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Comment by gr_norm | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I'm not in the business of responding thoughtfully to low effort questions slung rapid-fire over the fence, which moreover take nothing I've said into account. Case in point, this comment; it seems innocuous but would take an extreme amount of effort on my part to reply to what is, I suspect, something you've made up your mind about.

I think it's clear from your other comments cited here that you're exactly who I'm talking about: a gullible soldier of the culture war who has perfected the art of wasting endless quantities of time arguing online.

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> Sorry, I'm not in the business of responding thoughtfully to low effort questions slung rapid-fire over the fence

How is it “low-effort” to ask you to address a point raised in the article itself? The article talks about “decades” of complaints that the NSF isn’t focusing enough on applications. You’re the one who dismisses that in a low-effort way by saying “many people have many complaints.” I’m simply asking you to engage with the points in the article itself.

The fact that there’s been “decades” of complaints suggests it’s not some modern “culture war” issue. You’re the one who seems to be trying to shoehorn it into the culture war, instead of addressing the actual issue: the proper balance between fundamental research and applications.

Many words expended here to avoid asking an answerable question. Which complaints? Must I recapitulate the last 70 years of history of politics around science in the United States? You have fixated on a singular line from the article rather than reply substantively to anything I've said (which indeed responds to such complaints inasmuch as this is possible without hearing a specific one), because you have little interest in reaching a shared understanding of its subject material (you do not remotely care about any such historical complaints, or I would've heard one by now) relative to your desire to advance the culture war, as laid bare by your other comments. This sort of low-trust behavior, exacerbated by pretending otherwise, is typical of your unfortunate mindset.

The tactics of discourse you employ are tired and show no signs of improving. You've unfortunately lost the courtesy of a further response from me.

That's the game these guys play. It's rapid fire, low-substance Just Asking Questions again and again and again. There's never any actual thought behind it because there's no real desire to engage in the debate as a whole.

They don't have backing evidence and don't need it because they aren't starting from a position rooted in facts or logic, they start from a position rooted in feelings like "gender being a social construct makes me feel weird" and work backwards to whatever position they stake out.

The best move is always to aggressively call them out for what they are - gullible rubes at best and sociopathic liars at worst - and to not even bother engaging with the muck they sling.

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