Libertarians are supposed to refrain from initiating force, while pacifists refrain from using any force. That's theoretically the distinction between pacifists and libertarians. In practice politically, very little difference.
As for the boys in Wyoming, I don't think they're much better. Maybe worse. Sure, if you show up with an actual gun and shoot at them, they're likely to shoot back. But for all the huffy talk about how government initiates force against them, what do they actually do to retaliate? At least City Beta Boy Snowden actually did something.
If all their "eternal vigilance" amounts to is bitching and moaning when their liberty is infringed, what good are they?
Remember the context -- we're talking about persuasion in the social setting, about meme and value propagation, basically. In this context "pacifism" means "tolerance" in the sense of "you don't believe the same things as I do and that's fine".
Scott, known on LessWrong as Yvain, recently wrote a post complaining about an inaccurate rape statistic.
Arthur Chu, who is notable for winning money on Jeopardy recently, argued against Scott's stance that we should be honest in arguments in a comment thread on Jeff Kaufman's Facebook profile, which can be read here.
Scott just responded here, with a number of points relevant to the topic of rationalist communities.
I am interested in what LW thinks of this.
Obviously, at some point being polite in our arguments is silly. I'd be interested in people's opinions of how dire the real world consequences have to be before it's worthwhile debating dishonestly.