory. Honestly the tongue-in-cheek interpretation is probably the strongest one. There's no way to treat it as a strong argument and as a real question asked in good faith. Also it can be okay to downvote misinformation even when the commenter didn't do anything wrong.