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 their nature not surprising. That's why they are called confirmations. When doing pattern matching it's useful to see whether you find confirmations or disconfirmation for the patterns that you see.
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.
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.
There might be some Western people who misunderstand what Buddhists mean with karma, that doesn't change much about the Buddhist concept. A good Christian doesn't sins because God is an authority in which he trusts and God put out rules that the Christian isn't supposed to do certain things. Buddhist thought doesn't have a God that does things like that.
If you jump up gravity pulls you down but that has nothing to do with you having an obligation to be near the ground. Buddhist karma is supposed to work just the same.
So, I shouldn't repress the desire to be an asshole?
I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't do.
In practice you might pretty soon stop desiring to act like an asshole when you act based on those desires and suffer the costs of acting like an asshole.
Being a rationalist means not being ruled by System 1, and allowing for errors to be corrected.
You are not correcting the error of frequently wanting to be an asshole towards other people.
If I think about what outcome I want to achieve based on enlightened self interest and pick the actions that leads to that outcome I don't have to let myself be ruled by my System 1.
You behaved in a way that predictable annoyed gwern.
It certainly wasn't predicted by me. If your point is that asking people to clarify their position will predictably annoy them, and that's a standard norm here, and that if I want to avoid annoying people, one step to accomplish that would be to not ask people to clarify their statements, well, that really doesn't sound like a discussion board I have much interest in participating in.
I don't care very much about whether or not to apply the word "rude" to that behavior.
Then why did you bri...
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.