That's just how large communities operate, especially in heated environments. It's always been this way. That said your example really fails to demonstrate effective community interaction. The argument apparently had value to readers who naturally wanted to verify the claims. You're essentially expecting people on the verge of changing their views to simply take the word of someone challenging those views with a "trust me bro" approach. Rather than engaging meaningfully, you attempt to invalidate their perfectly reasonable request for sources in your response. After reading the linked thread I would also disengage and keep a red flag for your username in my mind.

> That's just how large communities operate, especially in heated environments.

Although this is only half true, you have a point - it does hold for the top social media sites which, curiously enough, end up in the same predicament.

However, this is a phenomenon that needs analysis, explanation and fixing, not just stating as inevitable reality because reality-building has been a thing at least since Karl Rove.

BTW, I did expect the downvoting of my unorthodox and out-of-band comment but I do appreciate your reply to it because in 90% of the cases downvoting is silent and no explanations are given.

Looking at the number of downvotes, I see that I've touched a nerve here, pretty sure due to the mentioning of Agent Smith's gaslighting brigade. Again, I'm not blaming the HN maintainers or the community as whole, as you noted, there's nothing unique here compared to other big social media.

> You're... expecting people... to simply take the word of someone challenging those views with a "trust me bro" approach.

Not at all. I simply shifted some of the burden of proof to the challenger who would otherwise put the speaker in a highly asymmetrical resource trap, similar to a DoS attack. I gave enough justification for it, I could prove it with a 10 word sentence but... does this matter given that we don't use the same notation?

As a result, a proof in my notation appears as "trust me bro" to you, and vice versa.