I hope.
Is this a matter of the problems pointed out are "correct" technically, but they may or may not be the "right" thing to spend time on?
"Is this a matter of the problems pointed out are "correct" technically, but they may or may not be the "right" thing to spend time on?"
I'm pretty sure you've already got it, this sounds like it. I would only add that a conscientious person checks whether their comment is adding to the conversation (not anxiously; just subconsciously, as a habit). The parent to your comment is saying that if you're 'correct' you're in the clear that way.
I think the thing about being "right" is that if you're right (i.e. your addressee is wrong) you have enough social capital to take that tone with somebody. If you're wrong and you take up an 'I'm right' tone, you come off like you don't care about thinking things through before you make an investment of your time.
He's not "right", though, because adopting any of these recommendations would cost anywhere from tens- to thousands- of dollars, and would be unlikely in the aggregate, even if all of them were adopted, to make Patrick one additional dollar.
You gave a numbered list of good suggestions and wrote the kernel of a detailed, thoughtful comment, but sabotaged it with poor framing and assumptions. I don't care or anything, but for your benefit: this is a nerdly inclination that will serve you very, very poorly in your professional career. HN often has the opposite problem from your comment (a bias towards being "right" even when we're not "correct", such as in civil liberties stories); here, you're "correct" but not "right", since adoption of all your recommendations is unlikely to change the bottom line for Patrick at all.
One consultant to (I presume) another: my suggestion for next time: either:
(a) (expensively) do exhaustive research so you can frame your high-level assessment and recommendations in the context of someone's business (ie, expend the effort to make sure you're both correct and right), or
(b) (much simpler) develop a habit of writing your comments in a neutral, helpful tone, so that you can be correct without having to be right at all.
By the way, I feel comfortable writing this comment because I have oh my God exactly the same problem with my comments. Look at me on a crypto thread sometime.