I don't think I need to be polite when I'm having everything I write be downvoted and "argued" against by about twelve different people.
Consider the case where some mugger is pointing a gun at you. That should help give you a more practical perspective. Sure, the mugger doesn't deserve politeness. It isn't fair that politeness is necessary. But you still need to be polite to him if you wish to minimize the chance that he will shoot you in the head.
Sometimes other people really do behaving like dicks and be unreasonable or unfair. Yet that doesn't mean you are obliged to sabotage yourself to get petty vengeance. You are free to follow whatever course of actions get you the best outcome. So what if that course happens to involve typing words that will cause other people to believe you are being polite to them? What matters is whether you get what you want in the end.
I was anticipating that people would evaluate my comments based on the arguments I made rather than on their general tone and I didn't update when that was obviously false which was a big mistake. I was expecting that rationalists placed a low value on politeness, like I do. I still place that low value on politeness and I still think many of my arguments are correct but I'm willing to jump through hoops and am willing to accept the fact that others don't accept my arguments.
I need the practice. Even though I don't like being polite and don't think it's o...
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
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