Hacker News Reader

Comment by Helianthus | Hacker News Reader

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!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com