To the contrary, you're not going to get much mileage in court attacking someone's weakest argument. On the internet, however, mocking someone's weakest argument is fair game.

> On the internet, however, mocking someone's weakest argument is fair game

Not on Hacker News it isn't. We want people to apply the Principle of Charity and respond to the strongest reasonable interpretation of what each other is saying [1]. Alternatively,

A comment in reply to another comment should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side. [2]

It increasingly seems to me that we should add these principles to the site guidelines, though they're arguably derivable from them.

It's true that when people seem (and/or are) hopelessly wrong and misguided, and no one else seems (and/or is) respecting these principles, there's a great temptation to say "fuck it" and let loose with snark. But that needs to be resisted. The community depends on you and other established users to set good examples. Otherwise how can we tell new users that they can't do the same—or rather, do worse, since these things always get worse?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761

As a mild disagreement, I would worry that over-enforcement of this principle would squelch out all humor. While humor may not quite be in the spirit of colleagues, or politics, it is certainly within the spirit of friendship. I am not sure about the right line to draw, but I do think that a truly friendly community is one that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Isn't humor obviously within the spirit of colleagues? It certainly has been, any place where I've had colleagues.

There's a kind of caricaturing wit that could be called uncharitable, but only if it's meant to distort, in which case the humor is a means to something else and it's the something else that's the problem.

It may be "fair game" in that you won't get hauled off by the Internet police, but it certainly doesn't work to convince people.

I don't buy it. You've repeatedly brought up that one item to the exclusion of all the others in contexts that use it as part of an actual argument. Unless your entire participation in this thread is just an elaborate and vast attempt to mock people?

If you search my post history, you can see I mentioned the cold room three times, besides the original mention.

One was in a hyperbolic rhetorical context, to exaggerate the distinction with killing someone, which we consider acceptable in war:

> So you're saying we shouldn't engage in torture because it's "bad"? It's okay to blow these same people up in the battlefield, but god forbid we throw water on them and put them in a slightly cold room?

One was self-referential:

> I'd be pretty happy if HN could muster the same uniform moral outrage about rape jokes involving non-terrorists (e.g. gamergate) as it has shown in response to my comment about terrorists being cold.

One was in response to 'reitanqild saying: "Most of us would much rather prefer to be shot dead or blown up in a split second than being even slightly tortured and locked up indefinitely."

> Throwing water on someone and leaving them in a 59-degree room is worse than shooting them dead? Keeping someone awake until they hallucinate is worse than shooting them dead? Really?

The cold room and the sleep deprivation were in response to the "slightly tortured" part of that comment.

At no point did I ever try to make the argument that "what the CIA did wasn't so bad because they just put people in cold rooms." I actually have no interest in trying to convince anyone that what the CIA did wasn't bad. This is not an issue that people are going to approach rationally. It's about gut-feelings--either you have a visceral reaction to these interrogation techniques or you don't.

You said elsewhere: "I don't think torture is ever justified, under any circumstances. No exceptions."

Well I strongly disagree. If it would actually save innocent lives,[1] I'd have absolutely no qualms about any number of Al Qaeda terrorists being tortured. It's an unspeakably evil organization, promulgating ideologies that are at their best barbaric and backward. I think even the people that are receptive to their message and associate themselves with the organization, even if they do nothing more, are morally culpable.

And I imagine polls will show about half the country or more agreeing with me: http://mic.com/articles/106084/two-charts-show-why-the-cia-s.... Now of course the majority of people can be on the wrong side of history, but I don't think this is one of those situations.

[1] I've noted elsewhere that I don't think the techniques are effective and that we shouldn't be engaging in them for that reason.

With how many posts you've deleted or had killed, I can't really search your history at this point.

Anyway, if you you have no interest in trying to convince people, why are you here discussing this? You're certainly giving every appearance of trying to convince people. You're putting forth arguments that look like they're intended to be convincing.

In another comment, you mentioned environmental disaster as something that should rank higher. Do you also endorse the use of torture on unrepentant polluters, climate change skeptics, and the like? Or is terrorism somehow special in your eyes?

And I couldn't care less how many people agree with you. I can't understand why you would even bring that up.

I could ask you the same question. Do you think you're going to convince people who think terrorism is an existential threat that torture is not acceptable, no exceptions? I doubt it. Rather, you're here to express your sentiment on the subject. I'm just expressing mine.

Anyway, at no point did I ever say we should torture anyone. In fact I said exactly the opposite in response to 'angibrowl. But at the end of the day I have better places to use my limited moral outrage than on how Khalid Sheik Mohammad was treated.

To be honest, what really kept me participating in this thread is the comparison to Japanese and Jewish persecution. I just can't understand the point of view of people who focus on the action alone, to the exclusion of who is the target of the action. I think it matters that these guys are scumbags.

So it's OK to torture or otherwise deprive a "scumbag" of their rights?

Who decides what constitutes "scumbaggery"? You? Me? A random person off the street? A CIA lawyer? The President?

This sounds like a recipe for disaster, frankly. It sounds like a recipe for treating some minorities as non-humans, on a not very formal basis.

I am here to convince people. I don't think the chances are good, but I give it a shot. I think that the massive fear of terrorism is the worst consequence of 9/11 in this country, and that it has caused us to damage ourselves far more than the terrorists themselves could ever hope to accomplish. I try to do my bit to roll back that opinion when the occasion arises.

There's a thin line between "this guy is a scumbag because he's part of al Qaeda" and "this guy is a scumbag because he's a Republican." This is why we have due process. Or rather, why we're supposed to have it, even though we've given up on it for al Qaeda, or for people we think are related.