I think he misread it. I had to absorb the sentiment of the rest of the post and re-read your first line a few times to properly parse it. For me, "the less yo

I think he misread it. I had to absorb the sentiment of the rest of the post and re-read your first line a few times to properly parse it. For me, "the less you discourage" reads less clearly than "the more you encourage". I realise that the two aren't identical in meaning, but I would have chosen the latter because a compounded minimization ("the less you don't do x") is generally less immediately clear than a maximization ("the more you do x"). This is compounded by your opening of "Another side of this". This can mean "another aspect of the problem you describe which agrees with your point" but it can also mean "another aspect of how sentencing should work that comes to a different conclusion". For many, the latter is more intuitive ("two sides to every story" etc etc). Not passing judgement on how you worded your post, just explaining why someone might misread it.