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Comment by joebadmo | Hacker News Reader

1. The article is about an algorithmic way to try to shield people from the horrifying notion of seeing flesh-colored pixels.

My story is about another perverse way in which puritannical culture considers sex taboo, but violence perfectly acceptable.

2. I don't know how to respond to being called a liar outright. It doesn't seem likely that I'd be able to convince you that this happened.

3. I've only been to reddit two or three times and didn't see the value. So I wouldn't be a good judge of that. I take that that's supposed to be derogatory in some way.

4. I'm not sure how you're trying to add to the discussion. I was making a comment on the societal and moral underpinnings and ramifications of the kind of technology described in TFA. If I may make a suggestion: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

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> My story is about another perverse way in which puritannical culture considers sex taboo, but violence perfectly acceptable.

It's not really that complicated. Sex is private, violence is public.

No one likes violence but they don't try to shield children because it's a public matter and kids can know about it. People like sex, but it's a private matter and kids shouldn't be watching it.

You are trying to make it about approves vs disapproves, but that's not what it is.

That's also why the same parent would not be OK with a scene of someone on the toilet, even if they arranged their clothes to be fully covered.

Wow, that's actually a really interesting analysis. Complicated it may not be, but it is, to me, novel. Thanks!

I'm not sure it obviously follows, though, that because it's private it's inappropriate for children, but not inappropriate for adults. A counterexample would be any private emotional moment between two people. Please enlighten me further.

Orthogonally, I think it is fairly self-evident that extreme graphic violence isn't appropriate for children, though not because it's private. At the very least, I don't understand why it's ok to be so cavalier about it.

> but not inappropriate for adults

Plenty of people think it is for adults as well. But adults can choose to override their feeling on the matter (and that's what makes it so exciting). That's why clinical or medical depictions of nudity don't have the same feel.

> any private emotional moment between two people

An emotional moment is not inherently private though. Many moments are, but many are not, so it's diluted.

> it is fairly self-evident that extreme graphic violence isn't appropriate for children, though not because it's private.

Yup, and since it's a different type of issue, parents will permit a certain degree of violence - it depends of the type of violence. But for sexual material they will veto anything, and not try to determine how sexual it is.

I understand the correlation between the story and your comment, but your comment isn't anymore relevant than if I posted a comment praising jQuery and how much better it is than other JavaScript libraries. The question of whether or not you believe sexual nudity being taboo is irrelevant here, this post has nothing to do with the morality of sex vs violence.

As for calling you liar, I apologize. Next time I will just use the flag button. Thanks.

Relevancy is relative and subjective. There's also not anything in the guidelines about relevancy in comments in the HN guidelines. Please note, too, that meta-comments are never strictly relevant, and that's what your first comment here is.

There are currently at least 11 people who thought it was relevant enough to upvote. I agree that flagging was probably the most appropriate recourse for you.

I accept your apology.

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