[_sdegutis]

> I fear I would have spent _way_ too long on, shall we say, an "appropriate" reply.

When someone's only interest is in being right and explaining how right they are, it's not worth talking to them when you disagree. You can listen of course, but that doesn't need a conversation.

> I appreciate the TIL regarding a community to call out and avoid.

This was 3-4 years ago, I'm sure the community has changed at least a little since then, like any online community does. It also may be completely different today.

> With such people, it seems you have two options - argue against their views and suffer the continuous backlash; or implicitly agree by not arguing, and risk the potential expectation to behave contrary to your personal standards as a result.

Silence is not implied assent. Silence is the right solution to most situations. Having been on the arrogant end of those kinds of "debates" for far too much of my life, I've learned that silence is effective because it does not give the arguer any satisfaction in their prior arguments nor the opportunity to continue showing off their arrogance with further arguments.

> HN's moderation does a reasonably good job

Having been in many, many online communities for the past 20 years, HN is in fact a minor miracle. It is a bit of an echo chamber, but you can't really escape that while still having a "peaceful" community. cake.eat(); cake.have(); throws "Error: cake reference has become invalid"

[exikyut]

[Rearranging the replies a bit:]

> This was 3-4 years ago, I'm sure the community has changed at least a little since then, like any online community does. It also may be completely different today.

Ah. Duly noted, thanks.

> Silence is not implied assent. Silence is the right solution to most situations. Having been on the arrogant end of those kinds of "debates" for far too much of my life, I've learned that silence is effective because it does not give the arguer any satisfaction in their prior arguments nor the opportunity to continue showing off their arrogance with further arguments.

> When someone's only interest is in being right and explaining how right they are, it's not worth talking to them when you disagree. You can listen of course, but that doesn't need a conversation.

Thanks for this, particularly the first sentence. I'm still learning to mentally model behavior so I can understand the thinking behind a given form of expression, and in turn how I should respond appropriately to it. Now to just learn how to actually quieten down in these settings... :)

> Having been in many, many online communities for the past 20 years, HN is in fact a minor miracle. It is a bit of an echo chamber, but you can't really escape that while still having a "peaceful" community.

For better or worse, I'm really glad I was having slow internet a couple years ago and went "alright what's the URL of that really barebones website again, that'll probably be usably fast" :D

The SnR here is probably the reason I like the place so much; reddit is full of _so much fluff_. Hm, maybe the reason people say they come here for the comments is not so much because the comments will have exactly the thing they want to read but because they're not full of distractions...

> cake.eat(); cake.have(); throws "Error: cake reference has become invalid"

Okay, this is one of my new favorite quotes, ha!