I view this as code for "whether or not they have in-status as a Yudkowskian Rationalist".

This would be untenable as an actual interpretation of the words written. Your straw man use here is unambiguous and intentional. People you communicate with here in the future should beware that you will not communicate in good faith.

Your point here can easily be interpreted as saying that if they don't talk like us then we can probably conclude that they're too stupid to learn, and that's what I think is wrong.

No. The quoted point cannot be interpreted as saying that (easily or otherwise) by someone who comprehends English and is intending to truthfully represent the words.

Your claim illustrates exactly what's wrong with the social norms of the site.

I maintain that your intended program of influence is toxic and shall oppose it wherever possible for the reasons specified. I simultaneously lower the credence I assign to the sincerity of your previous statements (given the strong discord between observed behaviors and exhortations.)

Yes, at some level one can interpret Kant as saying something like "use decision theory, not game theory."

Most of the world does not speak in the same way that LessWrong does, but they still have valuable things to say. Recognizing that and adapting to it would be beneficial.

Your intended influence is not in the direction of making it more easy for the rest of the world to communicate effectively on lesswrong---in fact it is the reverse. DaFranker is already far more willing than most to attempt to communicate with you despite your manner and without reciprocating your debate tactics. The presumption you made is that DaFranker should be expected to push himself to implausible extremes of tolerance, patience and rational thinking so that he is somehow able to resurrect the possibility of communicating with you. This kind of expectation is the opposite of what it takes to adapt to communicating with normal people.

Most of the world cares about belligerent tone. Your argument undermines your position.

I'll just throw in a random (read: self-selected, personal, cherry-picked) datapoint here:

Your tone in this thread greatly annoys me, and disrupts my ability to correctly infer the meaning of the words and sentences you have written. What's more, the perception I get of your attitude make me model you as very confrontational, conflictual, rebellious, and deliberately inflammatory in an attempt to subvert group norms and appeal to emotional intuitions to reform the site's guidelines and said norms. All of this combined makes it difficult for me to engage directly with your main points and reason correctly, particularly how the automatic Type-1 emotional responses I have to your writing completely disrupt my thoughts and insert dangerous anti-epistemology straight into my stream of consciousness.

My first guess is that this is sufficient as an example of why tone is somewhat relevant. Again, I have quite a bit of difficulty in properly reasoning through your arguments and avoiding the typical pitfalls and mistakes (in a mental exercise, I caught myself strawmanning your arguments at least three times) without going up a level of meta like I'm attempting to do in this comment.

10 utilons plus 0 utilons is equivalent to 5 utilons plus 5 utilons not because their average is the same but because their total is the same.

This is incoherent. "Average is the same" and "total is the same" are logically equivalent for cases where n is the same, which I think are all we're concerned about here.

Disclaimers discourage argumentative clash and take extra time to think of beforehand.

I like to think of possible holes in my arguments before I make them. Sometimes I discover minor holes that don't invalidate the whole argument but do reduce its force. (For example, the argument isn't universally valid but only if XYZ is true, and XYZ seems pretty likely to be true but we can't be sure yet.) Should I not point them out myself? Or are you thinking of some other kinds of disclaimers?

3 Disclaimers discourage argumentative clash and take extra time to think of beforehand. Simply putting down a disclaimer allows you to marginalize issues that others might have with your post, it makes relevant criticism superficially appear less relevant. A better practice that we should be cultivated is to simply concede things after those things are pointed out.

Disagree. I support using disclaimers to communicate your point clearly. I don't consider 'argumentative clash' to be an intrinsic good to encourage, especially not argumentative clash about points you could (and should) have conceded already. That distracts from the potential for useful discussion, that actually adds information that hasn't already been considered.

Making overgeneralized claims and deliberately refraining from putting in any clarifications or disclaimers is a terrible idea. It encourages arguments that achieve nothing more than force you to retreat to the sane position that you should have presented in the first place. Consider hiding disclaimers away in footnotes so as to not distract from the flow.

You say that they are good social skills. I agree, given the social norms of this site. But I think those social norms are detrimental to cultivating rationality efficiently and so I want to go about changing the social norms of this site.

I oppose your attempt to influence the social norms of this site in this manner. The influence is toxic.

2 I don't think we should react to differences in tone the way that we do. The fact that our community has different norms depending on whether or not you use certain tones is problematic. We should try to minimize the impact that things like tone have. Substantive issues ought to be a priority and they ought to dominate to the point where things like tone barely matter at all.

