Additional reason is that if I hedged my opinion and tried to predict and answer to all possible critiques, the comment would be way too long and nobody would read it anyway, including the pre-written response to the point they made in reply.
It's the recommendation with no inkling of acknowledgement that other factors exist beyond a naive comparison of oneself with their peers.
The ethos of HN is generally to explore the depths of an issue in favor of making sweeping generalizations. This is one of the key things that separates discussion here from other places that shall not be named.
Knowing that many younger students and folks earlier in their careers participate here, that comment wasn't going to remain unanswered for long.
I don't think it would be terribly difficult to reframe what was written to provoke thought about intellectual honesty with oneself without unnecessarily leading others astray or losing all nuance in the process.
Gosh, talk about sweeping generalisations. I mean, come on, it's not like HN users are some cohort of highly educated philosphers or mathematicians, the majority here spend most of their day battling the newest javascript framework and probably come to HN just to clear their mind of the impossible dreariness of modern-day web programming. Our dang wants this place to be all about intellectual curiosity but most users just want to vent and argue a bit, right?
I learned a phrase in French recently: "se jeter des fleurs aux fesses". Means throwing flowers onto one's bum. It is very evocative, I believe. Let's refrain from doing that. Think of the flowers.
And most people on HN also probably post on reddit anyway so.
Being intellectually honest with yourself is still important, but if that’s what the parent comment was advocating, it did so poorly.