The needless snarkiness ("Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that...Here's a tip") detracts from this comment. It would be more persuasive without it, because when you include status-lowering attacks with your factual counter-arguments, your opponent can't agree with you without lowering zir status.
If a wakeup call drives a clueless person further into their clueless position, it's the last thing they need. What they need is a persuasive argument with an escape route where they can concede while losing minimal status.
It's difficult to see it from the other side. When we see a status attack favoring a position we agree with, it feels like a righteous smiting of the enemy. But it doesn't have the effect we intuitively think it does.
Sometimes, offensive comments need to be called out as offensive. Had the person been talking about, say, post-Katrina New Orleans as an "incubator for innovation" they'd be downmodded to oblivion.
I suppose I am assuming that the purpose of a discussion on HN is truth-seeking. If we are also enforcing social norms, then it makes sense to attack the status of those who propose offensive things.
Enforcing social norms must come at the expense of truth-seeking though, and I think truth-seeking is more important. Anyone can easily think of examples from history where offensive opinions turned out to be correct, and there are sure to be views today which are regarded as offensive and are also correct.
Edit: We have drifted from the original topic somewhat. The snarkiness I objected to wasn't calling out his opponent as offensive. It was just snarkiness.
