It seems to me it would be more appropriate to ask Yudkowsky and LukeProg to retract the false accusations that Loosemore is a liar or dishonest, respectively.

He doesn't want to be "an effective, efficient, or helpful critic". He's here "for the lulz", as he said in his comment above.

I only visit LessWrong these days to entertain myself

Total available downvotes are a high number (4 times total karma, if I recall correctly), and in practice I think they prevent very few users from downvoting as much as they want.

Then, instituting a downvoting system that allows control by the high-karma elite: the available downvotes (but not upvotes--the masses must be kept content) are distributed based on the amount of accumulated karma. Formula nonpublic, as far as I can tell.

The formula max is 4*total karma. I'm curious- if there were a limit on the total number of upvotes also, would you then say that this was further evidence of control of entrenched users. If one option leads to a claim about keeping the masses content and the reverse would lead to a different set of accusations then something is wrong? If any pattern is evidence of malicious intent, then something is wrong. Incidentally, it might help to realize that the system as it exists is a slightly modified version of the standard reddit system. The code and details for the karma system are based off of fairly widely used open source code. It is much more likely that this karma system was adopted specifically as being a basic part of the code base. Don't assume malice when laziness will do.

Why don't these rationalists even come close to intuiting the logic of the downvoting system?

Disagreeing with what you think of the system is not the same as not intuiting it. Different humans have different intuition.

They evidently care not the least about its mechanics. They are far from even imagining it is consequential. Some rationalists.

But some people do think the karma system matters. And you are right in that it does matter in some respects more than many people realize it does. There's no question that although I don't really care much about my karma total at all, I can't help but feel a tinge of happiness when I log in to see my karma go up from 9072 to 9076 as it just did, and then feel a slight negative feeling when I see it then go down to 9075. Attach a number to something and people will try to modify it. MMOs have known this for a while. (An amusing take.) And having partially randomized aspects certainly makes it more addicting since randomized reinforcement is more effective. And in this case, arguments that people like are more positively rewarded. That's potentially quite subtle, and could have negative effects, but it isn't censorship.

While that doesn't amount to censorship, there are two other aspects of the karma system that most people don't even notice much at all. The first of course is that downvoted comments get collapsed. The second is that one gets rate limited with positing as one's karma becomes more negative. Neither of these really constitutes censorship by most notions of the term, although I suppose the second could sort of fall into it under some plausible notions. Practically speaking, you don't seem to be having any trouble getting your points heard here.

I don't know what your evidence is that they are from "evening imaginging it is consquential." Listening to why one might think it is consequential and then deciding that the karma system doesn't have that much impact is not the same thing as being unable to imagine the possibility. It is possible (and would seem not too unlikely to me) that people don't appreciate the more negative side effects of the karma system, but once again, as often seems to be the case, your own worst enemy is yourself, by overstating your case in a way that overall makes people less likely to take it seriously.

(Oh, and prescriptivists always lose.)

What, always ? By definition ? That sounds dangerously like a prescriptivist statement to me ! :-)

Well, it was a hasty generalization on my part. Flawed descriptivism, not prescriptivism. But you're losing sight of the issue, even as you refute an unsound argument. In the particular case--check it out--Grognor resolved the ambiguity in favor of the universal quantifier. This would be uncharitable in the general case, but in context it's--as I said--a ridiculous argument. I stretched for an abstract argument to establish the ridiculousness, and I produced a specious argument. But the fact is that it was Grognor who had accused Loosemore of "abuse of language," on the tacit ground that the universal quantifier is automatically implied. There was the original prescriptivism.

There are in fact some policemen (e.g. in Japan) who do not carry firearms while on duty.