Tell HN: What's your point?" needs to die | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: What's your point?" needs to die

6 pointsAnimalMuppet11 comments

OK, that's a bit of an overstatement. When confronted with a meandering, vague, or poorly worded post, "what's your point?" is a perfectly reasonable reply. (Although just ignoring it is also a perfectly reasonable action. If you do reply, some encouragement toward clarifying might be helpful: "I can't tell what you're trying to say. Could you clarify?"

But I'm getting very tired of "What's your point?" replies used to mean "I disagree with your point, so I'm going to try to pretend that you don't have one", even when the point is perfectly obvious to any objective reader with a halfway-decent command of English. It's either a cheap, dishonest rhetorical trick, or it's a mark of someone who's so committed to one viewpoint that they cannot conceive of another viewpoint even existing, let alone being valid.

That use of "What's your point?" needs to die.

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Mostly I find it's used as a stand-in for "What do you want, precisely?", a question that is both clear and honest. How many times have we been on the receiving end of a long-winded exposition, full of qualifications, and maybes, and ifs, and still end up confused about what the interlocutor wants. At that point, where we might use "What's your point?", it might be better just to simply ask them "What do you want to happen?" and go from there. If nothing is to happen, then there really isn't a point. If something is to happen, well we can talk about it.

> it's a mark of someone who's so committed to one viewpoint that they cannot conceive of another viewpoint even existing, let alone being valid.

I think that really has become much more common. Psychopathic reasoning: "no thoughts other than mine can be correct."

Which is doubly fun when the "thoughts" often strongly resemble the $CurrentThing propaganda of the moment.

"Psychopathic reasoning". I like the term. Is it yours, or is it a recognized term in the psych community?

But it seems to me that most of the time it has the other cause I mentioned - the absolute refusal to admit the existence of the opposing viewpoint, not because the author can't understand it, but because they refuse to admit it exists for propaganda reasons. By refusing to acknowledge that it exists, they hope everyone else will somehow not see it as existing either.

But it's a really lame, ineffectual approach, because almost everyone who reads the comment read the parent comment too, and they can see the parent's point for themselves. When the parent says something perfectly comprehensible, and the reply is "what's your point", it just makes the replier look like either they can't read or they're a shill.

Agreed. "I can't see your point" as rhetoric technique is lame.

i dunno what the "psych community" might be saying; so I'll claim local invention of "psychopathic reasoning" even if others are using it. I'll even define it further, to differentiate from "rhetorical feigned ignorance"... People suffering from such often find it offensive when other ideas are presented to them, they're rendered insecure by the notion their existing knowledge base isn't perfect and lash out in pre-emptive defense.

Pointless example: I recently mentioned to someone that you can flush a toilet by pouring water into the bowl. They've never heard of this, don't want to consider it, and so they begin insisting that everything else I've said in the conversation must be false, too.

Put these things down under "Idjit found on Internet" and go on about your day. Stressing over it isn't productive imo.

> you can flush a toilet by pouring water into the bowl. They've never heard of this, don't want to consider it, and so they begin insisting that everything else I've said in the conversation must be false, too.

You call it "psychopathic reasoning," but everybody has seen this before as "lawyer logic."

This is the very thought process attorneys exploit to convince jurors that a witness is not credible-- they try to rattle you into stating/admitting some inconsistency, which discredit your entire testimony.

"Lawyer logic" is a perfect term for it, for at least two reasons.

No matter how valid the testimony or reasoning, the opposing lawyer is never going to say "good point" or "I'm going to have to think about that". No, the response will always be denial of the validity of what you said. And they will always respond with an argument.

Also, the lawyer isn't talking to you. They're talking to the jury; you're just an unwilling participant in their attempt to persuade someone else.

Those are some interesting extensions I hadn't thought about.

They really can't afford to say things like "good point" and give you credibility when their goal is to discredit you. There's a second layer to this in that society are an arena of showmanship and dominance. Confusion, emotion and submission signal weakness and uncertainty.

So the toilet thing...in my experience, they wouldn't be interested in seeing it for themselves even if both of you were sharing a stall with a 5-gallon jug of water. Calling you an idiot and walking away denies you the opportunity to prove yourself better at using a toilet.

Rings bells with the concept of "face" in social hierarchies.

> It's either a cheap, dishonest rhetorical trick ...

It's mostly that. It appears in sales interactions as a kind of lazy objection handling as well, pretend you don't understand someone's concern and hope you embarrass them into dropping it. In an online discussion you can just ignore it though, there's no point in engaging with someone who's not discussing in good faith.

Yeah. "With those who will not listen, it is useless to have a conversation." And the not-in-good-faith "What's your point?" means that they definitely are not listening.

"X needs to die" needs to die. Other than gathering some comments agreeing, or not, posting rants about things you think "need to die" accomplishes nothing. People have said "What's your point?" ironically and sarcastically since long before they had the internet.

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