Thanks, but I meant actual, written-by-you examples, that meet the criteria of being concise and well-directed criticism—not, like, ones written by other people. (Preferably, multiple examples that show you putting forth at least half of the effort required to bridge the inferential gap between you and the author as opposed to expecting them to connect all the dots themselves.)
(This comment is a mirroring of/reference to a specific Said comment, meant to highlight certain properties of how Said engages with people.)
Well, if you insist, I’ll be glad to provide such examples; I was mostly trying to give a helpful additional perspective on the matter, while also avoiding “tooting my own horn”.
However, I do want to object to this part:
(Preferably, multiple examples that show you putting forth at least half of the effort required to bridge the inferential gap between you and the author as opposed to expecting them to connect all the dots themselves.)
My earlier comment said:
It has always seemed to me that criticism—especially concise, well-directed criticism—is a gift, and a public service.
You are asking for examples of “concise, well-directed criticism”; fair enough. But what has this business about “putting forth at least half of the effort”, etc., got to do with anything? I certainly don’t agree with the implication that good and useful criticism (whether concise or not) must necessarily show the criticizer putting forth any specific amount of effort. (As I’ve said many times, effort, as such, is of no value.)
Furthermore, you have mentioned the “inferential gap” several times, and suggested that it is the criticizer’s job, at least in part, to bridge it. I disagree.
For one thing, the “inferential gap” framing suggests a scenario where Alice writes something which is true and correct, and Bob doesn’t understand it. But surely this isn’t to be taken for granted? Couldn’t Alice be wrong? Couldn’t what she’s written be nonsense? Couldn’t Alice be, as you put it, “full of shit to begin with”? (Many people are, you know!)
And it quite mystifies me why you would suggest that it’s the job of interlocutors to bridge any such purported gap. Of course it’s not! A commenter who has read some post and honestly finds that its truth is not evident, or its meaning unclear, and asks the author for explanations, clarifications, examples, etc., owes the author no “half of the effort to bridge the inferential gap”. That’s the author’s job. Fair consideration, honest communication, an open but critical mind, basic courtesy—these things are owed. But doing the author’s job for them? Certainly not.
With that said, here are some examples of comments, written by me, containing criticism which is inarguably concise and arguably well-directed (at least, I judge it to be so):
(I have more examples of what I’d consider well-directed criticism; but when it comes to brevity, I’m afraid I can’t do any better than the above-linked comments… well, as they say: growth mindset!)
I’m sorry, how do any of those (except possibly 4) satisfy any reasonable definition of the word “criticism?” And as for “well-directed”, how does a blanket “Examples?”, absent any guidance about what kind, qualify? Literally the property that these examples specifically and conspicuously lack is “direction.”
(This comment is a mirroring of/reference to Said’s commenting style, meant to highlight certain properties of how Said engages with people.)
I’m sorry, how do any of those (except possibly 4) satisfy any reasonable definition of the word “criticism?”
Well, I think that “criticism”, in a context like this topic of discussion, certainly includes something like “pointing to a flaw or lacuna, or suggesting an important or even necessary avenue for improvement”. I’d say that a request for examples of a claim qualifies as such, by pointing out that there aren’t already examples provided, and suggesting that it’s important to have some available for consideration. I’d call this sort of thing a fairly central type of criticism.
And as for “well-directed”, how does a blanket “Examples?”, absent any guidance about what kind, qualify?
What do you mean by this? I think that’s clear enough, in each of the linked cases, “what kind” of examples are needed.
In the first case, the request is for examples of bureaucracies being used in the described way.
In the second case, the request is for examples of things of the described “types”.
In the third case, the request is for examples of the described phenomenon.
I could continue, but… this really seems to me to be a quite strange objection. Is it really unclear what’s being asked for, in these cases? I rather doubt it.
Oh, I’m just engaging with you in precisely the way that you engage with others. This is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Said (except I’ve only done it to you for, like, two comments, instead of relentlessly for years).
(I’ll be sure to keep “I could continue, but… this really seems to me to be a quite strange objection. Is it really unclear what’s being asked for, in these cases? I rather doubt it.” in a pasteboard, though; it’s the correct response to quite a large fraction of your comments.)
