What I'm telling the GP, and HN users generally, is that when something lands with them as a provocation or bait, we need them to pause instead of rushing to HN threads to vent about it, regardless of what the intention of the writer seems to them to be. It's all too easy for readers to get provoked, especially on the internet, even when no one intended to provoke them. Instead of reacting reflexively and making the thread even worse, we need them to handle that reaction and wait until they're able to be a bit more thoughtful [2].
Of course it's also my job to make that case to the commenter without inadvertently provoking anybody else. Obviously I didn't pull that off this time. I can see how my GP comment looked like a claim about your article, and I should have been more careful to disambiguate my own intent [3]. Sorry for fucking that up!
On another note, I wish you wouldn't be "careful not to participate" on topics that you know a lot about! If you participate by sharing some of what you know, there's a chance for people to learn. Of course the arguments here are pitiful—HN is a large internet forum. I don't like it either. But it's all relative, and you (i.e. all of us) shouldn't underestimate the power of adding solid information to a discussion.
[1] I used to tell people "Please don't X, regardless of how right you are"—but that sounds like I'm saying they're right, which I'm not (I say that to everybody). So now I phrase it as regardless of how right you are or feel you are, which seems to preempt that misunderstanding: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...