Your actions attempt to exert control over other people by making them acquiesce to your ethical demands, lest they want to be considered "bad guys" too. Hence the guy editing his post from his original point of empathy to something lesser.
>You seem to be arguing that expressing an opinion is a bad thing.
My main point that I haven't made clear is that individual bad or unethical actions don't make a person "good" or "bad". That's what I take exception to in your post.
That was my intent by pointing out that you could be considered a "Bad Guy" if we were to reduce people down to a single black/white moral adjective based on one of their actions.
Your recap of your comment is not controversial. It doesn't have any of the language I take exception to.
> Your actions attempt to exert control over other people by making them acquiesce to your ethical demands
I think that you might be reading a bit too much into this. That was absolutely not my intent.
> individual bad or unethical actions don't make a person "good" or "bad".
I agree. I was speaking casually, using slang that I assumed would be understood (that's why I capitalized "Bad Guy" -- to indicate that I'm not literally talking about the person being fubndamentally bad).
The irony is that the reason I speak rather formally in my comments on HN is to try to minimize exactly what happened here -- having my statements misunderstood in a way that I didn't anticipate. English makes misunderstanding all too easy.
That one just slipped past my rhetorical guard.
What I did was express my opinion. You seem to be arguing that expressing an opinion is a bad thing.
I'm not sure what I've said that made you so angry. The opinion I expressed was "unethical behavior is unethical regardless of who does it", which I would not have expected to be controversial.