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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

Your entire comment was sarcasm. Sarcasm is not a constructive or compelling way of making an argument.

It is sarcasm. I don't disagree with you on it. In terms of its effectiveness, I don't know. I contrasted a strong comment by singling out a single point about it. I certainly didn't intend it to be an attack and I hope its not seen as such by jusben1369.

In terms of its appropriateness, I guess that's debatable too. If me and jusben1369 were having a chat about this person to person, I'm sure we'd know that its a hearty debate and we could debate the merits of our opinion while still respecting each other and knowing that we have differing viewpoints. Not to say that this is always easy to do.

With only the written word, I guess these types of comments can be seen as verbal jousting. If this is viewed as such by everyone (especially jusben1369) then this was not my intention.

It might be appropriate on reddit, on the street, in a TV debate, in your living room, Hyde Park speakers corner, but it is not on HN. These kinds of comments are discouraged here, it's in the posting guidelines.

Sarcasm is a brilliant tool to use against derailing.

Why? It's just a strawman.

I dunno, I thought it worked pretty well. Prim posturing, however, I find bland.

Sarcasm is a tool for someone that can't actually come up with a counter-argument. It's an appeal to absurdity combined with a strawman. Exaggerate the other side's point until it sounds ridiculous and pretend that's an argument.

Did you detect an argument in the OP to be responded to? The argument that people die in war, perhaps? The Fox News argument? The argument that if they're bombing weddings now, they were probably bombing villages before?

The sarcasm seemed to be based on the fact that you can agree that truth is good and falsehood is bad and not see that as a reason to dismiss the Guardian piece.

Sometimes the ridiculousness of the opposition's argument is more compelling to the majority of people than saying "You've committed fallacy A, B, C, D, & F." Especially when the 'argument' in question actually isn't even an argument.

"Opinion piece is misleading because it isn't a factual non-biased piece of journalism" seems like one of these times.

Ridiculousness is just a subjective opinion though, that's why it makes such a terrible argument. I think it's ridiculousness that McDonald's doesn't have free refills in the UK, but I doubt many UK residents feel the same way.

Good illustration of a time when a logical argument makes no sense but pointing out the ridiculousness shines light on the point!

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