I assume some combination of using the word "cult" repeatedly, and the tonal offensiveness - and the writing style is lazy and hard to read (point form). The content is also more offensive the drethelin's similar point above.
For my part, I'd like to restate my point and see if the votes shift.
I feel drethelin's summary of Gwern's post is pretty fair. There's not much of interest in it. I think people are also underestimating how immoral Gwern's behavior is (meaning: how counterproductive if adopted as a rule). It is also injurious in this specific case.
I also think it is pretty obvious that Gwern could expect this post to be upvoted. The injury is not to a LessWrongian, and it confirms "beliefs" held by LessWrongians. Human experimentation is often fun! Gwern may not see himself as explicitly having posted for that reason, but I do think he paid very little heed to outside parties, both as they might perceive this reflecting on LessWrong and as they might be directly harmed (even in odd ways, such as taking this seriously). It is this lack of awareness of the outside world that I called cult-like. I do not believe folks here are seriously letting this hurt their opinion of Gwern, and they should. I would take considerable pains to avoid people who behave in this way.
If I had the option to vote up multiple times, I would have voted up a post like gwern's about a prominent LWer more times than I would have this post of gwern's.
I now want to interact with gwern more but want people I know who are less accepting of abrasive social norm violations to interact with gwern less. I personally would be elated if my friends pulled this kind of thing on me with some (but not too much) regularity.
Edit: fivelier brings up a good point. My first thought was "I wish it was normal to expect someone might be performing this kind o...
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