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Comment by incision | Hacker News Reader

Not really.

The criticisms could be absolutely correct, but the response doesn't "reason" anything.

The response doesn't actually demonstrate that the parent is incorrect or propose a complete alternative. It simply states that it is wrong without a shred of evidence or exposition, only vague phrases suggesting omissions.

That's not an indictment, just a wordy insult.

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I get the frustration with what appears to be shallow understanding of something turned into a sweeping judgement, but at least it's attempting something constructive. The response is pure aggressive arrogance.

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The response points out several specific considerations that OP failed to take into account. Based on these it is not unreasonable to conclude that OP was making broad judgement about a field he had little knowledge of based on one news report. Making a broad generalization may represent an attempt to be constructive, but when that attempt is based on a number of faulty assumptions, I think that pointing out what those assumptions are and why they are faulty is equally as constructive, if not more so. The implicit assumption in OPs comparison is that the farmer who grew hay is a Bad Farmer and the farmer who grew sorghum is a Good Farmer, and so the Bad Farmer should give up farming or at least apprentice himself to the Good Farmer, so he can learn how to grow sorghum instead of hay. Never mind that the farmer growing hay no doubt took into consideration many, many factors that the OP clearly knows nothing about, and that a crop failure based on an unexpected drought could happen to anyone give that there is currently no way to predict what the weather will be several months from now.

> The response doesn't actually demonstrate that the parent is incorrect or propose a complete alternative.

There is inadequate evidence here to come to any conclusion.

It would be irresponsible of me to claim that I knew all the farmer's capabilities, costs, risks, weather forecasts, crop options, crop rotation requirements, etc. If I did that, I'd be guilty of exactly the same mistake as OP.

Noise is not signal. Noise is the enemy.

Right.

You did a great job of noisily pointing out that the parent is noisy, without generating much if any signal yourself.

You don't have to provide a conclusion, just presenting a theory about how to apply those data points that you keep rattling off would be something constructive, a starting point.

Thing is, that would be hard and expose something you created to criticism. It's much easier to simply sit back and poke holes in someone else's flawed theory while alluding to an ability to construct a better one yet demonstrating absolutely nothing.

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