by throw10920 | 2025-08-14 12:40:25+00:00
> Intellectual dishonesty is a form of insult.

That's manipulative rhetoric that isn't even relevant here - not only did you not point out a single instance of their alleged intellectual dishonesty, but it's not even something you can prove in the first place because you have to know what's going on inside the other person's head. And, that's not how anyone would take the your usage of "insult" as you initially wrote it. Dishonest redefinition of your existing words.

> As is, for example, "laughably false". If you think I am wrong, you can explain why.

Because only people who have massive, fragile egos believe that they are never wrong, and so refuting their ideas amounts to attacking them personally. The vast majority of people can understand the difference between those things if you ask them about it.

> But you choose to insult me because you enjoy it.

Factually false. I did not insult you, I pointed out that one of your statements was false. It seems like you're incapable of even understanding the difference between refuting your points and attacking you personally.

> "But let's not pretend" is not manipulative,

Again, false - it's an emotionally-charged, manipulative figure of speech. I usually don't like doing this, but let's ask an LLM what it thinks, because you won't concede points (even if they're obviously true to the vast majority of humans) unless there's a citation for them, and because LLMs carry a large amount of encoded information on human speech (and because dictionaries don't carry information like this):

The phrase “let’s not pretend that…” usually carries a skeptical or confrontational tone. It implies:

- Dismissal of false optimism or denial – signaling the speaker believes a certain idea is unrealistic or insincere.

- Challenge to the listener – pushing them to acknowledge what the speaker sees as an obvious truth.

- Impatience or frustration – suggesting the topic is already settled in the speaker’s mind.

- Assertiveness – positioning the speaker as cutting through pretense or spin. It can sound blunt, accusatory, or even cynical, depending on context and delivery.

<LLM content ends here>

So, it is factually true that that's a manipulative phrase. It's obviously not neutral. Are you not a native English speaker? Because this is something that virtually no English speaker past the high-school level or so would fail to understand (and I'm trying to be charitable by not assuming that you're a native speaker intentionally lying about the emotional connotation of that phrase).

> Parasitism is a fairly well defined term in biology which can be extended to sociology/economy.

...which, again, is not how English speakers use this phrase in a non-biological context (which we're obviously not in). You didn't provide any definition of how it might be extended, so this is another false statement. Again - the vast majority of English speakers know that this is always used as a pejorative term unless it's specifically defined in a biological context (which you did not).

> I lost patience with someone defending rich people

Ah, so there's your agenda: you're just emotionally upset with rich people and trying to attack them through any means possible - whether it's outrage, misinterpretations of common English words and phrases, or logical fallacies.

> and being dismissive without any reason

They made concrete logical points that you were unable to respond to. Again - reduction of logic to "dismissiveness", which is a logical fallacy.

> That's not what the video says.

That's what you said, literally in the same line as the link:

> to quote "1% of of America has 40% of all the nation's wealth"

I'm just repeating your own description of the video back to you.

> It's called an opinion.

Yes, you can have an opinion that's also an arbitrary moral claim. That's not the same as an actual argument for your position.

> Now, entertain me, which part do you have an issue with?

No, I don't think I need to. I don't need to present an opinion to point out all of your logical fallacies, and in general it's useless to even try to present an opinion to someone who makes these kinds of factually false statements, logical fallacies, and emotional attacks, because if they were capable of making arguments without resorting to those things, they would have.

> The rest can be summed up as you defending inequality

Yet again, factually false. Refuting your statements is factually not the same as arguing for some perceived opposite position of whatever you hold.

> and trying to provoke me into insulting you

...what? This is not only wrong, it's just...so completely off the rails that there's no coherent response to it.

It massively undermines your positions that you can't defend them without rhetoric, emotional manipulation, falsehoods, and fallacies. Someone who can actually defend their arguments doesn't have to do those things.

You know that the point of Hacker News is intellectual curiosity, which means rational discussion, and not just emotional outbursts and fallacies, right? The entire point of this platform is to challenge each others' ideas.

If you can't take someone else challenging your ideas without thinking that they're personally attacking you (which, as previously stated, is false), or you immediately assume that someone is arguing the negative (which is also false), then you should take a break, instead of degrading the quality of the site.