[Most of this is meta-discussion. At the end of your comment you said something that wasn't. If anyone else is actually reading this, they're probably more interested in the non-meta. They should look ahead for the next comment in square brackets.]

Trying to extract an apology

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Obviously you are under no sort of obligation to apologize when criticized. But if your reaction is that you

• do not apologize, AND
• do not attempt to justify what you wrote, AND
• ask the person criticizing you to stop doing so

then it seems reasonable to point out what's going on.

through harassment

Harassment? Everything I have written in this discussion has been in direct response to something you wrote. I have not threatened you or insulted you. I seriously can't imagine what I have done that a reasonable person would describe as harassment.

has SJW written all over it

If that's what I pattern-match to in your brain, I'm not sure there's much I can do about it. (I am with SJWs in so far as they stick up for groups that tend to get treated badly; I am against them in so far as they end up abusing other groups, treat everything as tribal warfare, and/or employ blatantly stupid arguments in doing so. Make of that what you will.)

Might as well not chase me into the afterlife for it

Good grief. I criticized something you wrote. I responded to your responses to the criticism. When you said you don't like being criticized and asked me to stop, I said "I'll stop if you will" and happened to mention that you had neither justified nor retracted what you said. That's all.

what kind of behaviour towards me I will or will not tolerate

It appears that you will not tolerate (1) criticism and/or (2) not being given the last word merely because you would prefer it. You might want to rethink that.

a milder form of declaration of enmity

I think your enmity-detectors are oversensitive, and I think that given how this discussion began you've got quite a nerve complaining that someone isn't being friendly enough towards you. To put it explicitly: I do not in any way regard you as an enemy (though I am wondering whether I should given your remarks about enmity here), I see no reason whatever why we should not be allies in the future, but I strongly disagree with some things you have been saying in this discussion and how you have been saying them. That's all.

[Non-meta here:]

as it happens I don't believe that

OK. That's better than the impression I got from the way you began:

If anything, not being able / advised to discuss any of the above topics reflects significantly less rationality than the average person [...] the best thing I could say about a crowd that would abide by such norms is that they have a highly lopsided intellectual development [...] the failure to handle banal conversation topics like pop culture or humour casts doubt on the truth or intellectual value of the things such a crowd does accept to discuss

which was (at least to my reading) all about the cognitive failures one could infer from requiring those limitations.

(If your argument was intended to be "We'd only need those limitations if we had Bad Characteristic X, but obviously we don't, so we don't need the limitations" -- with the second half of the argument so obvious as not even to need stating -- then I submit that it was a mistake to choose for Bad Characteristic X something that (1) LW documentedly exhibits a way-above-average rate of and (2) LW folks have more than once been attacked for in the past.)

If you are offended by any of gjm's statements, I suggest you walk away now, because what I'm going to say is going to be just as offensive to you as anything that gjm has posted.

Right, I take issue with your statement that autistic people are irrational, but I think that point has already been made for me. What I am taking issue with now is:

then I think that's a sad state of affairs.

You believe it is a sad state of affairs that people on LessWrong are discouraged from discussing topics that will harm people more than benefit them? Am I correct in therefore saying that you believe it is a sad state of affairs people on LessWrong are discouraged from doing stupid and irrational things? Because if so, that doesn't seem like a sad thing at all.

Consider the case where political commentary is viewed as just as acceptable a topic of debate as any other. Yes, it would be ideal to have everyone here so rational they can discuss politics freely, without risking harm to their rationality. Yet it is a fact that Politics is the Mind-Killer, and this is not going to go away and it is not going to change because you believe in freedom of speech. And I don't think this is a particularly sad state of affairs, for the very fact that people avoid things that make them irrational is a promising sign that they value their lack of bias.

But you seem to think that the freedom to say silly things like "autistic people are less rational than others", or to bring up disruptive topics, outweighs that consideration.

At this point, I would like to recommend that you close the window right now, turn away from the computer and think hard about whether complete freedom of speech is one of those things that, in the minds of some people, automatically equals a win. I can't recall the technical term for it, but I do recall quite strongly that it will kill your mind.