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Kaj_Sotala comments on Thoughts on moral intuitions - LessWrong
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I have said you read the post uncharitably, which implies that I think that you have interpreted the post incorrectly, taking the interpretation you can most easily argue against rather than the interpretation that would be expected from a reasonable writer. For example, it seems that you assume that the post was arguing in favour of the most primitive moral relativism of "all preferences are equal" sort. Which is not true. For another example, calling argumentum ad Hitlerum suggests that you assumed that Kaj_Sotala was comparing someone to nazis to shed negative light on them (because that is usually called such). But that's also a misinterpretation since the original post used the analogy as an exaggerated illustration of what the vegans might feel - upon reading that neither I got the suspicion that Kaj thinks eating meat is comparable to the Holocaust, nor did I feel like reading an anti-conservative (or pro-vegan, or whatever) political argument.
No, you've misread me. As I said, while the author accepts the presuppositions of moral relativism, he was busy climbing out of the relativist swamp to be able to assert his own values. He attempts to resolve the unease of the liberal moral relativist at the apparent contradiction between their avowed moral relativism and the assertion of liberal values.
It's a backhanded "tu quoque". Basically, yeah, we're forcing our values on people, but everybody does it. It's much like Doug Wilson's "tu quoque" defense of faith - rationality isn't self justifying, so reason is just "another faith". Everybody's doing it.
Both of these tu quoques operate by destroying the distinctions made by the concepts in question, faith and force. Just as no one believes that having faith that quacking like a duck will start your car is "the same" as relying on reason and evidence to use your key, no one believes that my desire to murder you is "the same" as your desire not to be murdered.
In his argument, he pits a conservative straw man and a vegan straw man against his relatively favorably portrayed liberal moral relativist. It's peculiar that you accuse me of straw manning Kaj, when his whole argument is based in contrasts to straw men he disagrees with, which is part of what allows him to blithely assert liberal values despite his admission that "we're no different than the conservatives".
Notice who's missing in his political universe? Libertarians - those who assert the difference between my desire to murder you and your desire not to be murdered. Yet another straw man aspect to his argument - those who would most strenuously object to his thesis don't even exist.
Hardly strawmen. The characterization of (some) conservatives was based (among other things) on the violence and harassment inflicted against LGBT people, while the vegan characterization was based on an essay I once read which made the Auschwitz / slaughterhouse comparison directly. (I'd give you the link, but it's in Finnish.) I'm also not entirely unsympathetic towards the view in that essay.
ETA: However, since it's obvious that the original wording is diverting attention from the actual point of the essay, I've edited that sentence. Instead of saying that gays shouldn't be killed, it now says "people are just saying that people shouldn’t be denied equal rights simply because of their sexual orientation."
Giving examples in terms of every existing political group would have made the post unbearably long.