You seem to be suggesting that your questions weren’t asked in good faith, but rather as some sort of act.
If that’s so, then I must protest at your characterization of such behavior as being the way that I engage with others. I don’t think that bad faith, of all things, is an accusation that it makes any sense (much less is at all fair) to apply to my comments.
If, on the other hand, I’ve misinterpreted, and you were asking for examples and explanations in good faith—well, I’d say that I’ve provided both, and more than adequately. I hope that you may take inspiration from this, and consider behaving likewise in the future.
If “let’s be fair and justifiable in our assessments of one another’s internals” is a standard you’d like to employ, you’re something like 10,000 words too late in your treatment of me, and I find your hypocrisy … bold.
Separately, though, I wasn’t making any claims about your internals; I was mirroring your observable behavior, asking the kind of unnecessary and obtuse questions you reliably flood threads with. If I had a model of why you do this, I would’ve used that model to get you to stop long before this point.
I don’t think that “internals” has much to do with it. In this case, the accusation of bad faith is not based on some purported “internals”, but simply on behavior—statements, made by you. As I said, you seem to actually be saying that your earlier comments were made in bad faith. What need is there of “assessment of … internals”, when we have your plain words before us?
Likewise, I certainly don’t ask for fairness in assessment of my “internals”, nor, indeed, for any assessment of my “internals” at all; but fairness in assessing my behavior seems like an entirely reasonable thing to ask. Certainly it’s a standard which I’ve tried to follow, in my interactions with all members of Less Wrong.
You are confused about what my previous comment was referencing. I’ve added a link, since the clue of “something like 10,000 words” was apparently not enough to make clear that I wasn’t referring to the last couple of entries in this exchange.
Perhaps. Feel free to clarify, certainly. (EDIT: Ah, you edited in a clarification. But… why did you think that I was confused about that? It never occurred to me to think that you were referring only to this subthread. My comment is entirely unchanged by this attempted clarification, and I can’t imagine why you would expect otherwise…)
But it remains the case that, by your own admission, you seem to have been engaging in bad faith here. My response to that admission (and that that fact) stands.
If you care to describe “someone exhibiting the exact same conversational behaviors that I, Said, regularly exhibit” as bad faith, that’s certainly an interesting development.
I’d refer to it as “conforming to Said’s preferred norms of engagement.” I’m adopting your style; if you think that’s bad, then perhaps you should do things differently.
This comment seems pretty clearly to imply that you were not asking your questions in good faith. That seems to me to be the plain meaning of it, quite independent of any questions of what constitutes “my style” or “your style” or any such thing.
As I have never, to my recollection, engaged in bad faith, I must object to your characterization of such as being “my style” or “my preferred norms of engagement”.
As I have never, to my recollection, engaged in bad faith, I must object to your characterization such as being “my style” or “my preferred norms of engagement”.
Ah, but of course you would deny it. Why would you say “yeah, I flooded these threads with disingenuous whataboutery and isolated demands for rigor”? It would make you look pretty bad to admit that, wouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t you instead say that you asked every question because you were nobly contributing to the collaborative search for truth, or some other respectable reason? What downside is there, for you?
And given that, why in the world would we believe you when you say such things? Why would we ever believe any commenter who, after immediately identifying a certain kind of question as confusing and dubious and unlikely to be genuine, claims that when he asks such questions, they’re totally for good reasons? It doesn’t make any sense at all to take such a claim seriously!
(This comment also a near-exact reproduction of a Said comment, slightly modified to be appropriate to this situation, and thus surely the kind of utterance and reasoning that Said will overall endorse. I am slow to pick up Said-style lingo and will doubtless make errors as I climb up the learning curve; this kind of discourse is deeply alien to me and will take some time to master.)
after immediately identifying a certain kind of question as confusing and dubious and unlikely to be genuine
To what “certain kind of question” do you refer here?
In any case, the point remains that you admitted (as far as I can tell; and you haven’t disputed the interpretation) that you engaged in bad faith. I certainly haven’t done any such thing (naturally so, because such an “admission” would be a lie!).
