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The problem is that language is much higher bandwidth than the information content of the words.On the contrary, the problem with a natural language is that is imprecise, vague and ambiguous. This is why it's so easy to allow assumptions to creep into one's interpretation of it. A substantial part of your interpretation of my comments is based on your own assumptions, a lot of which do not hold up. I'm not inclined to address all of them -- for the same reasons I will elaborate when I address your interpretation of my having "time to kill" -- but I will try to address a few I found interesting.
> It's pretty obvious what the ad hominem is if you use this quote straight after someone quotes Ayn Rand: it is targeted at the poster and implies he is, himself, immature, living in a dream world, meaning one should dismiss his arguments without consideration.
I don't know if the poster is an objectivist. The poster remembered a quote from "Atlas Shrugged" that resonated with them and posted it in a comment, which does not necessarily imply that the poster is a fan of "Atlas Shrugged" or Ayn Rand in general; I could probably find myself in a situation where I could consider a comment from Meyer's "Twilight" relevant, without changing my opinion that "Twilight" is an utter piece of crap. I used the quote I posted to express my opinion of "Atlas Shrugged". Which brings me to the next assumption I would like to address:
> It is extremely rare to attack a work using appeal to emotion without attacking the author.
To paraphrase, instead of quoting: You keep mentioning that fallacy; I do not think it means what you think it means. "Appeal to emotion" is a logical fallacy that consists of trying to support your argument with pathos instead of logos. Not every form of discourse is an argument. Mine certainly wasn't and I suspect John's wasn't either. As I mentioned before, I was stating an opinion -- to wit, that I find "Atlas Shrugged" sorely lacking in certain aspects and that I think that staunch objectivists have certain flaws -- not refuting a point made by the poster. As a matter of fact, I did state in another comment that I agree, to a degree, with the poster's point, but dislike the quote he used to make that point.
> This really means "you are not ordinarily worth engaging with, because [see above], but since I have nothing to do, I will". This is reinforcing the ad hominem by introducing superiority and dismissiveness. "Here, child, let me explain."
You're right about one thing here: my reply to you did, indeed, contain an intentional ad hominem. That doesn't mean that the assumption underlying your interpretation of "time to kill" is correct. Rather than implying that objectivists, as a whole group, are not worth engaging with, I was implying that I ordinarily would not find a comment like yours worth replying to. Is that dismissive? It certainly is. Does it imply a feeling of superiority? Not at all. Just because I don't think that, under normal circumstances, I can produce more worth by spending my time on other things rather than replying to that particular kind of argument, it doesn't mean I'm superior (or feel like it) to you. Rather, it means that I don't think I'm good enough at arguing to produce any net worth by engaging in the discussion of a comment like yours.
> This one is on par with telling a new black acquaintance about your black friends, or sending them news about black people doing great things. I should not need to explain it, but I will.
As a quick aside, I don't have any assumption to address here; I just wanted to point out that I have no idea what that whole "black news" analogy is supposed to mean; you might have tried to explain it, but I failed to understand it.
But you do delve a lot into the ad hominem in that part of my sentence, so I should probably address that. Yes, I assumed from your comment that you're an objectivist and that, as an objectivist, you share the flaws I ascribe to the whole group. No, that assumption is not based on any hard facts, but my experience with similar comments and, as such, might very well be incorrect. Yes, I do imply that being an objectivist would explain why you misintepreted my original comment as an ad hominem. Yes, I did intentionally include an ad hominem in a comment that points out that my previous comment was not an ad hominem.
In closing, many of the assumptions on which you based your interpretations are wrong. It's not that I believe that they're wrong -- most of them are factually wrong, because most are assumptions about what I meant to say or was trying to say. The reason I point this out at all is because you're trying to engage in a highly rational argument out of a highly emotional motivation and I suspect those emotions are creeping into your assumptions and invalidating your efforts. The reason I suspect that is because I used to do the same thing: get riled up about something I read and then try to deconstruct the offending text with what I believe were purely rational arguments. In hindsight, it never worked out, even when I believed I "won" the discussion.
Regardless of the context of HN "and its sophisticated audience and level of discussion", sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; sometimes a person might state the equivalent of "I think 'Atlas Shrugged' is crap and adults who wholeheartedly buy into it should know better" and it might not be a slippery slope to a dystopian future where all rational argument has been replaced by Trump/Clinton debates; sometimes a person's sense of humor is impolite to a certain audience and the best reply is more along the lines of "Dude, don't be a jerk" rather than "The test results say you are a horrible person; we weren't even testing for that." ;)