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Whistleblowing is an essential theme of this article; by stripping it out of my rhetoric, we go spinning off into a generic tangent. While there are broader th

Whistleblowing is an essential theme of this article; by stripping it out of my rhetoric, we go spinning off into a generic tangent. While there are broader themes at work here as with anywhere, we're more likely to have an edifying discussion if we focus on the particulars: whistleblowing, the VA, mental health, and what Ian Fishback's case reveals about them.

jancsika 5y ago
All I did was bitflip your original statement and then change "individualism" to the equally general term "democracy." In both cases the final statement is way too broad to be anything but a non-sequitur. A government intent on silencing whistleblowers is indeed a type of organization, but it does not follow that the behavior of all or even most organizations are beyond reproach. Similarly, while Donald Rumsfeld played a role in the Bush administration, his role was one small part of our entire representative form of government. To make the argument for either conclusion, there need to be more ideas connecting our final sentences to the ones that preceded them.
- rectang 5y ago
  The "bitflipped" version expanded the theme from whistleblowers to "powerful people" — that's where I think it fell down. In both cases there are broad generalizations being made, but in my version I was careful to circle back to the smaller theme. I try to do this consistently because avoiding "generic tangents" is in the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. In retrospect, rather than relying on context, I could have explicitly qualified the final sentence to clarify that I was speaking of the relative weight of individuals and organizations in US society specifically with regards to the outcome of whistleblowing. I'd like to think there's something I could have done to have earned a more generous reading from you so we don't end up in a rhetorical gotcha game.

jancsika 5y ago

All I did was bitflip your original statement and then change "individualism" to the equally general term "democracy." In both cases the final statement is way too broad to be anything but a non-sequitur. A government intent on silencing whistleblowers is indeed a type of organization, but it does not follow that the behavior of all or even most organizations are beyond reproach. Similarly, while Donald Rumsfeld played a role in the Bush administration, his role was one small part of our entire representative form of government. To make the argument for either conclusion, there need to be more ideas connecting our final sentences to the ones that preceded them.

rectang 5y ago
The "bitflipped" version expanded the theme from whistleblowers to "powerful people" — that's where I think it fell down. In both cases there are broad generalizations being made, but in my version I was careful to circle back to the smaller theme. I try to do this consistently because avoiding "generic tangents" is in the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. In retrospect, rather than relying on context, I could have explicitly qualified the final sentence to clarify that I was speaking of the relative weight of individuals and organizations in US society specifically with regards to the outcome of whistleblowing. I'd like to think there's something I could have done to have earned a more generous reading from you so we don't end up in a rhetorical gotcha game.