I know what he meant, and what his example of a norm was supposed to provoke in me.
You do? Roughly it was supposed to provoke a short term frustration but a net reduction in sensitivity to the real or (more commonly) imagined effects you may have on the internal state of other agents. Also a somewhat reduced impulse to publicly distance yourself from your own (minor) actions and instinctively withdraw.
From now on I'll just concern myself with the local group here, or not, depending on what happens over the next few weeks. In any case, I can let this account lie fallow or delete it. Which would disrupt the chain of comments less?
For what it is worth people would prefer you to continue engaging with the community here. If you don't think you would personally benefit from participating here then by all means move along. But for crying out loud, you don't need to second guess what other people want you to do. Too much tiptoeing about like you're walking on eggshells is perhaps one of the worst things excessive exposure to religion results in.
Edit - Barring a major surprise, this post should be regarded as a worthless artifact of my impulse to do things instead of talking about them. I apologize for any time wasted on this, and would recommend ignoring it unless it is for historical purposes. I'll just stick to things I'm less bad at from now on.
This article will be edited as people post and discuss.
I believe that we need to have a clear, concise statement about the beliefs, practices, and taboos that it is rational to hold, and that we already hold as a group. To be clear, this is not an attempt to make new norms, but an attempt to codify the ones that we already hold and to get a rough estimate of the popularity/importance of each.
Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality
Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally
LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically
Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on
Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.
Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing. Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.