I was not trying to write a post to defend conscientious objection as a philosophy. I was trying to ask the following: given that you already sincerely believe in conscientious objection to war what should you do to elevate that signal to a level that e.g. a draft board would find acceptable?

It's true that you did not see any reasons in my post regarding why I oppose war. That was intentional. I wanted to write a thread about tradeoffs and decision making conditional on being a sincere conscientious objector.

Not every post should start from a philosophical recapitulation of all the beliefs held as supporting foundations.

If it looks to me that your post is about how to most cheaply fake pacifism,

I just don't understand this. I'm not asking about faking pacifism. I'm asking about how to efficiently signal actual pacifism. How else am I supposed to ask about that?

I could certainly write better. But I also expect readers to think about it a little more. It's easy to say I'm trying to fake a signal and then just stop reading. But is that really a justified interpretation of what I'm asking? And even if it was, what's wrong with doing the thought experiment where you simulate being a sincere conscientious objector and ask yourself what the right tradeoffs would be?

If LW discussion isn't the right place for doing that, I don't know where else on earth is.