I was thinking the same. I get the whole Hacker News "being a contrarian just to be a contrarian" thing, but this specific thread has gone much further than I thought it would.

To be fair, defending 'being a n asshole' is hard to do.

Wait I'm an asshole? For being upset that treating taxi drivers "as a human being" is considered a positive interaction instead of the absolute bare minimum of a respectful member of society?

1. Neither I nor anyone else in this thread has accused you of being an asshole.

2. Have you interacted with many human beings?

We'd all love it if being treated as a human being were the bare minimum, but quite a few people didn't get the memo and fall quite a bit below it. You really do want to filter out those folks in your hiring process. Unfortunately, here on HN, some commenters view any sort of hiring filter, much less one like "don't be an asshole", as a personal attack.

1. Apologies, the posts you replied to were shitting on me so I misinterpreted your comment as agreeing with them. ("you must be fun ~~at parties~~ in taxis" is a common dismissal + insult online)

2. Yeah... You're not wrong.