These threads remind me of reading newspaper articles that discuss how uncivil our current political discourse is compared to the far more civil past. And you can read essentially the same article from a 1880's/1950's/2012 newspaper archive.
> Everyone has opinions about consumer electronics. Everyone's entitled to them, even when they're wrong. I owned and liked a Windows Tablet PC at one time!
This was also telling, as it was itself a pretty clear insult, going so far as to call an opinion wrong, buried in a plea for people to be more careful with their arguments.
(In fact, I flagged this "Tell HN"--not that I imagine it will matter--as I believe that it is actually worse than having the threads of people arguing with each other.)
I'm very ok with people telling me I'm wrong. Sometimes they're right about that, sometimes they're, how shall we put this, "mistaken" about my being wrong. But that doesn't mean they're insulting me. I could only be insulted if I have tied the idea of infallibility to my self-worth, if being found to be wrong is some kind of social shame.
If I had that idea, I'd vigorously dispute anyone arguing with me, like I'm doing right now :-)
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Ok, I've had my little joke. In all seriousness, I did own a Tablet PC, and I liked it, even if many people told me that I had overpaid for an underpowered laptop with a flakey pen interface and a lack of decent software. Was I wrong? maybe, maybe not. But I certainly am not intending to insult anyone by suggesting that their worth is somehow connected to whether I agree or disagree with them on the subject of Tablet PCs.
However, that's not the kind of statement you made. To demonstrate this with a concrete contextualized example, instead of writing this response, I could have instead said the following: "well, people are entitled to their misunderstandings about discourse; I mean, I actually used to have the same wrong opinion you currently do, so none of us are beyond reproach".
Of course, that statement would add nothing: by your own criteria (We need to ask ourselves, "What understanding would my comment add?") I would have made a comment whose sole purpose is to throw in a bit of rhetoric for which the only realistic goals would be 1) to play towards audience members who agree with me and 2) to fluster you by belittling your opinion in a highly flippant manner.
In the case of your comment, it was even weirder, hence the response to the person pointing out "irony": you seriously took an article you posted about how people were making pointless comments over something you claimed wasn't important and used that as an opportunity to make an equally pointless comment about the exact same topic.
This, in one fell swoop, both demonstrated that you actually felt someone can be "wrong" on this specific topic (which is exactly what the people in these flame wars believe and is why they bother to spend so much time arguing with each other instead of just saying "that is your opinion, I have mine; opinions are awesome!"), while at the same time making it clear that you felt that a specific one of the two parties you were arguing about was on that "wrong" side.
I will then go so far as to say: how much more "ironic" can one man get?
(Note: I am pretty certain I have not participated in a single iPad Mini or Surface discussion; looking through my history, the last comment I made on a similar overall topic was in regards to the iPhone 5's larger screen almost a month ago, and I was commenting on a specific sub-argument, taking no overall stance on the high-level war people like to wage. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4609243 I say this to disclaim quickly that I am not "in the middle of one of these arguments" and thereby emotionally flustered at being called out by your overall article topic.)
In that spirit, I will say, "Nice move!"
Surely an opinion, a wholly subjective point of view, cannot by it's very definition be wrong. Being insulted (or not) is also a fundamentally subjective experience. Anything can be insulting or non-insulting to a given person. In my opinion, it is hurtful to tell someone that their being offended is in some way wrong since it disregards how a person legitimately feels. I'm not making any statement on how a situation like that should be handled, merely that an offended person is indeed offended and that acknowledging the fact is the best way to move forward.