This is not a personal swipe. Conflating terror watch lists, no fly lists, and red flag laws is so prima facie absurd, there’s no other way to put it. I have described the behavior, not attacked the person.

Calling someone disingenuous is a fancy way of calling them a liar, which is obviously attacking the person. It breaks another guideline, too, in the most literal way possible: "Assume good faith". You have no way of knowing that exabrial's view isn't sincerely held. Since most people's are, that ought to be the null hypothesis.

Disingenuousness isn't a behavior—something somebody says or does—but a state that one has to infer from such behavior. I think what may have happened is that you made that inference, or it made itself, so rapidly as to not to notice that you were making it [1]. I say that because you used this very interesting phrase:

> so prima facie absurd

On a non-siloed [2] internet forum like HN, one commonly runs into views that are more divergent from one's own than is usual in real life or on the siloed internet. Once the distance between some other view and our own exceeds a certain limit, this other view strikes us as more than just wrong. It seems absurd, impossible that anyone could hold it sincerely. This is not a pleasant experience; it feels a bit like being assaulted, and there is an immediate impulse to push back with a force that goes beyond just counterargument. This is natural and we've all felt it, but it's the moment that the HN guidelines are asking all of us to interrupt. For thoughtful conversation, people need to hold steady until that initial reflex passes and there's a chance for a slower, more reflective response [3] to kick in. This is a skill that can be learned, and one can think of HN as an experiment in having a large group of strangers work on learning it together.

Most views that seem absurd to us are not absurd in any universal way, but are legitimately held by people who we just normally don't talk about these things with because they're not in our strongly-connected component [4]. HN is an experiment to see whether we can have thoughtful conversation between components. It's easy to do that within one's component, but hard outside it. The question is whether we can do it enough for a richer overall graph to develop, or whether turbulence will shatter what few edges we do have and cause the whole thing to break down and become disjoint.

1. I don't mean to pick on you personally; this applies to all of us.

2. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

3. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

4. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886068 in this thread for an example.

I personally would have phrased the start of that sentence: "It is disingenuous to lump them in with..."

You're saying the same thing, but with language that focuses on the argument rather than the person. Not only is the former what you really intended to criticize anyway, but it tends to make people respond better, because they don't feel personally attacked. That elevates discussion and is good for everyone.

To call the comparison absurd and to argue why is not personal.

To ascribe motive to what you consider the absurdity of the comparison (“disingenuous”) is, as dang described it, ad hominem.

The fact that I can draw this distinction without indicating any agreement or disagreement with your actual argument helps emphasize this point.

I think you could make a very interesting comment on the distinction between the red flag lists and the others without discussing the poster.

It’s not “prima facie” absurd. It’s a perfectly reasonable comparison you disagree with.

"disingenuous" - Adjective. not candid or sincere ...

Synonyms: dishonest deceitful underhand underhanded duplicitous double-dealing two-faced...

You get the idea.

(https://www.bing.com/search?q=disingenuous )

Being descriptive about behavior is not a personal attack even if it puts someone in a negative light. “You’re a mass murder” can be a purely descriptive statement even if it says bad things about the individual.

"Being descriptive about behavior" can certainly be a personal attack. It just depends. Most of us wouldn't like the worst behavior we ever did to be repeated in every context that we were mentioned.

More importantly, disingenuousness is not a behavior. It isn't something a person says or does. You have to infer it from something they say or do. Internet users are far far too quick to make this leap, and it breaks the site guidelines to do that on HN.

It's entirely possible to disagree with someone without accusing them personally of being dishonest.

This is not controversial.

The circumstances of the discussion are not comparable in any way to interviewing a mass murderer about his recent autobiography.

What about Bernie Madoff‘s autobiography? Calling a specific action of his dishonest is simply factual.

Notice I am not saying Madoff is in general is dishonest, only a specific action.

When you have proof that they've been dishonest, it is sometimes valid to bring that up.

Really disliking an opinion is not proof that they've been dishonest.

In other words you agreed with what I said, thanks.

Anyway, that’s a completely different argument. You assume the reason someone used such language was because they simply disagreed.

I am not saying it’s an accurate assessment, but an argument it’s self is evidence. Calling this absurd based only on the argument is fine if you have enough evidence as with say a modest proposal: http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/30827_modestpr...

Now, if you disagree with that assessment fine, but don’t assume the assessment is always disingenuous. Someone may honestly believe the original statement is so far from a rational argument that it can’t be serious. They could simply be leavening their https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window.

Granted they might have simply been using abusive language because they have poor debating skills. Either way it’s a sign to stop a debate and go onto something more productive.

> In other words you agreed with what I said, thanks.

Let me be clear. This is not a situation where you would bring up dishonesty if you had proof, and there is no proof.

I agree with what you're saying about Bernie Madoff's autobiography itself, but strongly state that it is not analogous to this situation.

So if your 'what about' was a total tangent, I agree with your post. If you were trying to use it for an argument by analogy, I do not agree with that argument.

> You assume the reason someone used such language was because they simply disagreed.

More that they lack empathy! The comparison accused of being 'disingenuous' is not an inherently ridiculous one. All it takes is strongly valuing the second amendment to make that comparison. It's not in the same ballpark as a modest proposal. Anyone who honestly believes that the statement is far from a rational argument is not even trying to understand.

A high percentage of firearms restrictive ex parte orders are overturned when the restricted party has a chance to defend themselves in court.

2-3mm restraining/protection order requests are made per year in the US (often as boilerplate in divorce filings). Many are bogus.

this here is why I don't consider HN a very good place for actual discourse. What you get is a lot of overly polite people afraid of getting on the bad side of dang.

If you don't drop it he'll start to harass you, to goad you into stepping over a line that he can then use as an excuse to up the ante, as it were.

It's best to just move on and realize you can't actually speak like a normal human being on these boards.

I’ve been uncivil on HN from time to time and have never felt harassed by dang. If you’re being followed around, I suspect it’s because of a repeated and consistent pattern of unproductive soap boxing.

I watched it happen to someone else, and it started because we were having a back and forth discussion and dang stepped in to berate the other person. I ended up defending the other person as I didn't consider anything they said to be problematic.

OTOH, I value actual discourse over politeness. But dang decided that person didn't need to be on HN.

But thank you for the assumptions, I appreciate them.

Since you appreciate my assumptions, then I assume what I said applied to who you were interacting with.

It’s very hard on an online forum to know if two people engaging in a debate have a shared intention in their communication. I trust dang to have a holistic view of good and bad behavior on HN.