While I won't deny not having given your comment as careful a reading as I perhaps could have, my motivation in posting my own had more to do with staving off a torrent of follow-ups that all came from the place of "opinions over facts" that I decried than it did criticism of your position.

My apologies for my ambiguity. I could have been far clearer about what I was trying to say, and my motivations for having said it.

I wanted to single out your comment as an example of a gracious apology and what I presume is the desired level of discourse at the Hacker News community.

I see both parts of the discussion are among the older members of HN, glad to see they're setting a good example :)

>You have made a common mistake. You have pattern matched what I said to commonly said things that you have an opinion on, and then have proceeded to respond on the belief that I said something that I did not say.

I wouldn't call this a mistake. It is a very accurate heuristic not just in this particular case but in online discussions in general. There will be errors, but deploying a heuristic instead of a perfect algorithm makes great sense when dealing with the internet. Less acceptable for something like a scientific paper.

So you won't bother reading what other people are saying, and instead will resort to spewing retorts based on your preconceived notions of what other people are stating? You must be a fun person to discuss with.

I'd say actually reading may be a better approach rather than to use an heuristic.

>So you won't bother reading what other people are saying

Perhaps you should read what I wrote then, because what I wrote was about a heuristic to identify intentions based on what was read. Would you suggest that in face to face discussions body language should ignored when it disagrees with what a person says?