alt Hacker NewsHN commenters do this all the time. A lot of people here treat comments as mathematical or logic proofs. They see a statement like "Planes are a very safe way to travel", and their minds go to:
∀x(X(x)⟹(Y(x))
and then they make it their mission to find the falsifying x sub 0 example.
Replies
All the time? HN attracts some ... interesting ... characters so I accept it as something that has likely happened at some point, but something common? Anecdotes aren't shared in some kind of weird effort to falsify an imagined mathematical proof. They are shared because that is the natural progression of a discussion.
More commonly we see things like,
A: "I went to work today"
B: "One time I was on my way to work but I slipped on the ice in my driveway and ended up in the ER with a broken leg instead"
A: "Your broken leg does not disprove that I went to work today..."
Where A is trying to relive their glory days on Reddit where such a retort would have been considered funny, but thankfully most HN accounts know better than to think that is still funny, or that it was ever considered funny on HN. This thread being illustrative of one such exception, of course.
You’re right it looks that way now i read it back. I’m sorry.