Please note that I'm not saying HN is turning into reddit - I don't believe my score is high enough for me to be allowed to make that claim. (I do believe HN would benefit from a measure of reddit-style levity: right now it's all Serious Business, all the time.)<p>What I'm saying is that real constructive critical debate <i>requires</i> strong-willed, pedantic, even curmudgeonly debaters. The marketplace of ideas doesn't work without the push and pull of challenges, refutations and even meta-refutations ('You're asking the wrong question').<p>If Paul Graham wants good answers to his question, the price he has to pay is an allotment of bad answers - answers that are revealed as such on the marketplace of ideas. You can't get the good stuff without also allowing the bad stuff (and having reasonable filters to distinguish them).<p>P.S. Not sure why I was downvoted for my comment above.