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Comment by paul_f | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the downvotes. This is a legitimate distinction.

Discussions generally don't sway people. When someone has a fixed worldview and you present facts that undermine that worldview, he perceives you as a threat (like he would a large bear) and reacts to those facts with the same fight-or-flight response that threats generally elicit.

Online, this fight-or-flight response manifests as people downvoting you, flagging you, doxxing you, and so on for presenting hard-to-refuse facts and arguments contrary to any entrenched but incorrect narrative.

The problem is exacerbated on HN by high-karma accounts having the ability to flag discussions to death without engagement and essentially end them unilaterally.

It’s not about disagreeing with them. I generally downvote pedantic exceptions because you should respond to an argument in the most generous terms. largely proving your identity did apply to the examples given but doesn’t address the thrust of their argument.

Showing an ID to drink or get a senior discount isn’t about identifying you specifically just something about you and that is completely accepted by the general public. Show your military ID to get a discount is another.

The issue I take with such pedantic exceptions is they derail the thread.

Edit: This is a far more direct response which I upvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28501323

There argument was a one line "we regularly [do this"].

My two line "no, those things are different to this thing" is responding both directly to the thrust of the argument and with an appropriate amount of effort.

Except the first line actually acknowledges your argument doesn’t apply in every case thus making it a pedantic argument.

Saying X is usually Y, doesn’t actually mean showing ID to demonstrate an unrelated fact is somehow unusual.

I don't actually follow what you said here, but to be clear pedantry is a focus on arbitrary precision or something close to.

My argument isn't that, there is no level of imprecision where I'd be satisfied. I went straight to the substance which is the examples listed are acceptable in ways that a vaccine mandate is not.

It is perfectly reasonable to expect proof that someone is who they say they are when picking up a parcel or borrowing a book in their own name. It isn't like it is information that they aren't implicitly volunteering as part of the transaction. Ditto ID for a hotel stay to an extent, the normal case for a hotel stay is you have already identified yourself to the hotel.

There is a fair comparison when it comes to drivers licenses (I echo Mr Mouse's argument there). But 25% relevant examples is not a good batting average. And it isn't pedantry to point that out, it is routine argumentativeness. The complaint against vaccine passports is people are being forced to reveal information about themselves that they may not want to. I don't want to have to start registering information about myself with the government to have a pub lunch; the risk for those systems to go bad is off the charts high.

That's not true: people in the peanut gallery can be swayed. sub-midwits like myself only form opinions based on what smarter people have convinced us about areas we're not experts on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com