"Trust your intuitions, but don't waste too much time arguing for them"

This is an excellent point. Intuition plays an absolutely crucial point in human thought, but there's no point in debating an opinion that (by definition, even) you're incapable of verbalizing your reasons for. Let me suggest another maxim:

Intuitions tell you where to look, not what you'll find.

wait so, are you agreeing with me or disagreeing?

What makes you think Hitler didn't deliberately think about how to yell at crowds?

You're confusing "reason" with inappropriate confidence in models and formalism.

I vote for the meta-thread convention, or for any other mechanism that keeps meta off the front page.

I think the main problem with mormon2's submission was not where it was posted, but that it was pointless and uninformed.

I suggest you run an experiment. Go try to eat at a restaurant and explicitly state your intention not to tip. I predict the waiter will tell you to fuck off, and if the manager gets called out, he'll tell you to fuck off too.

I basically agree with you, though I'm not sure the legal distinction between "theft" and "breach of contract" is meaningful in this context. As far as I know there's no law that says you have to tip at all. So from a technical legal perspective, failing to tip is neither theft nor breach of contract nor any other offense.

It may not be legal theft, but it's still moral theft. You sat down and ate with the mutual understanding that you would tip. The only reason the waiter is bringing you food is because of the expectation that you will tip. If you announced your intention not to tip, he would not serve you, he would tell you to fuck off. The tip is a payment for a service, it is not a gift. The fact that the agreement to pay is implicit, the fact that the precise amount of the payment is left partially unspecified are merely technicalities that do not change the basic fact that the tip is a payment, not a gift.

You don't tip in order to be altruistic, you tip because you informally agreed to tip by eating in a restaurant in the first place. If you don't tip (assuming the service was acceptable), you aren't being virtuous, you're being a thief.

Perhaps you should say the correct moral move is to tip exactly 15%.