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Your comment seemed to be positioned as a refutation of the prior comment (it could have been meant as an aside, but without something to indicate that it can b

Your comment seemed to be positioned as a refutation of the prior comment (it could have been meant as an aside, but without something to indicate that it can be hard not to assume it's a counter). Unfortunately, if it was meant as a counter to the prior argument, countering just the example put forth does not actually address the argument put forth, so it it looks like a straw man argument itself (that is, addressing an example, even if it was presented by others, without making any attempt to address the position itself).

klodolph 6y ago
> ... countering just the example put forth does not actually address the argument put forth ... The particular example put forth was a good example, and it's worth responding to. If you can come up with a better example, I'd love to hear it. My argument is that the timing of inputs and outputs to consoles is heavily quantized, which gives you a lot more freedom if you want to create an accurate software implementation--depending on whether your goals are to emulate existing games or serve as a platform for experimentation. For example, the NES has lots of "timing tricks" but they are internal to the console, and at the scales it takes to render a frame of video, you can do a lot of work in software. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > In Comments > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- kbenson 6y ago
  > If you can come up with a better example, I'd love to hear it. I don't have a side in this discussion. I just stepped in to note one reason why you might have gotten the reply you did, since you specifically noted "Don’t know what you’re getting at." I was merely attempting to illustrate why I thought you might have received the response you did. > My argument is that the timing of inputs and outputs to consoles is heavily quantized... That's probably a good argument. That's not what you replied with though. If you had, I don't think you would have gotten the response you did. >> > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. That's as much a point against your comment as against the person that responded to you. Responding to a specific example instead of the position is not responding to the strongest possible interpretation. Then you get responses like you did. Again, I'm not taking a position on this. I only bothered to comment at at because you seemed to indicate you didn't know why you got the response you did. Honestly, I thought you were likely presenting it as a slight tangent, not an argument, since it's fairly common here for people to view any response as someone arguing the other side once they get slightly heated in an argument.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    > I was merely attempting to illustrate why I thought you might have received the response you did. Oh, that's completely unnecessary. When I said, "Don't know what you're getting at," I was hoping that the commenter understood something that I didn't. > That's probably a good argument. That's not what you replied with though. If you had, I don't think you would have gotten the response you did. This is a good illustration of why the guidelines are there in the first place. Comment #1 was the weaker argument, comment #2 was the stronger comment. If you have a discussion with someone, you can get from comment #1 to #2 and beyond. Telling me that if I had written comment #2 first is... not helpful! Because the process of writing comment #2 involved reading replies to comment #1!

klodolph 6y ago

> ... countering just the example put forth does not actually address the argument put forth ... The particular example put forth was a good example, and it's worth responding to. If you can come up with a better example, I'd love to hear it. My argument is that the timing of inputs and outputs to consoles is heavily quantized, which gives you a lot more freedom if you want to create an accurate software implementation--depending on whether your goals are to emulate existing games or serve as a platform for experimentation. For example, the NES has lots of "timing tricks" but they are internal to the console, and at the scales it takes to render a frame of video, you can do a lot of work in software. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > In Comments > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

kbenson 6y ago
> If you can come up with a better example, I'd love to hear it. I don't have a side in this discussion. I just stepped in to note one reason why you might have gotten the reply you did, since you specifically noted "Don’t know what you’re getting at." I was merely attempting to illustrate why I thought you might have received the response you did. > My argument is that the timing of inputs and outputs to consoles is heavily quantized... That's probably a good argument. That's not what you replied with though. If you had, I don't think you would have gotten the response you did. >> > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. That's as much a point against your comment as against the person that responded to you. Responding to a specific example instead of the position is not responding to the strongest possible interpretation. Then you get responses like you did. Again, I'm not taking a position on this. I only bothered to comment at at because you seemed to indicate you didn't know why you got the response you did. Honestly, I thought you were likely presenting it as a slight tangent, not an argument, since it's fairly common here for people to view any response as someone arguing the other side once they get slightly heated in an argument.
- klodolph 6y ago
  > I was merely attempting to illustrate why I thought you might have received the response you did. Oh, that's completely unnecessary. When I said, "Don't know what you're getting at," I was hoping that the commenter understood something that I didn't. > That's probably a good argument. That's not what you replied with though. If you had, I don't think you would have gotten the response you did. This is a good illustration of why the guidelines are there in the first place. Comment #1 was the weaker argument, comment #2 was the stronger comment. If you have a discussion with someone, you can get from comment #1 to #2 and beyond. Telling me that if I had written comment #2 first is... not helpful! Because the process of writing comment #2 involved reading replies to comment #1!