Comment by johnisgood 4 days ago
I keep getting down-voted, but I have never been against being specific, in fact, I was advocating to be specific[1], i.e. North American, Latin American, South America, etc.
[1] "If someone says "America" to refer to a place, they really ought to specify if they want you to understand them.".
Additionally, natural languages are inherently ambiguous.
So ugh, I do not think we disagree.
Reading this interchange, I think I'd really enjoy a forum where all the responses a poster thinks they'd want to make in a thread are pre-committed-- but not yet viewable-- when the initial comment is posted. Any consequent responses in that thread are then limited to those that are pre-committed-- e.g., that user can select them from a dropdown-- and the full list of pre-commitments is (eventually?) publicly viewable.
Maybe that doesn't apply to what you're replying to here. But my gut is that anything nested deeper than level 2 on HN is one or more respondents doing low-effort, pedantic heel-digging. (Single exception for any and all of Alan Kay's posts where the references cited are always worth whatever level the nesting is at.)
If someone can’t figure out what America I’m referring to when comparing America and China, I’m not sure how much useful conversation is left in them on the topic.