find your technicality hard to imagine without prompting
What "technicality"? The idea that by "allowed" jimrandomh might have meant something akin to "allowed"?
(Perhaps you're under the impression that I took it to mean that some actual authority will actually punish you for writing less-metrical poetry. If so, then it seems that you were simultaneously complaining of my alleged literal-mindedness while reading my words over-literally yourself.)
I presented it in language that did not rely on being inside [etc.]
If I'm understanding this correctly, you are now claiming that you thought I misinterpreted "allowed" as referring to being allowed because I was "outside the reality of the game" and didn't understand that poetry (and, given that you took Picasso as an example, other art) is all about status.
Which is odd, since the sort of greetings-card verse jimrandomh was trying to get Swimmer963 to write doesn't in fact have very high status among readers of poetry and the not-allowed claim is just as false when understood in terms of status as when understood in terms of artistic merit, social acceptability, utilitarian ethics, or anything else I can think of.
I have no idea what he said
For sure, nor was I implying that you do have any idea what he said.
explaining that the helium nucleus consists of two protons and (usually) two neutrons
The claim that good artists know "which deviations work to gain you status and which do not" is not parallel to that trivial claim, because it implies that what those artists are aiming at is status, which is certainly controversial and (so far as I can see) probably false. (I don't think, and didn't say, and didn't suggest that you think, that it's deep.)
I made no claims about how much status you were hoping to gain by talking about status, and the mistake of conflating status and karma never even occurred to me. Perhaps you didn't notice the word "more" in what I wrote?
**Note: I'm not a poet. I hardly ever write poetry, and when I do, it's usually because I've stayed up all night. However, this seemed like a very appropriate poem for Less Wrong. Not sure if it's appropriate as a top-level post. Someone please tell me if not.**
Imagine
The first man
Who held a stick in rough hands
And drew lines on a cold stone wall
Imagine when the others looked
When they said, I see the antelope
I see it.
Later on their children's children
Would build temples, and sing songs
To their many-faced gods.
Stone idols, empty staring eyes
Offerings laid on a cold stone altar
And left to rot.
Yet later still there would be steamships
And trains, and numbers to measure the stars
Small suns ignited in the desert
One man's first step on an airless plain
Now we look backwards
At the ones who came before us
Who lived, and swiftly died.
The first man's flesh is in all of us now
And for his and his children's sake
We imagine a world with no more death
And we see ourselves reflected
In the silicon eyes
Of our final creation