One one hand, down-voting someone because (you think) they're wrong is counterproductive to a healthy discussion, but batista is doing the equivalent of walking into a technical discussion about, let's say, improving Django performance and saying "look, just use Rails, duh!" - there's nothing insightful about that position (which just seems to mirror normative culture), and the posts have a slight tin-foil-hat tone. There are some statements that are just not worth arguing against and are tangential to the point of distraction. Would you agree that those kinds of comments are worth downvoting (even if you don't agree that batista's comments fall into that category)?
>One one hand, down-voting someone because (you think) they're wrong is counterproductive to a healthy discussion, but batista is doing the equivalent of walking into a technical discussion about, let's say, improving Django performance and saying "look, just use Rails, duh!"
That would be "being off topic".
But what I did was being counter-general-HN-sentiment, which is different.
I replied on the same topic, added counter arguments (which few of my commenters did --instead, they kept it on the personal level, Batista this and Batista that, like here)
>- there's nothing insightful about that position (which just seems to mirror normative culture)
So, normative culture has nothing insightful to offer? Hundreds of millions of people beg to differ.
I'd rather say that it's the prevalent position that can be described as de facto normative, and the prevalent position on the thread happens to be the opposite of mine.
So, could a counter-position be insightful? Or is just nodding in agreement and adding another argument in favor of the prevalent thread position insightful?
>There are some statements that are just not worth arguing against and are tangential to the point of distraction.
And, as always, people fail to mention which. Or argue against them, since, as they claim, it's so "easy".
