Calling someone rude is a defacto claim that they have an obligation not to be so.
No.
If I say that it's not in your own self interest to not bang your head against the wall I'm not saying that I forbid you from banging your head against the wall. I'm not creating an obligation for the other person. If the like getting their head hurt they can continue banging their head against the wall and I don't want to take that freedom away from them.
I follow the moral principle of giving people information about how they are hurting themselves, I'm not forbidding them from hurting themselves.
I have also no problem with someone making an expected utility analysis and finding that being rude is having the most utility to pursue that course of action. In the case of rudeness ends can completely justify means.
Furthermore you ignore a bunch of emotional effects that come along with putting obligations on other people. It makes you feel bad when they don't follow your dictates. If someone bangs their hand against the wall after I told him that it's not in his self interest and he continues, I might feel pity but not anger.
Getting rid of shoulds is one of the CBT exercises of identifying distorted thinking that David Burns described in the Feeling Good Handbook. It's not just about changing around a few words.
You think that Alice should meet Bob and Alice. You feel bad and get angry at Alice. Then you want to be an asshole to Alice but you think you shouldn't, so you suppress your anger. That's a strategy you can use to live your life and it can make you depressed.
If you would get rid of the "should's" in the first place, then you wouldn't feel bad about the situation. But of course you are free to bang your head against the wall and suffer. If I want to be cynic I can add that sometimes it needs a lot of suffering till people see that there a different way that doesn't involve suffering. Maybe a person hasn't suffered enough from banging their head against the wall and they still need a few rounds till their head hurts enough that they will stop. It's their issue not mine.
People generally distinguish between such cases as "You shoplifted, and now there will be negative consequences" and "You failed to pay protection money to the mob, and now there will negative consequences". You can say that there is no essential difference between them, and in both cases you feel quite comfortable with telling the person in question that their actions are not in their self interest, but most people accept the idea that there are standards for behavior other than mere self-interest. Furthermore, if you merely intended t...
Apparently, I am not entitled to be treated with basic civility. Or, at least, not according to gwern. It started when gwern wrote
>>All you're saying is that Saddam called the USA's bluff and was wrong and it was disastrous. That could EASILY have happened with an attempt by the US to demand inspections from Russia.
>Um, no, because the USSR had no reason to think and be correct in thinking it served a useful role for the USA which meant the threats were bluffs that were best ridden out lest it damage both allies' long-term goals.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfd/a_parable_of_elites_and_takeoffs/b1xz
I read this as saying the USSR should call the bluff, which made no sense in relation to gwern's other posts. When I asked whether this was actually what was intended, gwern got pissed off, insisted that there was no way a good faith reading could see the post as saying that, and accused me of deliberately misunderstanding. I have bent over backwards to resolve this civilly, but my repeated attempts to get gwern to explain how I had misunderstood the sentence achieved nothing but the accusation that I was making an “underhanded” effort to get gwern to respond. Despite not being willing to discuss the matter in *that* thread, gwern brought the matter up in a comment thread for a completely different article. Throughout our encounters, gwern has been incredibly rude, referring to me as an “idiot” and “troll” (rather hypocritical, given the ridiculously silly claims made by gwern, such as that "A, therefore, A" is not a circular argument), and generally treating me with an utter lack of respect. And in defense, gwern has pointed to high karma and being here a long time as making any accusation of inappropriate behavior “presumptuous”. Because apparently, the popular kids can't be criticized by mere common folk.
Looking at the stats, gwern is indeed the top recent contributor, which makes this behavior all the more worthy of comment. If some random poster were being rude, that would be worrisome, but the fact that the top contributor thinks that a high karma score is license to egregiously violate Wheton's rule suggests that there may be something wrong with the site as a whole.
EY has referred to a need to have this be a “Well-Kept Garden”. So I would like to know whether gwern's behavior is the sort of thing that people here think is acceptable in this garden.