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Comment by cstrahan | Hacker News Reader

Hey, if you like living your life uninformed of the risks of your actions (or maybe it’s that the risks are irrelevant to you, if you’re not getting any?), you do you.

I don’t know how I can help you understand the utility of analogies (you recognized the rhetoric as such, yet simultaneously seem stuck on the fact that analogies don’t establish a literal connection). However, I’m not sure if that’s actually the problem, or if you’re feigning confusion in attempt to offend me. Granted, it would seem an odd choice for you to claim incompetence as part of an attempted insult.

Regardless, I’d be happy to help you in any way I can.

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They aren't claiming incompetence and you're being rude.

Ironically there is some projection here about playing dumb since you're pretending you don't understand why getting and spreading sexually transmitted disease is a poor analogy to "using json".

A good analogy needs more than just a slight parallel - it should have lots of significant parallels (and few significant misses) that help you think about the shape of the topic being discussed.

You can hate json but pretending it is similar to infectious disease in cause, usage, value, solution, or expression makes it really ineffective at bringing people to your side since it's really hard to see any useful similarities which makes it seem like the whole point is just fluffed up "json bad" and "people not me are dumb".

If you're actually happy to help in any way you can then stop being patronizing and either walk back your overly incendiary first shots or take a good faith attempt to clarify after someone pushes back on an intentionally extreme example.

> They aren't claiming incompetence and you're being rude.

No they weren't.

> Ironically there is some projection here about playing dumb since you're pretending you don't understand why getting and spreading sexually transmitted disease is a poor analogy to "using json".

I don't understand why it would be a poor analogy, and I'm not pretending. (And I hope I'm not too dumb for real.) Please explain.

> You can hate json but pretending it is similar to infectious disease in cause, usage, value, solution, or expression makes it really ineffective at bringing people to your side since it's really hard to see any useful similarities

The obvious similarity I saw was "this has risks. Not huge risks, the sky isn't falling, but definitely not zero either, so it's useful to be informed about and explicitly acknowledge and weigh the risks." Am I dumb for seeing this similarity? Or for not finding it rude?

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