The comment I responded to claims there is no evidence, without offering support for itself. My goal here is to offer constructive criticism and invite the comm

The comment I responded to claims there is no evidence, without offering support for itself. My goal here is to offer constructive criticism and invite the commenter to clarify. Here on HN, like most forums, there is a write vs. read imbalance: "write once, read many". If you take a broad view, the implications are clear: it is better when writers put in the effort to be clear, particularly when asked. There is a common conversational pattern: (a) One person makes a comment which is somewhat vague. (b) The next person reads, and despite the ambiguity, responds without asking clarification questions. (c) Repeat. Is it a surprise that such conversations have so many failure modes? Some include: (1) talking past each other; (2) not really learning; (3) not getting to know each other; (4) missing an opportunity to connect and build bridges. I attempted to break the pattern by pointing out the ambiguity and asking clarification questions. This is the norm for sites like Stack Overflow, for good reason. I have a hypothesis: the above dysfunctional pattern is not widely recognized here on HN. It isn't part of people's awareness; we fall into counterproductive conversational styles without recognizing it. Sure, there are styles of debate where people try to score points. That's a zero-sum mentality; a waste of our collective effort. I encourage us to reflect on this question: Given how much time people spend on HN, how many durable personal connections are formed?