I didn’t downvote it but I’d guess that one reason why some people did is that they thought it was rude and would prefer LW to be a more civil place.
(My initial reaction to your question about downvotes was: “Ah, I bet those people didn’t notice that the person being so rude was the same as the person whose ‘unsteady pile of pattern-matching’ they were being so rude about”—I was very surprised when I checked and found it was just garden-variety rudeness rather than self-deprecation.)
I didn’t downvote it but I’d guess that one reason why some people did is that they thought it was rude and would prefer LW to be a more civil place.
(My initial reaction to your question about downvotes was: “Ah, I bet those people didn’t notice that the person being so rude was the same as the person whose ‘unsteady pile of pattern-matching’ they were being so rude about”—I was very surprised when I checked and found it was just garden-variety rudeness rather than self-deprecation.)
I think it is self-deprecation, ie it refers to this not this.
Aha, I think you’re right. Score one for my intuitive self-deprecation sensors, then.