Can I remind you that from where I sit, the title of the original post translated into something like "Famous left-leaning columnist awarded prize by committee slammed as being too political lately"?
So I was hunting the articles down and driving them away. The problem is that it didn't look like that for the majority.
If you don't want to see dissent and downmod it, then how can minority opinions ever sway the majority that they are wrong? Sure, in this case I'm probably smoking crack, but there's something really bad here.
I've seen your handle in far too many threads lately, and for the most part I just scroll past; because life is too short. In this particular case I chose to comment because economics is an interest of mine as an entrepreneur. You do not appear to be contributing to the conversation about ideas, you seem to be mostly emoting and acting as though anything that does not conform to your rather straitened ideological views is a personal attack on your ego. And you've been doing this all day every day.
In this particular case it's clear that you did not RTFA since it's about Krugman's workflow, and says relatively little about the substance of his work and almost nothing about his politics other than that he regularly attempts to think and write about topical policy debates.
It looks rather as though you read the the name Krugman and reacted unthinkingly with an attack. That is not dissent, that is noise. If you want to make noise may I suggest that the politics reddit is the right place for you and that Hacker News is for people who want to focus on the ideas rather than the emotions.
Do you want a reply to this? I'm confused. If I'm trolling (which I'm trying not to) then why comment in this manner? As a way of appealing to other readers? I thought the thread system was set up in order to reply to individual comments. Seems more like a rebuke.
Nicely done -- especially liked the part about emoting. The neat thing is that it makes it impossible to reply in any fashion whatsoever. Which of course was the point.
I'm willing to grant you the benefit of the doubt when you say that you are not intentionally trolling, but I respectfully submit that that is what you come across as.
Starting highly charged political threads on topics that are only tangentially related to the linked article does not contribute value to the discussion.
I've noticed for myself that one of the signs that I am spending too much time in front of a computer is that I get into emotional arguments on internet message boards or IRC. It's easy to forget that a level of emotional involvement that would be normal and healthy IRL can make you seem like a raving lunatic online.
Take that as you will. I am through with this thread.
To me it looked like you were more irritated with his political orientation rather than the fact that the article was here at all. I don't want to see Krugman, or mises.org or Cato or Denis Kucinich or Nader or Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, or any of them here, even though I happen to enjoy reading some of the above some of the time (I'm not saying who), and in the right forum (over a bottle of good wine) would enjoy discussing them a great deal.
That sort of thing pretty much invariably happens with economics or politics on sites like this, whatever persuasion the 'herd' happens to be.
Which is why I think discussion of said topics should be ruthlessly hunted down and driven away.