<ironic but sincere>That's fucking bullshit! Tone matters. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you that makes you so oblivious to the actual real world consequences of the proposals you are making but you really need to be slapped down like a bitch for the good of the tribe. Your influence and credibility needs to be crushed so these damn fool ideas of yours get no traction. Seriously, shut the fuck up until you get a clue. YOU ARE DANGEROUS AND IGNORANT. Observers, please grant chaosmosis no social status or leeway when it comes to violating the norms that he (or she, or it) wishes to oppose. Naive fucktard.</ironic but sincere>

My claim here is that the tone in the above XML-tagged paragraph would be completely inappropriate and unhelpful in any situation where it was not illustrative. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the actual information conveyed by the insulting and vulgar presentation that isn't entirely reasonable. In terms of "substantive issues" the above paragraph is noble and virtuous. But tone does matter and, as a matter of general policy, that kind of tone should never be accepted, regardless of who the offender is.

At a more mild level, where the disrespectful tone is below the threshold of outright swearing and abuse, tone gives reliable indications of how the person is likely to respond to continued conversation. It's a good indication of whether they will respond in good faith or need to be treated as a hostile rhetorician that is not vulnerable to persuasion (or learning).

I don't have any previous experience with this sort of thing, but judging from what I hear and read, I'm supposed to be asking why all this is happening, and why it's happening to me. Honestly, those questions are about the farthest thing from my mind.

Partly, that’s because they aren't hard questions. Why does our world have gravity? Why does the sun rise in the East? There are technical answers, but the metaphysical answer is simple: that’s how reality works. So too here. Only in the richest parts of the rich world of the twenty-first century could anyone entertain the thought that we should expect long, pain-free lives. Suffering and premature death (an odd phrase: what does it mean to call death "premature"?) are constant presences in the lives of most of the peoples of the Earth, and were routine parts of life for generations of our predecessors in this country—as they still are today, for those with their eyes open. Stage 4 cancers happen to middle-aged men and women, seemingly out of the blue, because that's how reality works.

As for why this is happening to me in particular, the implicit point of the question is an argument: I deserve better than this. There are two responses. First, I don't—I have no greater moral claim to be free from unwanted pain and loss than anyone else. Plenty of people more virtuous than I am suffer worse than I have, and some who don't seem virtuous at all skate through life with surprising ease. Welcome to the world. Once again, it seems to me that this claim arises from the incredibly unusual experience of a small class of wealthy professionals in the wealthiest parts of the world today. We think we live in a world governed by merit and moral desert. It isn't so. Luck, fortune, fate, providence—call it what you will, but whatever your preferred label, it has far more to do with the successes of the successful than what any of us deserves. Aristocracies of the past awarded wealth and position based on the accident of birth. Today's meritocracies award wealth and position based on the accident of being in the right place at the right time. The difference is smaller than we tend to think. Once you understand that, it’s hard to maintain a sense of grievance in the face of even the ugliest medical news. I’ve won more than my share of life's lotteries. It would seem churlish to rail at the unfairness of losing this one—if indeed I do lose it: which I may not.

The second response is simpler; it comes from the movie "Unforgiven." Gene Hackman is dying, and says to Clint Eastwood: "I don't deserve this. To die like this. I was building a house." Eastwood responds: "Deserve’s got nothing to do with it."

That gets it right, I think. It's a messed-up world, upside-down as often as it's rightside up. Bad things happen; future plans (that house Hackman was building) come to naught. Deserve's got nothing to do with it.

--William J. Stuntz, discussing his cancer diagnosis

Apologies for the length, but I wanted to include the full substantive point and hated to snip lines here and there. For what it's worth, Prof. Stuntz was a devout Christian, and the linked post went on to discuss his theological views on why "something deep within us expects, even demands moral order—in a world that shouts from the rooftops that no such order exists." Obviously I draw a different conclusion about this conflict, but I still respect that he could take such an unflinching view of how morally empty nature really is.

This is the same ethical judgement that an average utilitarian makes when they say that, to calculate social good, we should calculate the average utility of the population

This is the part that I think is wrong. You don't assess your average utility when you evaluate your utility function, you evaluate your aggregate utility. 10 utilons plus 0 utilons is equivalent to 5 utilons plus 5 utilons not because their average is the same but because their total is the same.

If we reprogrammed you to count paperclips instead, it wouldn't feel like different things having the same kind of motivation behind it. It wouldn't feel like doing-what's-right for a different guess about what's right. It would feel like doing-what-leads-to-paperclips.

Um, how do you know?