Thanks for the advice, but my purpose—given that I'm an amoralist—isn't to enjoy a sense of moral superiority. Rather, to test a forum toward which I've felt ambivalent for several years, mainly for my benefit but also for that of any objective observers.

Strong rhetoric is often necessary in an unreceptive forum because it announces that the writer considers his criticisms fundamental. If I state the criticisms neutrally, something I've often tried, they are received as minor—like the present post. They may even be voted up, but they have little impact. Strong language is appropriate in expressing severe criticisms.

How should a rationalist forum respond to harsh criticism? It isn't rational to fall prey to the primate tendency to in-group thinking by neglecting to adjust for any sense of personal insult when the group leader is lambasted. Judging by reactions, the tendency to in-group thought is stronger here than in many forums that don't claim the mantle of rationalism. This is partly because the members are more intelligent than in most other forums, and intelligence affords more adept self-deception. This is why it is particularly important for intelligent people to be rationalists but only if they honestly strive to apply rational principles to their own thinking. Instead, rationality here serves to excuse participants' own irrationality. Participants simply accept their own tendencies to reject posts as worthless because they contain matter they find insulting. Evolutionary psychology, for instance, here serves to produce rationalizations rather than rationality. (Overcoming Bias is a still more extreme advocacy of this perversion of rationalism, although the tendency isn't expressed in formal comment policies.)

"Karma" means nothing to me except as it affects discourse; I despise even the term, which stinks of Eastern mysticism. I'm told that the karma system of incentives, which any rationalist should understand vitally affects the character of discussion, was transplanted from reddit. How is a failure to attend to the vital mechanics of discussion and incentives rational? Laziness? How could policies so essential be accorded the back seat?

Participants, I'm told, don't question the karma system because it works. A rationalist doesn't think that way. He says, "If a system of incentives introduced without forethought and subject to sound criticisms (where even its name is an insult to rationality) produces the discourse that we want, then something must be wrong with what we want!" What's wanted is the absence of any tests of ideology by fundamental dissent.

I think the argument you make in this comment isn't a bad one, but the unnecessary and unwarranted "Apostle Yudkowsky (prophet of the Singularity God)" stuff amounts to indirectly insulting the people you're talking with and, makes them far less likely to realize that you're actually also saying something sensible. If you want to get your points across, as opposed to just enjoying a feeling of smug moral superiority while getting downvoted into oblivion, I strongly recommend leaving that stuff out.