Thus there is no need to believe or disbelieve me on that count; we need only check the record. As I have noted, I refer only to behavior here, not to “internals”.
why in the world would we believe you when you say such things?
But I wouldn’t say such things.
The difference between “disingenuous whataboutery” and “nobly contributing to the collaborative search for truth” hasn’t anything to do with anyone’s motivations, except insofar as they are reflected in their actions—but then we can simply examine, and discuss, those actions.
Something like, say, a request for examples of some purported claim, is good and praiseworthy, regardless of whether it is, secretly, posted for the most noble or the most nefarious of reasons.
The distinction you’re pointing to, here, is one of evaluation, not fact. So it makes no sense to speak of “believing”, or of “denying”. One may reasonably speaking of “disagreeing”, of “disputing”—but that is different.
why in the world would we believe you when you say such things?
But I wouldn’t say such things.
“Such things” above refers to your claim that you’ve never engaged in bad faith, which is a thing you just said.
I am no longer concerned with your beliefs about anything, after your blatant falsehoods in this comment, in which you explicitly claim that four different links each say something that none of them come even remotely close to saying. That is sufficient justification for me to categorize you as an intentional liar, and I will treat you as such from this point forward.
“Such things” above refers to your claim that you’ve never engaged in bad faith, which is a thing you just said.
But this makes no sense. As I made it clear, when speaking of “bad faith”, I was referring to your (apparent) admission of engaging in bad faith. There is no need to “believe” or “disbelieve” your subsequent claims about whether you’ve done this, after you’ve admitted doing so.
Certainly I wouldn’t say “you must believe me that I’m not engaging in bad faith [but this is entirely a matter of my internal state, and not public record]”. That is the sort of thing of which you might reasonably say “why would we believe you?”. So, indeed, I did not “just” (or ever, in my recollection) say any such thing.
your blatant falsehoods in this comment, in which you explicitly claim that four different links each say something that none of them come even remotely close to saying
On the contrary, I correctly (as far as I can tell) claim that the five provided links demonstrate that, as I said, you believe a certain thing. I did not claim that you said that thing, only that you clearly (so it seemed, and seems, to me) believe it. (Certainly your behavior is difficult to explain otherwise; and when a person says something—multiple times and in multiple ways—that sounds like X, and then they also act like they believe X, is it not reasonable to conclude that they believe X? Of course more complex explanations are possible, as they always are; but the simplest explanation remains.)
Now, you later—after I’d responded, and after the ensuing discussion thread—edited the linked comment (Wayback Machine link as evidence; screenshot)[1] to add an explicit disclaimer that you do not, in fact, hold the belief in question.
Had you included such a note at the outset, the conversation would have gone differently. (Perhaps more productively, perhaps not—but differently, in any case. For example, I would have asked you for examples of you asking for examples and of you providing examples when asked; and then—supposing that you gave them—we could have discussed those examples, and analyzed what made them different from those which I provided, and perhaps gained understanding thereby.)
But that note wasn’t there before. So, as I see it, I made a claim, which had, until that moment and to my knowledge, been contradicted by nothing—not even by any disclaimer from you. This claim seemed to me to be both true and fairly obvious. In response to a challenge (by gjm) that the claim seemed like a strawman, I provided evidence, which seemed (and continues to seem) to me to be convincing.
I do not see any way to construe this that makes it reasonable to all me an “intentional liar”. The charge, as far as I can tell, is wholly unsubstantiated.
Now, you may protest that the claim is actually false. Perhaps. Certainly I don’t make any pretensions to omniscience. But neither do I withdraw the claim entirely. While I would no longer say that I “do not think it’s controversial at all to ascribe this opinion” to you (obviously it is controversial!), your previous statements (including some in this very discussion thread) and your behavior continue (so it seems to me) to support my claim about your apparent views.
I now say “apparent”, of course, because you did say that you don’t, in fact, hold the belief which I ascribed to you. But that still leaves the question of why you write and act as though you did hold that belief. Is it that your actual views on the matter are similar to (perhaps even indistinguishable for practical purposes from) the previously-claimed belief, but differ in some nuance (whether that be important nuance or not)? Is it that there are some circumstantial factors at play, which you perceive but I do not? Something else?
