This dynamic reminds me of arguments-as-soldiers from The Scout Mindset. If people are used to wielding arguments as soldiers on themselves then it seems relatively easy to extend those patterns to reasoning with others.
Testing this hypothesis seems tricky. One avenue is “people with more internal conflicts are more predisposed to the soldier mindset”. I can see a couple ways in-model for this to be untrue though.
I interpret upvotes/downvote as
Do I want other people to read this post
Do I want to encourage the author and others to write more posts like this.
And I favour this post for both of those reasons.
I agree that this post doesn’t make philosophical argument for it’s position, but I don’t require that for every post. I value it as an observation of how the EA movement has affected this particular person, and as criticism.
A couple of strongly Anti-EA friends of mine became so due to a similar moral burnout, so it’s particularly apparent to me how little emphasis is put on mental health.