Hacker News Reader

Comment by nhashem | Hacker News Reader

There's a good point in this blog post -- "it's unfortunate that dealing with certain types of clients puts my civil liberties at risk" -- but it's buried in a bunch of sensationalist drivel.

Lines like "it makes me racist" or "it could even affect your kids" or "Osama Bin Laden won after all" do nothing for intelligent discourse of the issue. The author could have easily made the same points without using such counterproductive emotional appeals.

View on HN

Wait. It could affect his kids. His civil liberties are at risk, and this involves a fear that he, who supports his children, could get in trouble: putting the dependents at risk.

Furthermore, in more than one sense, Bin Laden has won a victory here. He's inflamed Americans against middle easterners, his goal, and he's gotten lucky enough to have government protocols that protract the inflammation.

It isn't fair to call what can be a writer's honest feelings emotional appeals. They may be appeals to emotion, but you're trying to claim that the author was somehow dishonest in your context.

People use emotional appeals because they work. What's worse, those who oppose your ideas are frequently using emotional appeals of their own, creating a sort of communications arms race, where you have employ a little fiery rhetoric or a few logical fallacies just to get anyone to listen to you at all.

Granted, this is the internet, and we can theoretically hold each other to a higher standard of discourse. Just wanted to play a little devil's advocate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com