I think this thread might need a refresher on how to disagree [1]. Already a few DH0 offenses.
To answer your question, first of all name calling and attacking the people instead of the ideas makes for a nasty and unproductive conversation—basically like youtube comment discussion.
Secondly you're on the site he built. The guidelines clearly say, "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names." If you dislike the guidelines or feel that they are "terribly condescending", then maybe this isn't the ideal site for what you want.
is there anything in my comments that you think is out of line? did I attack anyone ad hominem or use weasel words or other forms of deceptive rhetoric?
judge for yourself. my standards of conversation are perfectly fine though, in my opinion. in fact, nearly ALL of the conversation in this thread has been perfectly fine.
my question for you is: why are you so sensitive about the tone of the conversation? is it that you're unhappy that so many people are deeply offended by Marc Andreesen's comments and it makes you uncomfortable to confront that disagreement?
I do not appreciate your insinuation about my own opinions. It's way off base and uncalled for. Referring to pg by the title used for N. Korea's dictator is also obnoxious.
I care about the civility of discussions because without it, they get both less pleasant and less constructive. This entire thread has been an exhibit of that.
Marc Andreessen is an extraordinarily influential person in tech, and that influence is based on his reputation. If a nobody like me tweeted something dumb, everyone would just ignore me. Nobody ignores Andreessen, though. Maybe it would be better for the world if his Twitter feed and mine were treated similarly, but that's not how the world works, and we have to respond to the world as it is.
Furthermore, part of his continuing influence, 20 years after Netscape, is the continuing impression that he is a clear thinker about issues facing the tech world. (See, elsewhere in this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072721 .) There are two valid discussions at play here. The first is whether Free Basics is a good idea; the second is whether Andreessen is in fact the insightful thinker he appears to be. (The specific subdiscussion about whether rejecting Free Basics is a form of anti-colonialism, incidentally, is only valid if we take it as a given that Andreessen's ideas are worth listening to in the first place.) For the second one, a record of him just not being a good or well-informed thinker is in fact refuting the central point of that argument.
This comment itself is further argument that more people here could stand to read it. You've literally ignored the ideas within and just made an ad hominem argument based on the author instead.
If for example you wanted to discuss The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, the first step would not be to "not use the ideas described within (e.g. genetics and biology research)". Ignoring the topics within and attacking the author for what he later wrote about Atheism or how he behaved in interviews would a mindblowingly terrible way to critique his book about biology.
When discussing or critiquing an essay, the first step is to actually address the ideas inside of it. Attacking the character of its author or other things they may have said about unrelated topics is not a rational substitute.
In this case, geofft's comment is flawed on multiple levels. Aside from making a purely ad hominem argument against the 2008 essay How to Disagree, its specific attack was the author's twitter usage that occurred more than five years later.
If you think that anything I say is invalidated because I put ad hominems at the top of my comments, well, uh... I'm not sure how to explain this to you, but....
(Oh, and if you think this is about Twitter usage alone, I'd like to amend my personal attack to remove the words "on Twitter", and then direct your attention at http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm .)
To answer your question, no I don't think your usage of ad hominems invalidates everything you say. It does detract from the quality of the discussion and the pleasantness of the site, though. It also detracts from your ability to communicate effectively.
I completely agree with geomark's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072755). There are a lot of comments on this article that are little more than name calling, personal attacks or uncharitable assumptions.
And that reputation is based on his position as an early luminary that made direct and real contributions to the progress of the field, and his continued ability to make great picks for VC. Andreessen, like Paul Graham, is one of the few VCs who actually understands the technical underpinnings of what's going on, which seems to seriously enhance a VC's performance.
Andreessen's political beliefs are totally irrelevant. Frankly, it wouldn't matter if he were a neo-Nazi.
But for the goal of improving society by this investment, instead of worsening it? A successful neo-Nazi VC would be terrifying.