OK - I respect you. I find myself not infrequently disagreeing with your positions, but you more often than not argue them cogently and with objective evidence

OK - I respect you. I find myself not infrequently disagreeing with your positions, but you more often than not argue them cogently and with objective evidence - as above. Actually, I take your point, in its entirety. I can be quite the little shrike when it comes to political discussions, and I often manage to undermine my own point with my approach - although I think you have just managed a pretty great "the worst of" collection! That said, just to provide you one recent little counterexample - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6180222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6180222 - looks, there's me responding to your actually also reductio ad absurdum comment (it's an acronym so he's scared of it), in a balanced fashion! But more often than not I don't feel the need to go "let's agree to disagree", in part because I loathe the phrase, and in part because even if I get and appreciate someone's counterargument, if I don't agree with them I'm unlikely to laud it. But... I think you're right about the last few months. The Snowden affair has bought out the raving pareidoliac in me, and I've slewed from largely discussing engineering and science to, as you say, almost purely politics. https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=HnDzLnVwDzevzYJN1zt8QU https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=HnDzLnVwDzevzYJN1zt8QU - different dude, although I'm still a cranky old man. Either way - thanks for providing an adjustment to my outlook, as it was evidently needed.