While the framing of treating lack of social grace as a virtue captures something true, it's too incomplete and imo can't support its strong conclusion. The way I would put it is that you have correctly observed that, whatever the benefits of social grace are, it comes at a cost, and sometimes this cost is not worth paying. So in a discussion, if you decline to pay the cost of social grace, you can afford to buy other virtues instead.^[1]

For example, it is socially graceful not to tell the Emperor Who Wears No Clothes that he wears no clothes. Whereas someone who lacks social grace is more likely to tell the emperor the truth.

But first of all, I disagree with the frame that lack of social grace is itself a virtue. In the case of the emperor, for example, the virtues are rather legibility and non-deception, traded off against whichever virtues the socially graceful response would've gotten.

And secondly, often the virtues you can buy with social grace are worth far more than whatever you could gain by declining to be socially graceful. For example, when discussing politics with someone of an opposing ideology, you could decline to be socially graceful and tell your interlocutor to their face that you hate them and everything they stand for. This would be virtuously legible and non-deceptive, at the cost of immediately ending the conversation and thus forfeiting any chance of e.g. gains from trade, coming to a compromise, etc.

One way I've seen this cost manifest on LW is that some authors complain that there's a style of commenting here that makes it unenjoyable to post here as an author. As a result, those authors are incentivized to post less, or to post elsewhere.^[2]

And as a final aside, I'm skeptical of treating Feynman as socially graceless. Maybe he was less deferential towards authority figures, but if he had told nothing but the truth to all the authority figures (who likely included some naked emperors) throughout his life, his career would've presumably ended long before he could've gotten his Nobel Prize. And b), IIRC the man's physics lectures are just really fun to watch, and I'm pretty confident that a sufficiently socially graceless person would not make for a good teacher. For example, it is socially graceful not to belittle fledgling students as intellectual inferiors, even though they in some ways are just that.

1. ^{^}

   Related: I wrote this comment and this follow-up where I wished that Brevity was considered a rationalist virtue. Because if there's no counterbalancing virtue to trade off against other virtues like legibility and truth-seeking, then supposedly virtuous discussions are incentivized to become arbitrarily long.

2. ^{^}

   The moderation log of users banned by other users is a decent proxy for the question of which authors have considered which commenters to be too costly to interact with, whether due to lack of social grace of something else.

I just tried it on mobile in a browser, and it works the same there: edit your comment via the ⋮ menu in the top right, and select the text of the paragraphs you want to turn into a quote. Then a popup with formatting options opens where you can find the quotation formatting behind another ⋮ option.

By the way, LW quotes look like this.

Not every post is addressed at everyone. This post (and others like Death With Dignity) is mostly for those who already believe the world is likely ending. For others, there are far more suitable resources, whether on LW, as books (incl. Yudkowsky's and Soares' recent If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies), or as podcasts.

Though re:

I could be convinced we're in serious danger. I could even be convinced the odds are bad. But I need to believe those odds can move: that the right decisions, policies, and technical work can shift them. A fixed 99% doesn't call me to action; it calls me to make peace. And I'm not ready to make peace yet.

Yudkowsky argues against using the concept of "p(doom)" for reasons like this. See this post.

I only realized halfway through that this was a quote. Suggestion: format it as one. (On desktop, by selecting all the quote text and then choosing the quotation mark symbol.)

+1. In general, if an expert has already put in the time to write such a detailed comment, I strongly encourage them to turn it into a top-level post. If it sounds daunting to edit a comment to the ostensibly higher standards of a top-level post, then don't; just add a brief disclaimer at the top à la "off-the-cuff comment turned into top-level post" or something and link to this original comment thread. And maybe add more section headings or subheadings so the post is easier to navigate and parse.

I skimmed your tweet and didn't see what evidence you used to support your assertions in it.

I was somewhat surprised you didn't mention bad / autumn weather in your post as a potential contributing factor to depression or sleep problems at this time of year, but apparently California is a lot warmer and sunnier right now than it is here in Germany.

Tangentially related comment: From webcomics like xkcd or SMBC, I was under the impression that alt text is automatically displayed on mouse hover, but apparently that's realized via the "title" HTML tag instead. For instance, the HTML for today's xkcd looks as follows, and only the content of the "title" tag is displayed on hover:

<img src="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geologic_core_sample.png" title="If you drill at the right angle and time things perfectly, your core sample can include a section of a rival team's coring equipment." alt="Geologic Core Sample" srcset="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geologic_core_sample_2x.png 2x" style="image-orientation:none">

That almost makes me wonder why alt text isn't displayed on mouse hover when no title text is set, but I suppose that runs contrary to the core purpose of alt text, namely that it's only displayed when the image is not.

I can certainly empathize with that, but is it still "heroic" responsibility if someone else tries to push it onto you? The situation you describe sounds like one of the friend exhibiting emotional blackmail or attention-seeking behavior.

Here's a LW discussion thread of this article from back then, including a review comment I made with some extra info which I think still holds up well.