Which doesn't provide the evidence the parent was looking for. Just because you take a variety of classes doesn't mean that they have a benefit. If they do, please give us the evidence.
> virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education
How could I possibly provide evidence of an intangible benefit? All I can do is show that they provide the education that's supposed to have this quality.
Otherwise, all you’re claiming afaict is that the posters should argue with themselves — find the counter-evidence to their own claims, which is likely sufficiently convincing that they would not have had any reason to speak in the first place.
That is, this idea of “not anyone’s job to search for (counter)evidence” is antagonistic to any form of discussion where parties disagree. If you want to make the opposing claim successfully, its quite useful to have evidence to support it (it’s not their job to find it for you... its not anyone’s job to do anything in an HN thread.)
One one or two occasions, when I was about to post something, I looked for evidence, and realised I was mistaken, and didn't mislead others.
But in this case, evidence was requested for a particular idea, and the response was completely tangential to the request. And it wasn’t really an issue of citation needed, I think, so much as just anything to support the idea that colleges actually offer non-job value (and that they offer courses across multiple fields is insufficient, which is true, its a thing they’re doing but says nothing about effectiveness).
Ofc, the difference is in the intent. And the problem I have with “its not my job” is the intent; it’s a belief/defense whose primary purpose/outcome is to kill communication, and I very much like communicating