I make no such assumption, and I'm not a fan of brutality. I'm not endorsing his position, I'm just rephrasing it as what I believe he meant to say.

I'm also not a fan of intentionally putting the worst possible spin on someone's words. Reading charitably is pretty much always a net positive for any thread.

arkades is right, and there's a site guideline that specifically addresses this: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. It's easily plausible that one of blazespin's concerns is not to humiliate people in front of their peers.

This is a problem with this sort of discussion generally: a lot of the people arguing for others not to treat each other badly, treat others very badly indeed whilst arguing it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I could certainly have phrased my comment more clearly.

My point was not necessarily that that was what they were saying, but rather, that that is a likely outcome of that approach.

I've added an edit to my original comment clarifying this.