I agree the analogy is not perfect, but I do think it’s better than you’re suggesting; in particular, it seems to me like going to math grad school as opposed to doing other things that require high mathematical ability (like quantitative finance, or going to physics grad school, or various styles of programming) is related to “writing about rationality rather than doing other things with rationality.” Like, many of the most rational people I know don’t ever post on LW because that doesn’t connect to their goals; similarly, many of the most mathematically talented people I know didn’t go to math grad school, because they ran the numbers on doing it and they didn’t add up.
But to restate the core point, I was trying to get at the question of “who do you think is worthy of not being sarcastic towards?”, because if the answer is something like “yeah, using sarcasm on the core LW userbase seems proper” this seems highly related to the question of “is this person making LW better or worse?”.
I agree the analogy is not perfect, but I do think it’s better than you’re suggesting; in particular, it seems to me like going to math grad school as opposed to doing other things that require high mathematical ability (like quantitative finance, or going to physics grad school, or various styles of programming) is related to “writing about rationality rather than doing other things with rationality.” Like, many of the most rational people I know don’t ever post on LW because that doesn’t connect to their goals; similarly, many of the most mathematically talented people I know didn’t go to math grad school, because they ran the numbers on doing it and they didn’t add up.
But to restate the core point, I was trying to get at the question of “who do you think is worthy of not being sarcastic towards?”, because if the answer is something like “yeah, using sarcasm on the core LW userbase seems proper” this seems highly related to the question of “is this person making LW better or worse?”.