I've been considering to precommit to this: if someone in a group I'm a part of plays dirty or uses blackmail, I'll delete all of his/her reputation points in my head, and impose a moratorium on when he/she can start earning reputation points with me again. I would do this regardless of the success of what he/she did to the group.
Is this wise?
It is perhaps not wise to have such an all or nothing reaction to something that is as hard to define as "plays dirty" or "uses blackmail."
Scott, known on LessWrong as Yvain, recently wrote a post complaining about an inaccurate rape statistic.
Arthur Chu, who is notable for winning money on Jeopardy recently, argued against Scott's stance that we should be honest in arguments in a comment thread on Jeff Kaufman's Facebook profile, which can be read here.
Scott just responded here, with a number of points relevant to the topic of rationalist communities.
I am interested in what LW thinks of this.
Obviously, at some point being polite in our arguments is silly. I'd be interested in people's opinions of how dire the real world consequences have to be before it's worthwhile debating dishonestly.