I think that it would be useful—not just to you or to me, but to everyone on Less Wrong—to dig into this further.
Incidentally, I find this to be a quite unfortunate habit of yours. It has happened several times in this conversation that you posted some comment, I’ve responded to it, and then you later edited the comment in such a way that my response would’ve been very different if I’d read the edited version first (or, in some cases, would never have been written at all). In no cases almost no cases (EDIT: correction) have you signaled the edit (as I do when I edit for substance), leaving me no way to discover, except by vigilant watchfulness, that a comment I’d responded to now contained new and/or different words, sentences, paragraphs. I cannot but strongly disapprove of such behavior.
Actually, update: I just remembered I could ban them both from this post temporarily. I just did that, and undid the previous rate limit. I do ask them not to engage in various proxy threads about this in other posts.
further update: moderators talked for awhile today, writing up some thoughts. Most likely tomorrow we’ll post a top-level post briefly outlining the situation background, and post individual comments with our respective takes.
Thanks, but I meant actual, written-by-you examples, that meet the criteria of being concise and well-directed criticism—not, like, ones written by other people. (Preferably, multiple examples that show you putting forth at least half of the effort required to bridge the inferential gap between you and the author as opposed to expecting them to connect all the dots themselves.)
(This comment is a mirroring of/reference to a specific Said comment, meant to highlight certain properties of how Said engages with people.)
Well, if you insist, I’ll be glad to provide such examples; I was mostly trying to give a helpful additional perspective on the matter, while also avoiding “tooting my own horn”.
However, I do want to object to this part:
My earlier comment said:
You are asking for examples of “concise, well-directed criticism”; fair enough. But what has this business about “putting forth at least half of the effort”, etc., got to do with anything? I certainly don’t agree with the implication that good and useful criticism (whether concise or not) must necessarily show the criticizer putting forth any specific amount of effort. (As I’ve said many times, effort, as such, is of no value.)
Furthermore, you have mentioned the “inferential gap” several times, and suggested that it is the criticizer’s job, at least in part, to bridge it. I disagree.
For one thing, the “inferential gap” framing suggests a scenario where Alice writes something which is true and correct, and Bob doesn’t understand it. But surely this isn’t to be taken for granted? Couldn’t Alice be wrong? Couldn’t what she’s written be nonsense? Couldn’t Alice be, as you put it, “full of shit to begin with”? (Many people are, you know!)
And it quite mystifies me why you would suggest that it’s the job of interlocutors to bridge any such purported gap. Of course it’s not! A commenter who has read some post and honestly finds that its truth is not evident, or its meaning unclear, and asks the author for explanations, clarifications, examples, etc., owes the author no “half of the effort to bridge the inferential gap”. That’s the author’s job. Fair consideration, honest communication, an open but critical mind, basic courtesy—these things are owed. But doing the author’s job for them? Certainly not.
With that said, here are some examples of comments, written by me, containing criticism which is inarguably concise and arguably well-directed (at least, I judge it to be so):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
(I have more examples of what I’d consider well-directed criticism; but when it comes to brevity, I’m afraid I can’t do any better than the above-linked comments… well, as they say: growth mindset!)
I’m sorry, how do any of those (except possibly 4) satisfy any reasonable definition of the word “criticism?” And as for “well-directed”, how does a blanket “Examples?”, absent any guidance about what kind, qualify? Literally the property that these examples specifically and conspicuously lack is “direction.”
(This comment is a mirroring of/reference to Said’s commenting style, meant to highlight certain properties of how Said engages with people.)
Well, I think that “criticism”, in a context like this topic of discussion, certainly includes something like “pointing to a flaw or lacuna, or suggesting an important or even necessary avenue for improvement”. I’d say that a request for examples of a claim qualifies as such, by pointing out that there aren’t already examples provided, and suggesting that it’s important to have some available for consideration. I’d call this sort of thing a fairly central type of criticism.
What do you mean by this? I think that’s clear enough, in each of the linked cases, “what kind” of examples are needed.
In the first case, the request is for examples of bureaucracies being used in the described way.
