I don't understand the point of this.

I mean, I get that OrphanWilde is feeling very smug at having been able to "mug" some other people in the discussion here, and that this mugging is meant to be analogous both to the situation (deliberately incoherently) described in the article and to things that happen in real life.

But ... so what? Are we meant to be startled by the revelation that sometimes people exploit other people? Hardly.

And what seems to be one of the points you say you're trying to make -- that when this happens we are liable to assume it's our own fault rather than the other person's malice -- seems to me to be very ill supported by anything that's happened here. (1) I don't see other people assuming that the confusion here is their own fault, I see them trying to be tactful about the fact that it's yours. (2) I would expect posters here to be more willing to give benefit of the doubt than, e.g., in a business situation where they and the other party are literally competing for money. (3) You say "Here, I mugged you for a few seconds or maybe minutes [...] in real life, that would be hours, weeks, months" -- but I see no reason to expect people to be orders of magnitude slower in "real life" than here.

Further, you didn't in fact exploit anyone because (unless you're really malicious and actually enjoy seeing people waste time to no purpose, in which case fuck you) you didn't gain anything. You (at most) just wasted some people's time. Congratulations, but it's not like that's terribly hard to do. And, perhaps, you just made a bunch of people that little bit less inclined to be helpful and understanding to some confused-seeming guy on Less Wrong in the future.

I'm downvoting your post here and your replies in the comments, and would encourage other readers to do likewise. Making Less Wrong incrementally less useful in order to be able to preen about how you exploited people is not behaviour I wish to encourage here, and I see no actual insight (either overtly expressed or implicit) that counterbalances your act of defection.

[EDITED to add: OH HA HA I JUST MUGGED YOU AREN'T I CLEVER]