The rush of adrenalin and almost righteousness I had when I posted the above response? I really need to recognize that feeling, it's called being pissed off at a mental model I have of a certain world view from which I would expect a response similar to the parent post.

ChrisitanKI, I am sorry. Your later posts show that you are seriously addressing the topic and are not the straw-man I was attacking. Also, you at no point said "this does not affect MIRI so it's not a problem". You were only rebutting my assertion that a treasury default is an existential risk. I should have responded strictly to that instead of getting personal.

Thank you to MrMind for saying:

we evolved to quickly recognize emotions in others. I agree that in the context of an Internet discussion, the sensorial bandwith is so low that miscalibration is frequent, and so we should strive to achieve "non empathy"

and to wedrifid for saying:

You can certainly use the part of the 'empathy' modelling capacity to realise that telling other people what they feel tends to piss people off when you are wrong (and sometimes also when you are right).

This was what I needed, apparently, to come around.