"But surely it's better to delete what you do nothing but cringe at, while keeping writing that's mostly bad but has a couple good points! When you come back..."
"Stop. What you're defending is what you already do. [wordless] Faced with a choice either to change one's mind or to prove there's no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. Domain experts are telling you you're wrong. [/wordless] Change your mind."
"I changed my mind! I'm such a good rationalist! Can I go brag on LW?"
"Knock yourself out. Maybe you can rationalize it by saying you need to show agreement more, and promoting a norm of publicly changing one's mind in response to evidence, or something."
"Yay!"
I wouldn't necessarily call "Why?" as presenting a choice, but point taken. I guess my real reason why I began not deleting everything is that I've lost a lot of my early writing and regret doing so. What I wrote above still occasionally applies.
Why do you delete everything?
An exercise:
Name something that you do not do but should/wish you did/are told you ought, or that you do less than is normally recommended. (For instance, "exercise" or "eat vegetables".)
Make an exhaustive list of your sufficient conditions for avoiding this thing. (If you suspect that your list may be non-exhaustive, mention that in your comment.)
Precommit that: If someone comes up with a way to do the thing which doesn't have any of your listed problems, you will at least try it. It counts if you come up with this response yourself upon making your list.
(Based on: Is That Your True Rejection?)
Edit to add: Kindly stick to the spirit of the exercise; if you have no advice in line with the exercise, this is not the place to offer it. Do not drift into confrontational or abusive demands that people adjust their restrictions to suit your cached suggestion, and do not offer unsolicited other-optimizing.
To alleviate crowding, Armok_GoB has created a second thread for this challenge.