I don't believe I can.

I'm honestly flabbergasted that I read "Burn the mechanized mills!" on Hacker News.

I'm not advocating groupthink, and there are certainly ways we could have built a better present, but the blind ungratefulness to say "Mass manufacture and electricity were mistakes" deserves some outrage.

anigbrowl is right. Please don't post in the outrage style to HN. Your comments would be more persuasive for being less flamey. This is a case of medium-is-the-message.

Also, please don't use quotes to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not. That's also a flamewar trope and a vector in the unwanted direction.

Apologies. I'd be in favor of removing the first line, and decapitalizing THAT. I feel everything else stands as content.

I'll try to limit double quotes to avoid confusion, though I was under the impression quote consensus was > demarked.

I'd certainly characterize my reaction as incredulous and shocked. I re-read the parent 3 times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding their point.

I realize we're not making progress in some areas we should be as a species, but I had no idea people had gotten this cynical.

I think you misinterpreted sgc's comment to mean that everything about the industrial revolution was bad. More likely it meant that some things, not all, were bad. Of course sgc didn't specify what things—which made that comment pretty unsubstantive. Still, that's no reason to go on a flamewar tangent.

The site guidelines try to address this like so: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

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