The interesting thing is that you don't perceive your own behavior in this case to be rude.
I certainly don't consider my behavior prior to being accused of dishonesty as being rude. Do you? After I was accused of dishonesty, I still trying to resolve the issue civilly. As I endured more and more abuse from gwern, I became increasingly short with him, but I don't think anything I said was inappropriate, given his behavior, and I find your proposition that it was to be poorly defended with vague, contradictory, and outright false statements.
The fact that you purposefully chose to avoid gendered pronouns just confirmed my suspicion.
Is that so surprising, as to provide significant information?
No. I know a bunch of people in that space who are very clear that they have no responsibility for anything that happens outside of their body.
I'm sure in pretty much any group there will be some who reject the concept of obligation. That doesn't mean that this is the predominant strain of thought.
In Buddhism you get bad karma if you kill another person. The Buddhist idea is that you don't go around killing other people because it's in your own self interest not to mess up your own karma. It has nothing to do with having obligations not to kill.
I find it disingenuous to claim that there is no sense of obligation connected with the concept of karma, especially as conceived in its Western versions. That's like saying that in Christianity, there is no sense of obligation in the concept of sin; Christians avoid sin merely out self interest, wanting to avoid hell.
In the moment where you repress the desire to be an asshole that desire doesn't go away.
So, I shouldn't repress the desire to be an asshole?
People who don't disassociate their emotions but act authentically deal with them and thereby learn not to feel like wanting to be an asshole.
That sound like a bunch of hooey to me. And I have a problem with the word “authentically” being redefined to mean “without inhibitions”.
I don't trust people who feel like they would like to be an asshole towards me but only act nicely because they perceive an obligation to be nice.
What's, there's something dishonest about not being an asshole? Maybe if gwern were to repress his desire to be an asshole long enough to have a civil discussion with me, he would discover that I have legitimate reasons for thinking as I do, and then would lose his motivation for being an asshole. Being a rationalist means not being ruled by System 1, and allowing for errors to be corrected.
I certainly don't consider my behavior prior to being accused of dishonesty as being rude. Do you?
You behaved in a way that predictable annoyed gwern. I don't care very much about whether or not to apply the word "rude" to that behavior.
I find your proposition that it was to be poorly defended with vague, contradictory, and outright false statements.
Basically you still fail to understand what I'm arguing. Nothing less, nothing more.
Is that so surprising, as to provide significant information?
Confirmations of past predictions are in the...
Apparently, I am not entitled to be treated with basic civility. Or, at least, not according to gwern. It started when gwern wrote
>>All you're saying is that Saddam called the USA's bluff and was wrong and it was disastrous. That could EASILY have happened with an attempt by the US to demand inspections from Russia.
>Um, no, because the USSR had no reason to think and be correct in thinking it served a useful role for the USA which meant the threats were bluffs that were best ridden out lest it damage both allies' long-term goals.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfd/a_parable_of_elites_and_takeoffs/b1xz
I read this as saying the USSR should call the bluff, which made no sense in relation to gwern's other posts. When I asked whether this was actually what was intended, gwern got pissed off, insisted that there was no way a good faith reading could see the post as saying that, and accused me of deliberately misunderstanding. I have bent over backwards to resolve this civilly, but my repeated attempts to get gwern to explain how I had misunderstood the sentence achieved nothing but the accusation that I was making an “underhanded” effort to get gwern to respond. Despite not being willing to discuss the matter in *that* thread, gwern brought the matter up in a comment thread for a completely different article. Throughout our encounters, gwern has been incredibly rude, referring to me as an “idiot” and “troll” (rather hypocritical, given the ridiculously silly claims made by gwern, such as that "A, therefore, A" is not a circular argument), and generally treating me with an utter lack of respect. And in defense, gwern has pointed to high karma and being here a long time as making any accusation of inappropriate behavior “presumptuous”. Because apparently, the popular kids can't be criticized by mere common folk.
Looking at the stats, gwern is indeed the top recent contributor, which makes this behavior all the more worthy of comment. If some random poster were being rude, that would be worrisome, but the fact that the top contributor thinks that a high karma score is license to egregiously violate Wheton's rule suggests that there may be something wrong with the site as a whole.
EY has referred to a need to have this be a “Well-Kept Garden”. So I would like to know whether gwern's behavior is the sort of thing that people here think is acceptable in this garden.