All right, I'll dissect that comment.
Some of it was mistaken assumptions about karma.
Okay: what mistaken assumptions about karma? What false beliefs did you have about karma, and how did they mislead your actions?
a huge amount of underlying structure which is necessary to explain what looks like seemingly irrational behavior (to someone who doesn't have that structure)
Okay: how does what underlying structure explain what apparently irrational behavior?
(until you catch the underlying regularities and make the right assumptions)
Okay: And those regularities and assumptions are...?
terms of art" that are not recognizable as such to the newbie
Okay: and I can find your list of these, and how you misunderstood them, where?
the underlying consistency of the "irrationality"
Which takes what form, please?
the necessary understandings.
Such as?
One must understand the expected process and expectations of contribution and understand the "terms of art" that are invariable [sic] used in the evaluatory [sic] comments. Clear and confused have very specific meanings here that do not unpack correctly unless you have the underlying structure/understanding.
And the process is? The expectations are? The terms mean? The structure/understanding is? What is the mystery you have unraveled here, please show the class.
most of the behavior that totally baffled me before and appeared irrational now makes total sense
Do tell. How does it make sense?
The rules are totally different here from what I expected/assumed and the unnoticed phase change caused my "rational" behavior to be deemed "irrational" (only because it was ;-) and "irrational" behavior to be widely accepted (not what you expect on a site devoted to rationality ;-).
And the rules are...?
Ending the dissection here because comments can't be arbitrarily long, and because it's all the same. You throw around words labeling things you supposedly understand without ever describing those things. Over and over and over.
Okay. So the comment is unclear and incomplete but not unwelcome with a +5 karma). Clearly, I need to slow down and expand, expand, expand. I'm willing to keep fighting with it and do that and learn. Where is an appropriate place to do so?
Premise: There exists a community whose top-most goal is to maximally and fairly fulfill the goals of all of its members. They are approximately as rational as the 50th percentile of this community. They politely invite you to join. You are in no imminent danger.
Do you:
Premise: The only rational answer given the current information is the last one.
What I’m attempting to eventually proveThe hypothesis that I'm investigating iswhether"Option 2 is the only long-term rational answer". (Yes, this directly challenges several major current premises so my arguments are going to have to be totally clear. I am fully aware of the rather extensive Metaethics sequence and the vast majority of what it links to and will not intentionally assume any contradictory premises without clear statement and argument.)It might be an interesting and useful exercise for the reader to stop and specify what information they would be looking next for before continuing. It would be nice if an ordered list could be developed in the comments.
Obvious Questions:
<Spoiler Alert>