GP comment was questioning, challenging and critical, but objective, precisely qualified and not mean-spirited. The hope you describe is for comments that are f

GP comment was questioning, challenging and critical, but objective, precisely qualified and not mean-spirited. The hope you describe is for comments that are feel-good rather than think-good. Your comment is angry, attacking and personal (and unlike GP's is meta, and content-free wrt the article). I find GP's comment personally relevant, because I would like to make a impact for good in the world... but what I'm working on doesn't directly relate to that. One resolution is faith that better technology eventually makes everything better. This seems historically true. But there's something more... At first, Darwinism seems purely competitive, a fight for survival. But symbiosis exists, and there's even some evidence for integration of cooperative organisms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion#Origin). Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation investigates the obvious cause, that cooperation makes evolutionary sense when it benefits both parties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation). What has this to do with a technologist indirectly addressing poverty? It seems to me that any technology that assists cooperation, or enhances its benefits, enhances the value of every human life. One natural outcome of providing more value is to receive more value in exchange, and thus reduce poverty. Another benefit is that it doesn't make sense to destroy your neighbour if he's benefiting you (this self-interest argument mightn't appeal to ethicists, but ethicists aren't the ones starting wars). But there's a more direct route for Stanford. Providing options is another way to reduce poverty. He personally benefited from public libraries. Considering poverty in the third world, building public libraries might not be plausible. But what about small computers, perhaps with flat screens? Perhaps with rechargeable batteries and solar cells (so electricity infrastructure isn't necessary)? Might not this indirectly do more to alleviate poverty than any direct means available to him (or, indeed, to anyone)? I think you're sincere in wanting a less nasty HN, but your comment isn't helping. It's part of the problem - "more thoughtless and petty" as you acknowledge. Partly it's because you interpreted GP's comment as mean-spirited, when it can be interpreted as objective, because it undermined your good feelings. In my opinion, the way to make things better is to find and act on what's better - in objective truth, not just personal feeling. (For this to be viable, you have to believe that objective truth will turn out to be good; i.e. that the universe is somehow "good". The symbiosis argument above convinces me.) If you think my approach works better (in the preceding paragraphs), please copy it. If not, please show us a better way.