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Comment by Dr_tldr | Hacker News Reader

Suggesting that someone's material interests may interfere with their objectivity and cause them to pass on incorrect information uncritically is now a personal attack? This was my initial concern and it's been profoundly confirmed by subsequent dialogue.

If I'm a PHP dev and I say (without any good evidence) that all security problems come from not using PHP, contradicting me is not a personal attack. Or is it, in your world?

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Talking about conflict of interest in general is fine, but making it be about one person is almost never fine. Egregious cases might be different, but to use it as a routine device in an argument is a personal attack and doesn't belong here. This is important because people on the internet are much too quick to jump to such conclusions about people they disagree with. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR... if you want to read about our thinking on this; there's a lot of material there.

> contradicting me is not a personal attack.

You've moved the goalposts though. If I contradicted you by saying you were lying for personal gain, that would be.

Argh, I see your point, and I'm wrong.

Even if I think that misleading-statement A stems from personal-interest/experience/bias B, bringing B into the discussion is a form of personal attack.

That's a great way of putting it that I'm not sure I've heard before. Thanks!

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