You broke the site guidelines extremely badly in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban you right now because (unlike the other account) you don't seem to been doing it in other threads lately. But please make a point of not doing it again, because (if I go back far enough) you do have a history of getting warned and banned (and unbanned) here.
> because (if I go back far enough) you do have a history of getting warned and banned (and unbanned) here.
Unless I'm missing something, that was once, like a decade ago or something, a testy conversation about history. I was shadow banned for ages and then some mod noticed my comments were good quality and restored me. So that seems like a bit of an uncharitable read given the age of my account and my average comment score.
I appreciate I was far off the mark here and I appreciate the warning. This particular subject is very triggering for me given the impact in my nation of American money influencing our politics. I'll try my best to be better but its hard.
There's nothing wrong with speculation on HN. Speculation is intimate with curiosity, and curiosity, not correctness, is the guiding value of this site.
It may seem odd to demote correctness in that way, but it doesn't mean we value incorrectness. Correctness is good, just not at the top of the hierarchy. Curiosity (specifically, intellectual curiosity) is what we're optimizing for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
We value the freedom to meander curiously. Some paths turn out to be wrong [1], but that is how new things are learned, and it's a good way to spend time. People are allowed to be wrong on HN as part of figuring out what's true [2]. Truth is crucial, but one ought not to squeeze the throat of speculation so tightly that wrong things aren't allowed to be spoken, or fun to be had.
[1] not saying the OP is right or wrong - I have no idea - but the article looks like the fun kind of meandering that has a place here.
Edit: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=meander - "from Greek Maiandros, name of a river in Caria noted for its winding course". Is there a better website than etymonline?
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