and often makes the comment unnecessarily rude
Rudeness is sometimes necessary, otherwise the Overton window of what can be mentioned in a polite society shifts:
There are facts that were once known, sometimes generally known, that are now known to but a few. Some of this information loss is caused by changes in occupational patterns – farmers automatically know something about heritability, clerks and workers in dark satanic mills, not so much.
But mostly these facts are unpleasant, at least to some ears. People who mention such facts are punished – generally in terms of their careers, not being invited to parties, etc. That’s enough to cause a 10 or 20-fold drop in visibility, which ought to tell you something about how brave people are. Many people assume that everyone is secretly aware of those unpleasant facts, but that is not the case. A generation that has grown up never hearing those facts will be almost entirely unaware of them, in part because their personal life experiences don’t impinge on those patterns much. This means that they can and sometimes do make serious mistakes that those ‘secretly aware’ types never would.
Greg Cochran, by the way, tends to be rude.
Rudeness is sometimes necessary
I submit that if Viliam hadn't understood that he wouldn't have felt the need to say "... unnecessarily rude".
Do you think it is at all likely that by writing the way he does Eugine is keeping LW's Overton window in a better place than it would be if he stated equivalent opinions without going out of his way to offend?
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.