I just... I don't... Why do people feel the need to do this on Eliezer's posts so much? Why can he not make a single statement without somebody finding some obscure, improbable, irrelevent exception, and loudly trumpeting it? Going through the sequence reruns, it's appalling how many people in the comments from the OB days just seem to be wilfully missing the point for the sake of generating a defensible disagreement.
Is it a desire to demonstrate how clever they are by being contrary, even if the disagreement is over some wholly irrelevent nitpick? Do they really think that the existence of imaginable but implausible exceptions is important? Is it just extreme, unrestrained pedantry?
All it does is pollute the discussion. If you don't believe the exceptions to the "buying lottery tickets is stupid" rule are common enough to be significant, and you don't believe that Eliezer thinks so either, and you don't believe anybody reading the post is going to be adversely affected by Eliezer's failure to explicitly mention these contrived exceptions to the rule, then why even bring it up?
ETA: And if you do believe any of those things, why?
All it does is pollute the discussion.
I generally agree with your post, but this phrasing is too strong.
It's a net bad, but there are good consequences.
Today's post, New Improved Lottery was originally publeslished on April 13, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments of the original post).
This post is part of a series rerunning Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts so those interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Lotteries: A Waste of Hope, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki, or creating exercises. Go here for more details, or to discuss the Sequence Reruns.