Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

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> Because it's common sense that an invasive medical procedure needs to be administered by someone with some semblance of competence in medicine, if you expect the patient to have a shot at not dying.

Common sense does not determine how difficult something is, how difficult it is determines that. Reality, for the most part, flows into the brain from the outside world, not the other way around.

> An emergency doesn't change the hard technical requirement of administering ventilation.

Neither does common sense. The "the hard technical requirement of administering ventilation" is precisely as hard as it is. So, how hard is that? You represent (in poker parlance) that you know the answers to such things, but you seem reluctant to provide evidence.

> Or rather, this should be common sense, but the over-inflated egos on HN don't understand that it takes more than knowing which button does what to operate a ventilator.

This seems a bit ironic, because no one other than you has made that specific claim.

> Being able to hold a paint brush is a very different skill level than painting a portrait.

Now this statement is actually correct, but unfortunately I don't think it has much relevance to the topic at hand.

We've rate-limited your account again because of how awful this flamewar was. Please don't do this kind of damage here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've been using HN mostly for political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that. Please stop doing that.

Hi Dang,

For starters, sincere apologies. You asked me nicely to stop this behavior in the past, I didn't, and you subsequently rate-limited me. After some time, once I had gone through some "personal work" as they say, I asked for this to be removed, you kindly accommodated me while repeating your earlier warning, and I promised to comply.

I think it is more than fair to say that I have clearly violated your trust - although, I would also say, only in a sense. I will describe the details of my thinking on that (the method to my madness so to speak), in a reply to your last email when I can find the time (next few days or so). Not that you care I imagine, just an fyi.

Just as a preview of that email, I won't be arguing for a removal of my rate-limiting. You have your hands full on HN maintaining some reasonable level of decorum (herding cats) in discussions, in a world that seems to have almost gone mad. This is no small task, and I fully appreciate why you must resort to this. No disagreement from me on this particular decision.

Rather, in the email I will attempt to explain the reasoning behind my (deliberately) anomalous conversation style (this entire comment, for example). Whether you will agree with my thinking, or even have the time to give it any serious thought, is of course up to you. As I said, you are a busy guy with a thankless job, and if you decide that you can afford little time to spare on entertaining the out-of-the-box theories of some random crackpot (who also exhibits numerous signs of classic schizophrenia) on the internet - no disagreement from me on the decision. You have been more than fair and patient with me under the circumstances as you understand them (and yes, I am aware of the ~"implied condescension" in that statement - I believe noting such things can be useful to minimize misunderstandings regarding beliefs &/or intent).

I've anticipated the day your hammer would come down on me, as did some of the folks I was in conversation with - it seemed quite inevitable. The only ways that quickly come to my mind for how this eventuality could have been avoided are:

- I personally decide to "knock it off" (rather unlikely, to say the least)

- Multiple people happening to notice a pattern in behavior, and realizing "what it is I'm up to", or "what I am trying to draw people's attention towards". To my mind, "what I am up to" is so blatantly obvious that it boggles my mind that not one single person, in a community of thousands of the planet's best and most logical minds, has noticed the method. One person I can think of noted it somewhat, but I got no sense that they noticed the systematic and intentional pattern, but rather were merely thanking me for "pointing out" when we were straying from evidence-based discussion in his particular sub-thread. One thing I speculate people may be overlooking in this situation, or "the point I am trying to make", is that there is a "pattern in behavior" that can be observed not only on my behalf (this one is easy to see), but also in the behavior of my counterparts, in essentially every conversation I've participated in recently.

Wrapping up, I'll just say: no hard feelings on my end. On the contrary, I am sincerely grateful for your patience with me. You've got a job to do here, you did it with amazing restraint under the conditions, but at the end of the day, sometimes pragmatic justice must be dispensed to maintain overall order.

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