> Do you think I may have overreacted?

Not really, but the length might be a problem.

I've had to really shorten my HN comments. Otherwise people generally ignore or misunderstand what I'm trying to say.

My wisdom of commenting is people will always latch in to the worst parts, so you either have to commit to the worst things you write or write in a more bland way.

Regarding your comment I have the same issue with how badly engineers simplifies science, but they usually have a to noble view of themselves being ignorant of what they ignore. Having discussions which offends people needs to be done in a trustfull way even then it is hard, I usually sound like a dimwit or a twat.

Maybe not over-reacted, but over-rehearsed. Your debate produces a clear winner, and may appeal to popular sentiment, but I'm not sure any scientist would associate themselves with either side of it.

Belief in science as an all-encompassing ideology is a minority view among scientists. Scientists are usually careful to stipulate that it's not. My parents were both scientists. They're the ones who took my brothers and me to art museums and concerts, exposed us to religions, literature, the love of the outdoors, and so forth.

Maybe 90% of the public have never met a scientist, making it easy to turn us into the bogeyman.

> Belief in science as an all-encompassing ideology is a minority view among scientists. Scientists are usually careful to stipulate that it's not.

I believe that if this was studied carefully (with temporal detail), the reality of the situation would be revealed to be much more interesting than your intuition indicates.

Even the best scientists still have heuristics based consciousness, layers of culture, etc. Consciousness is way more complicated than it reveals to itself (which is what people here are describing, technically / architecturally).

I describe it using Donald Rumsfeld's famous quote: "You go to battle with the army you have." We all wrestle with the limitations of our mental apparatus. Also, reality is always more complicated than any concise description of it. No experienced scientist would claim otherwise.

> I describe it using Donald Rumsfeld's famous quote: "You go to battle with the army you have."

It's a great meme, but all capabilities in existence have not been brought to bear, not even close.

> We all wrestle with the limitations of our mental apparatus.

Agreed, but to very different degrees, and in very different ways (as in positive wrestling vs negative).

> Also, reality is always more complicated than any concise description of it. No experienced scientist would claim otherwise.

a) You 2nd sentence is subject to your first.

b) You have no way to know this. I on the other hand do: I talk to scientists on the regular who make unsound claims. There is nothing about science that renders its practitioners immune to culture, propaganda, ideological blindness, heuristics, etc (despite it being an extremely popular, faith based belief).