Ok, but the cost of tedious downward spirals greatly exceeds the benefit. Much better is not to feed them. We all need to just accept wrongness on the internet as a cost of doing internet on the internet. Fighting it amplifies it.
I think that's the fundamental disagreement. I think fighting it through dressing down is most effective. Conspiracy theories thrive on politeness, and masking harmful leaps of faith as innocent conversation. Mockery quickly points out the inherent bad faith of the premise. I don't think open platforms have to cater to such extremism.
HN is one kind of site (the kind where that's not ok) and not the other. I get that not everyone agrees with the guidelines or would design a community to be this way, and that's fine—there's room for many different kinds of community, including many that haven't been created yet. We're going to enforce the rules of this one, though.
That's a valid perspective and I find this community to be a place of interesting content and discussion the majority of the time. Obviously my comment was flagged, and looking at the original parent I replies reveals a vast array of discussion circling around dangerous speculation and paranoia, so whatever goals I aimed to accomplish failed.
Oh well, it's ultimately just the internet, I have to believe people are good enough not to become radicalized. Worrying about these issues is more likely to get me banned then to generate anything productive.
