I don't know anything about this guy. However when you say "[t]hat dude is a hardcore racist" you're making a very strong claim about his character.

Could you point us to some evidence of your claim?

I don't want to debate about whether some random Internet person I first heard about today is racist, but I was curious enough to Google it and found this wikipedia article describing the author of iSteve.com. It may help provide some context to claims made by the parent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

He has his very own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

Which has fuck all to do with the subject at hand, which was the relationship between abortion and crime.

Let's try to keep this civil.

I am. Vaguely threatening to label another commenter a racist for citing an argument by Steve Sailer that had nothing to do with race was far less civil than anything I said.

Yes I agree, his point that there are better sources could have been made without the ad hominem implication. I also think profanity doesn't help civility.

"Fuck all" is just a slightly course way of saying "nothing." It's not an insult directed at a person. pg himself has used the word "fuck" on this board [1], so I assume it's not necessarily proscribed. We're all adults here - at least I proceed on that assumption.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1766387

I myself use profanity from time to time in in-person discussions with people I know, so this may seem a bit hypocritical.

The reason I try not to do it online though (or in person with strangers) is because I have marked that when you use profanity with strangers (especially online) it tends to make the discussion more rancorous because people focus on the profanity instead of the content. It does not seem to matter whether it was meant as an insult, or simply as an "emotional multiplier".

I have certainly realized that I used do it, so may be it's just a bad data point, weighted heavily!

So that's my perspective.

Randomly screaming "racist" is the height of incivility.

Agreed that the ad hominem implication to the commenter was unnecessary.