Most of his comments are essentially saying "you are wrong". Once he was right in saying that, many times he was wrong. He probably knows a lot of facts about many topics, and he expresses with very high certainty; unfortunately the quality of his comments does not match this certainty, and he seems very immune to feedback. Low karma just proves he is right.

He is very negative towards others. Almost all his comments contain something like: "Your work is wrong." "I never said anything like this" "I never flamed anyone." "spelled wrong" "I have no such delusions." "it hasn't done anything for me." "it's definitely going to do more harm than good." "I already explained why it's not possible." "There is practically no chance" "It's a misconception" "This idea is based on a whole range of confusions and misunderstandings" "just another example of people not understanding" It's like his only point in discussions is to show that everyone else is wrong, but it's often him who is wrong. Did he make some useful contribution? I don't see any.

And then the -- "You are trying to submit too fast. try again in %i minutes." and "You do not have enough karma to downvote right now. You need 1 more point." -- just make me want to scream. (Though the fact that he does not have enough karma to downvote makes me happy. I guess he was going to downvote those who disagree with him. I am happy that LW karma system does not allow him to make dozen sockpuppet accounts and start a downvoting war.)

Maybe the guy is not having fun, maybe that's just what he honestly is... but anyway his comments seem like optimized to create mental suffering in others, certainly in me. I have left websites where people like this became frequent. If this kind of behavior becomes tolerated on LW, I will either write some GreaseMonkey plugin that will remove all his comments from the page, or I will simply stop reading LW. In theory I am reading this site for information, not for positive emotion, but I am just a human... if this site will give me negative emotion too often, I will stop reading it.

I tried to give him the benefit of doubt, and answered his comment seriously, but now I feel it was totally not worth doing. This is my worst experience on LW so far. Though this mostly means that I did not have bad experiences on LW so far. :) But I prefer it to stay this way.

I'm not so sure he's a troll. He very well might be, but at least he made this comment which is at 4 karma right now.

This is how trolling works.

Less Wrong isn't some kind of human right that we need to go beyond reasonable doubt to withdraw from someone; it's an online community run by an enlightened dictator, and if you want to keep your well kept garden, you have to accept some collateral damage.

Your best way to be taken seriously would be just to create a new account without making any reference to this one, and, well, not act like a troll.

Yet people on this site have refused to back up their own claims with citations because apparently "I'm not worth bothering with".

I found this claim difficult to believe, so I looked it up. For the record:

911truther: Freezing things makes water expand and burst the fragile parts of your brain.

gwern: Freezing canard: proof you have not read the cryonics literature. Instant downvote.

911truther: If "the cryonics literature" (presumably explaining why freezing does not destroy the brain) actually exists why don't you link to it?

gwern: Because spending the time to look up references solid enough that they cannot be glibly rejected indicates that I think someone is worth educating, that I can educate them, or it's a sign of respect.

None of those three are true. So if you think you are right, you are free to bring your own references to the table.

One of the problems is that you say things like "I've been rational for years". Sorry. No, you haven't. EY hasn't been rational for years. You may have been an aspiring rationalist, but that's a far cry from actually being rational. When you say things like that it is extremely off-putting because it sounds self-congratulatory. That's something that this community struggles with a lot, and we typically heavily downvote things that are that way because they send very bad signals about what this website is. Beyond that, when it's said by someone with the username "911truther", it implies an element of "You're not rational unless you're a truther too", which mean it or not, is how it comes across.

Secondly, and this relates, your username. It's inherently political, which brings up all of our opposition to politics every time you make a post. That's not a good thing, and it will be very difficult for anyone on this site to take you seriously. If two different people wrote two articles that were of exactly equal caliber, and one was named BobSmith, and the other was named Obama2012, I would anticipate at least 2-3 times the upvoting on the former and 2-3 times the downvoting on the latter. And 9/11 is so much more of a polarizing issue. The vast, vast majority of people here disagree with you. But roland, despite being wildly downvoted every time he brings up 9/11, actually manages positive karma, because it's not inherently brought up every time he posts. I can not recommend strongly enough that you delete your account and create a new username if you wish to continue on this site. If you're a 911 truther, I would not suggest lying about that, but choosing that as the phrase by which you identify yourself is not a very effective strategy for being taken seriously on this site.

Thirdly, the great grandparent to this isn't a terrible comment. I agree with you there. I likely would have upvoted it had it been made by a different username, since I didn't think it deserved that level of downvoting (but not because I thought it was particularly wonderful in and of itself).

I never said anything like this and I never invoked Eleizer. I don't understand why you're telling me off for something I didn't do. Look at my post history if you don't trust me.

I know you didn't invoke Eliezer, but that is a common statement by people who find themselves downvoted a lot, so I was pre-empting it (if you were not going to do that, I apologise and that sentence should be considered removed from my quote, however the rest still stands). The only reason I said that, was because I looked at your post history and saw this one:

[...] If you look at my user page (http://lesswrong.com/user/911truther) it's blatantly obvious that someone is systematically downvoting everything I post multiple times. I don't claim to be persecuted but clearly there is an attempt to censor me. Frankly it just proves that I'm right, if I was wrong people could easily disprove me.

For the rest:

• People have been providing links and citations to back up their claims. (Several of the replies in this thread)
• I wasn't implying that you flamed anyone, just that dissent is part of this website, and it is treated with respect.
• Dismissing accusation of "troll" with uncheckable and irrelevant claims of rationality is not the right way to do it.