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wedrifid comments on The Curve of Capability - Less Wrong
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It's called less wrong for a reason. Encouraging the use of fallacious reasoning and dark arts rhetoric even by leaving it with a neutral reception would be fundamentally opposed to the purpose of this site. Most of the sequences, in fact, have been about how not to think stupid thoughts. One of the ways to do that is to prevent your habitat from overwhelming you with them and limiting your discussions to those that are up to at least a crudely acceptable level.
If you want a debate about AI subjects where the environment isn't primarily focussed on rewarding sound reasoning then I am almost certain that there are other places that are more welcoming.
This particular thread has been about attacking poor reasoning via insult. I do not believe that this is necessarily the best way to promote sound reasoning. The argument could be made, and if you had started or if you continue by making that argument I would be satisfied with that.
I am happy to see that elsewhere there are responses which acknowledge that interesting information has been presented before completely demolishing the original article.
This makes me think that pursuing this argument between the two of us is not worthwhile, as it draws attention to both of us making posts that are not satisfying to each other and away from other posts which may seem productive to both of us.
Agreed. It takes an effort of willpower not to get defensive when you are criticised, so an attack (especially with insults) is likely to cause the target to become defensive and try to fight back rather than learn where they went wrong. As we know from the politics sequence, an attack might even make their conviction stronger!
However,
I actually can't find a post on LessWrong specifically about this, but it has been said many times that the best is the enemy of the good. Be very wary of shooting down an idea because it is not the best idea. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the idea is better than doing nothing, and (again I don't have the cite, but it has been discussed here before) if you spend too much time looking for the best, you don't have any time left to do any of the ideas, so you end up doing nothing - which is worse than the mediocre idea you argued against.
If I was to order the ways of dealing with poor reasoning, it would look like this: Point out poor reasoning > Attack poor reasoning with insult > Leave poor reasoning alone.
Again, I disagree substantially with your observations on the critical premises.