Considering things from different angles is a useful thing to do, and may well be what Hacker News is about. Considering things from useless angles that have no

Considering things from different angles is a useful thing to do, and may well be what Hacker News is about. Considering things from useless angles that have no bearing on the discussion doesn't contribute to anything and only serves to confuse the issue at hand. What is the benefit of discussing an arbitrary hypothetical that's so radical and unsupportable that even the individual who proposes it immediately backs off of the position instead of putting an ounce of effort into providing evidence? Maybe the whole thing is manufactured by Putin. Maybe the entire chain of events is related to the Kennedy assassination. Maybe Anita Sarkeesian is actually the Lindburgh Baby. Maybe Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend is the son of the gunsmith who made the Magic Bullet. There are millions of hypotheticals out there, and no benefit to discussing all of them. You're a literal conspiracy theorist; do you understand that you're equivalent to somebody posting that picture of the UFO and saying, "I believe!"?