It seems that the complaint can be summed up as "100+ comments on a Near issue, only 23 on a Far issue! Boo!"

I didn't really want to get involved in the various different levels of my problems with this thread at the moment, (and hence the vagueness of the original comment) but since Festivus was yesterday perhaps I can partake in some belated airing of grievances.

The original post is entirely unsubstantiated other-optimizing, and I don't care if the original poster got a dispensation from the Pope himself to do so. The comment threads are almost entirely worthless lumps of anecdotal evidence.

These points are made better by other people elsewhere in this thread, but I will add to them and say that they are symptoms of a larger systemic problem within the community. The community implicitly values "rational self-help" over working on the Art, and that's a problem.

In particular, while I thought gwern's article was awesome, I didn't have anything to add to it, nor did I see any obvious thing I could do about the issue.

I thought it was pretty obvious that even if you had nothing to say about it or to add to it, the information would: lower estimates of medical progress, by contagion lower general estimates of progress and the Singularity, and as further ramifications, raise the values of cryonics, intermittent fasting, caloric restriction and other methods of extending longevity - all of which have pretty well-understood 'action' items.

The voting went the opposite direction of the commenting, so the voting mind (probably the conscious mind) agrees with Gwern. However, reading and writing comments may cause people to unconsciously elevate the importance of a post. On the other hand, bike-shedding is a serious concern. This isn't a committee that requires consensus, but the danger is that the disagreement will lead people to not act (the best is the enemy of the good).