Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

The subtle difference between the original statement and yours:

Ideas that drive governing decisions should be globally good - meaning there should be more than just @sama espousing them.




You're defending an argument that is blatantly self contradictory within the space of two sentences.

A) "anything he suggests should be categorically rejected because he’s just not in a position to be trusted."

B) "If what he suggests are good ideas then hopefully we can arrive at them in some other way with a clean chain of custody."

These sentences directly follow each other and directly contradict each other. Logically you can't categorically (the categorical is important here. Categorical means something like "treat as a universal law") reject a conclusion because it is espoused by someone you dislike, while at the same time saying you will accept that conclusion if arrived at by some other route.

"I will reject P if X proposes P, but will accept P if Y proposes P." is just poor reasoning.


More clearly said than I managed, yep.

But I suppose it comes down to priorities. If good policy is less important than contradicting P, I suppose that approach makes sense.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: