It's exactly this kind of sarcasm I avoid when replying to someone I disagree with (HN has definitely helped me mature comments-wise). It antagonizes the opposite party, preventing a rational debate.

There are plenty of smart people who disagree with you. Assuming the answer is obvious harms your argument. (I have a personal exception for tea baggers.)

It's a bad habit that I've (mostly successfully) tried to stop myself as well. Growing up, I was struck by two realisations:

1) I had dismissed sarcastically (or worse) many people as idiots who I discovered later were right

2) I have very little capacity to determine whether someone is thinking two or three steps ahead of me, at least from a couple of forum posts

The pain of remembering multiple situations where I was 'that guy' is enough to keep me in check, mostly :)

"(I have a personal exception for tea baggers.)"

I have a personal exception for anyone who thinks it is a good idea to legally enforce programming language choice in a developer agreement.

Your attempt at an aura of wisdom is rather sullied when you tar half of a country with a crude sexual epitaph. (Or are you perhaps one of the apparently large number of people who are unaware of what "tea bagger" actually means?)

I suggest that your "maturity" is still perhaps not to the point where you should be lecturing others quite yet.

Given that "teabaggers" is a moniker that the Tea Party adopted for themselves, it's not "tarring" anyone. Moreover, the Tea Party astroturf group clearly does not command anywhere near half of a country. I don't think that neonfunk in any way sullied himself.

Yes, a mostly right/libertarian protest movement adopted a crude sexual term of their own free will. That makes lots of sense, for "those sorts of people", they're all about the crude sexual innuendos. (Given the likely way you feel about "those sorts of people", that doesn't fit at all.)

Sorry, it turns out you are right, it's more like a quarter: http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainst... Still way too many people to be tarring with a brush while claiming to be rational about disagreement.

The politics of the tea party are not my concern here. My point is that you shouldn't claim to be open to disagreement, except for that thing over there that commands the "support" of tens of millions of people. That's simply called not being open to disagreement. Honestly, that's fine; I doubt there's anybody here who is actually open to every argument you can find 25% of a country or world to agree to. Just don't pretend otherwise. As that link shows, there's no obvious "well, that's just the stupid people" argument available, either.

(I do draw the line at the "supported by millions of people", though of course I can't draw a bright shining line, because there are practical limits; one need not spend a lot of time pondering one guy's theories about the Time Cube. But dismissing entire quarters of a country at a time isn't anywhere near the line.)

If they actually had a coherent policy position to disagree with, that'd be one thing. I will happily be dismissive of a group that has no coherent stance on any issue. That's not being dismissive of disagreement, that's being dismissive of patent madness.

By analogy, should I also not be dismissive of creationism, which fails to postulate a single verifiable claim which has not already been disproved? If I am to be rational, then I must also be able to expect at least some baseline of rationality from those I converse with.

In summary, yes, I am open to disagreement, but I'm not open to be respectful of groups which have nothing with which I can even in principle disagree.

I don't mean to interrupt you guys but you're arguing politics on a technology site. Please stop.

I'm not, actually. Check my messages again. I'm arguing about claiming to be open minded while dismissing large swathes of people.

Apparently, it wasn't a favored group of people by HN standards, because if someone had come on and said the same thing about Democrats and I had been standing up for Democrats, I guarantee I would have been upmodded to the sky. But "not the favored group of people" is exactly who you need to be listening to if you're going to be "open minded". Smacking someone down for merely suggesting that if you are open minded you shouldn't be insulting the people who disagree with you is demonstrating the very sort of poser open mindedness that I'm speaking out against.

And I choose and emphasize the word "poser" quite deliberately. Everybody knows they're supposed to say they are "open minded". Few actually do it, but everybody sure does claim it!

Looking at my comment again, I think you're right. I'm succumbing to the same cheap temptation. Morals for me intertwine much more with politics than with tech -- and I feel strongly enough sometimes that I can't contain myself. How to constructively debate with people who seem as if in another world? That I would even say that surely indicates I haven't figured it out yet; it seems impossible that we could see things so differently -- it's almost painful to think about.

I don't see how this could harm. There has been too much "toughtful analysis" in this religious war. I'm still laughing.

This is not a religious war, at its core. Anyone making it out to be is confusing the issue, but I haven't seen much of that on HN.

The owner of a platform is making a very clear and calculated business decision in order to strengthen their position. This comes at the expense of the thousands of businesses that are attempting to profit from the platform.

Just because Mac vs PC, Android vs iPhone etc from a consumer perspective gets lost in endless, meaningless, irrational internet debate does not mean that you can't have rational, in depth discussion about issues related to developing software for these platforms.

You are right. At its core the dispute is not funny at all. And I'm not against rationality. I'm affected financially by Apples move myself (before anybody asks: no, not flash). I stand by my point that it's a religious war since it's not about technology _at all_. There are fundamentalist on both sides and they don't and won't care about any argument. Endless, meaningless, irrational internet debates don't mean that you can't have a good laugh.

I have to agree with the laughing part, and I might say that calling this a "religious war" is going a bit too far, but I'd say that for emacs vs vim fanatics as well.

I'm frustrated with Apple for their choices, but I expect that developers will work with it, and Apple does have some good points to their aid. Overall, Apple will happily bicker with their developers, but in the end they will always be trying to support them. On the sarcasm part, I think anyone coming across this and missing that won't think too much about it, and no harm done will be remembered.

I thought it was pretty funny.