I don’t think anyone understands the phrase “rationalist community” as implying a claim that its members don’t sometimes allow practical considerations to affect which topics they remain silent on. I don’t advocate that people leave out good points merely for being inconvenient to the case they’re making, optimizing for the audience to believe some claim regardless of the truth of that claim, as suggested by the prosecutor analogy. I advocate that people leave out good points for being relatively unimportant and predictably causing (part of) the audience to be harmfully irrational. I.e., if you saw someone else than the defendant commit the murder, then say that, but don’t start talking about how ugly the judge’s children are even if you think the ugliness of the judge’s children slightly helped inspire the real murderer. We can disagree about which discussions are more like talking about whether you saw someone else commit the murder and which discussions are more like talking about how ugly the judge’s children are.
I don’t think anyone understands the phrase “rationalist community” as implying a claim that its members don’t sometimes allow practical considerations to affect which topics they remain silent on. I don’t advocate that people leave out good points merely for being inconvenient to the case they’re making, optimizing for the audience to believe some claim regardless of the truth of that claim, as suggested by the prosecutor analogy. I advocate that people leave out good points for being relatively unimportant and predictably causing (part of) the audience to be harmfully irrational. I.e., if you saw someone else than the defendant commit the murder, then say that, but don’t start talking about how ugly the judge’s children are even if you think the ugliness of the judge’s children slightly helped inspire the real murderer. We can disagree about which discussions are more like talking about whether you saw someone else commit the murder and which discussions are more like talking about how ugly the judge’s children are.