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Comment by gliiics | Hacker News Reader

I agree, and in fact I did not compare them. I asked an entirely different question.

You can re-read the first line of my comment if you think I'm putting those two things on the same level, and you will see that I agree with:

> He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.

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What is the point of asking that question if you strictly intended no comparison between the subject of the post you’re replying to and the people you mentioned?

It is like posting “You have interesting thoughts about Kim Dotcom. What is better, paragliding or parasailing?”

He was contrasting them. He was pointing out that the logic of the previous post falls apart when applying it to more noble subjects.

That is a comparison.

You can believe that the two should be held to different account while still critiquing a specific attempt at doing so.

The comparison is between the proposed heuristic of "stopping at some point", not between the people.

It's not. They were attacking an argument made in the original comment. That argument had no reason to only apply to Kim dotcom. It applies to everyone. The poster attacked the logic behind that argument using a few different people as examples.

On the internet, questions like your first comment are statistically likely to be smug gotchas. It'd be nice if it was different, but it's not. So if that's not your intention, it's worthwhile to say so in the first place rather than assume people will understand.

Just to say up front, I think you are the only one that gets it here and am not criticizing you, but the answer in question could also be read that way (of course with the excuse that "the other guy did it first!").

Am I the only one that didn't read either that way? I think a lot of biases are hanging out in this conversation.

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