And yet, he is correct. Naming a particularly egregious blindspot of the groupthink of hacker news will only get you downvoted and ignored (and flagged, and hellbanned...).
Despite potentially being correct, I think the downvotes are merited, and not coming from pointing out an instance of groupthink, but coming because the comment was not civil. (This was my personal reason for downvoting him.) The comment is worded to attack and deprecate those people it targets — this was not necessary in order to make the point about groupthink.
Maybe you can help me with this. I am assured in normal life that I am "not normal" w.r.t. normal human convention (although I am told I'm a pretty nice guy)
Can you tell me what, exactly, was uncivil? I ask you, because you seem civil, and I'm hoping you won't criticize me for simply not seeing it. (fwiw - I'm a native speaker of the English language in the North American tradition, but I do get out of practice from time-to-time in my travels)
I knew it wasn't a very popular opinion, so I didn't want to invest a lot of time trying to make it sound nicer. I'm terribly uncivil by nature, unfortunately.
I'm really sorry, but I appreciate that at least one person was able to take something from it and share his empathy with me! (Thanks, reddytowns!)