I also(?) have a sort of intuitive sense that this post is Not Less Wrong, in some sense. (Probably because "contemporary politics, boo."
At the same time, I'm glad you wrote it, glad I read it, and I got useful things from it. Since I wouldn't have read it if you hadn't posted it here, that kind of commits me to thinking it's lucky for me that you did.
I don't find the categories confusing, I'd speculate that this is because there's a lot of overlap in the ontologies being used by you, me, and Nerst- these feel like clusters-I-recognize-an...
This makes sense, and I think it helps my understanding a lot, but it feels importantly incomplete. What's the meta-context you use to decide which context to use?
I can maybe guess at some of it.
You're probably trying to get along with other people, so you look for ways their statements are true rather than false.
You probably want to save face, so you'll avoid constructions that could reflect badly on you if quoted in a different context. (Is malicious quotation a huge problem in this society, or are there sufficient cultural antibodies against it? If the latter, what do these antibodies look like in practice?)
Are there more specific cultural rules for context-switching?
"When all its work is done" definitely supports the ironic interpretation.
I intuitively read this more as taking a little consolation in the bigness of the truth relative to the petty little intrigues and dramas that distort it. I agree that for people with out values this is illegitimate, and I think it's kind of a stretch for the speaker, too, but I don't see them as being cannily ironic so much a grasping for solace; same tone you get from Marcus Aurelius when he reassures you than eventually you'll be dead.
I mean, I think the "plea for speed" is a norm...
Every memorable apology I've ever gotten has hailed an update, although sometimes it lags a little bit- (eg person updates –> person spends some time applying the update to all affected beliefs –> person apologizes).
This mostly holds for apologies i've given as well, excluding a couple where transgression and apology were separated by enough years to make pinning it on a specific update difficult.