Comments like these are easily my least favorite kind of comments on Hacker News. Rather than trying to understand the meaning of what people say, in the articl

Comments like these are easily my least favorite kind of comments on Hacker News. Rather than trying to understand the meaning of what people say, in the articles or in the comments, we get caught up in having arguments about what the definition of some particular term is, or what the right term to communicate some concept is. I think the correct response to seeing a comment that appears "self-contradictory" is to read it again, and see if there is some alternative meaning behind the comment that makes sense--some interpretation other than our first impression. That's what we do with literature, and I don't think we should be lowering our standards for reading comprehension just because we're online.