While I somewhat agree with the sentiment of your comment, one of the reasons I believe Hacker News is so civilized is because the arguments are always very rat

While I somewhat agree with the sentiment of your comment, one of the reasons I believe Hacker News is so civilized is because the arguments are always very rationalized. That is, it is easy to point out faulting logic. Following up with your example: If someone simply states [y] then the context of where [y] came from is lost and the discussion turns into a person saying [x] and a person saying [y], which is a step too close to becoming Twitter. While I agree it can sometimes be a bit tiresome to read and write, I say this significantly improves the overall quality of the conversations.