I either don’t understand what you’re saying, or don’t have any idea on what grounds you say what you’re saying. (The latter if you mean that nowadays LW is so supersaturated with progressivism that gwern wouldn’t bother to defend himself. The former if you mean something else.)
He didn’t “beg for mercy”. He (1) criticized the person who reported what he’d done for breaking IRC norms by posting bits of logs; (2) agreed that what he said was unpleasant and rude; (3) explained why he thought he shouldn’t be expected to ensure that he doesn’t do it again.
I’m sure you’d prefer him to have said that it’s perfectly reasonable and correct to describe trans people in the way he (jokingly) did, but if we take him at face value (which I see no good reason not to) then he doesn’t think it is (or at least didn’t at the time). None the less, I don’t see how his response can be categorized as “begging for mercy”.
(In particular, I don’t think anyone threatened him with anything and I don’t think he made any kind of request for such threats not to be carried out. In which case, he certainly didn’t literally beg for mercy or even ask for it. I suppose it’s possible that you’re using the term extremely broadly, to cover any response more temperate than “I am completely in the right and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves”, but I don’t think that’s how the rest of the world uses “beg for mercy”.)
I made a typo. See the edited version.
OK, that makes more sense, but still not very much. gwern did defend himself. Maybe not in the way you’d prefer, but he did defend himself.
He begged for mercy, that’s very different than defending oneself.
He didn’t “beg for mercy”. He (1) criticized the person who reported what he’d done for breaking IRC norms by posting bits of logs; (2) agreed that what he said was unpleasant and rude; (3) explained why he thought he shouldn’t be expected to ensure that he doesn’t do it again.
I’m sure you’d prefer him to have said that it’s perfectly reasonable and correct to describe trans people in the way he (jokingly) did, but if we take him at face value (which I see no good reason not to) then he doesn’t think it is (or at least didn’t at the time). None the less, I don’t see how his response can be categorized as “begging for mercy”.
(In particular, I don’t think anyone threatened him with anything and I don’t think he made any kind of request for such threats not to be carried out. In which case, he certainly didn’t literally beg for mercy or even ask for it. I suppose it’s possible that you’re using the term extremely broadly, to cover any response more temperate than “I am completely in the right and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves”, but I don’t think that’s how the rest of the world uses “beg for mercy”.)