My point, proven by construction, was that burmesetheater’s comment was completely information-free and generic and extremely superficial and applicable to anything whatsoever, pure argument from authority; and yet it was sitting at >4 with no criticism. I could have simply downvoted it, but then burmesetheater (and all his upvoters) might go around thinking that his brave truthtelling was being censored and that LW is in even more dire need of his insights than he thought. So I gave it a politer and better response than it deserved.
Strange to call it ‘childish’ or ‘disrespectful’ when I put much more thought into it than he put into his original comment, nor is it out of character for me; I am very contemptuous of such lazy middlebrow throwaway bullshit comments, and always have been (see my recent comments on DALL-E 2 responding to people who have not taken 5 seconds to google things, or Mark Friedenbach freely bullshitting left and right about crypto and supercomputers and anonymity). As I said then, I’m not upset that you disagree with me or are wrong; I wouldn’t have added comments about China if I had thought that everyone agreed with me on it or that it was so obvious as to be beyond serious argument. I’m upset that you apparently don’t care in the least bit and put zero effort into being less wrong, and could not be bothered to even hint at anything that could be considered a genuine argument or point.
My point, proven by construction, was that burmesetheater’s comment was completely information-free and generic and extremely superficial and applicable to anything whatsoever, pure argument from authority; and yet it was sitting at >4 with no criticism. I could have simply downvoted it, but then burmesetheater (and all his upvoters) might go around thinking that his brave truthtelling was being censored and that LW is in even more dire need of his insights than he thought. So I gave it a politer and better response than it deserved.
Strange to call it ‘childish’ or ‘disrespectful’ when I put much more thought into it than he put into his original comment, nor is it out of character for me; I am very contemptuous of such lazy middlebrow throwaway bullshit comments, and always have been (see my recent comments on DALL-E 2 responding to people who have not taken 5 seconds to google things, or Mark Friedenbach freely bullshitting left and right about crypto and supercomputers and anonymity). As I said then, I’m not upset that you disagree with me or are wrong; I wouldn’t have added comments about China if I had thought that everyone agreed with me on it or that it was so obvious as to be beyond serious argument. I’m upset that you apparently don’t care in the least bit and put zero effort into being less wrong, and could not be bothered to even hint at anything that could be considered a genuine argument or point.
How would you feel if for a response I just copy pasted what you wrote with a few key words changed?