In short, the comment contained more than enough hedging to preclude such a retort.
Even if it did, orthonormal's point contains a significant subclass of the suffering that occurs in prisons. Hence ignoring it or sweeping it under a hedge seems somewhat strange.
Let's back up. Here is the history of this conversation:
It seems much more like a commentary on the American prison system than anything else. The Western European systems don't generally suffer many of the problems of American Muggle prisons, or the problems they do share are often to a smaller degree. Britain is one of the middle range countries in this regard, but this may be enough for some people to not get the point.
Notice what this says: Western Europ...
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This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
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