In the second case, the request is for examples of things of the described “types”.
In the third case, the request is for examples of the described phenomenon.
I could continue, but… this really seems to me to be a quite strange objection. Is it really unclear what’s being asked for, in these cases? I rather doubt it.
Oh, I’m just engaging with you in precisely the way that you engage with others. This is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Said (except I’ve only done it to you for, like, two comments, instead of relentlessly for years).
(I’ll be sure to keep “I could continue, but… this really seems to me to be a quite strange objection. Is it really unclear what’s being asked for, in these cases? I rather doubt it.” in a pasteboard, though; it’s the correct response to quite a large fraction of your comments.)
You seem to be suggesting that your questions weren’t asked in good faith, but rather as some sort of act.
If that’s so, then I must protest at your characterization of such behavior as being the way that I engage with others. I don’t think that bad faith, of all things, is an accusation that it makes any sense (much less is at all fair) to apply to my comments.
If, on the other hand, I’ve misinterpreted, and you were asking for examples and explanations in good faith—well, I’d say that I’ve provided both, and more than adequately. I hope that you may take inspiration from this, and consider behaving likewise in the future.
If “let’s be fair and justifiable in our assessments of one another’s internals” is a standard you’d like to employ, you’re something like 10,000 words too late in your treatment of me, and I find your hypocrisy … bold.
Separately, though, I wasn’t making any claims about your internals; I was mirroring your observable behavior, asking the kind of unnecessary and obtuse questions you reliably flood threads with. If I had a model of why you do this, I would’ve used that model to get you to stop long before this point.
I don’t think that “internals” has much to do with it. In this case, the accusation of bad faith is not based on some purported “internals”, but simply on behavior—statements, made by you. As I said, you seem to actually be saying that your earlier comments were made in bad faith. What need is there of “assessment of … internals”, when we have your plain words before us?
Likewise, I certainly don’t ask for fairness in assessment of my “internals”, nor, indeed, for any assessment of my “internals” at all; but fairness in assessing my behavior seems like an entirely reasonable thing to ask. Certainly it’s a standard which I’ve tried to follow, in my interactions with all members of Less Wrong.
You are confused about what my previous comment was referencing. I’ve added a link, since the clue of “something like 10,000 words” was apparently not enough to make clear that I wasn’t referring to the last couple of entries in this exchange.
Perhaps.
Feel free to clarify, certainly.(EDIT: Ah, you edited in a clarification. But… why did you think that I was confused about that? It never occurred to me to think that you were referring only to this subthread. My comment is entirely unchanged by this attempted clarification, and I can’t imagine why you would expect otherwise…)But it remains the case that, by your own admission, you seem to have been engaging in bad faith here. My response to that admission (and that that fact) stands.
If you care to describe “someone exhibiting the exact same conversational behaviors that I, Said, regularly exhibit” as bad faith, that’s certainly an interesting development.
I’d refer to it as “conforming to Said’s preferred norms of engagement.” I’m adopting your style; if you think that’s bad, then perhaps you should do things differently.
This comment seems pretty clearly to imply that you were not asking your questions in good faith. That seems to me to be the plain meaning of it, quite independent of any questions of what constitutes “my style” or “your style” or any such thing.
As I have never, to my recollection, engaged in bad faith, I must object to your characterization of such as being “my style” or “my preferred norms of engagement”.
Ah, but of course you would deny it. Why would you say “yeah, I flooded these threads with disingenuous whataboutery and isolated demands for rigor”? It would make you look pretty bad to admit that, wouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t you instead say that you asked every question because you were nobly contributing to the collaborative search for truth, or some other respectable reason? What downside is there, for you?
And given that, why in the world would we believe you when you say such things? Why would we ever believe any commenter who, after immediately identifying a certain kind of question as confusing and dubious and unlikely to be genuine, claims that when he asks such questions, they’re totally for good reasons? It doesn’t make any sense at all to take such a claim seriously!
(This comment also a near-exact reproduction of a Said comment, slightly modified to be appropriate to this situation, and thus surely the kind of utterance and reasoning that Said will overall endorse. I am slow to pick up Said-style lingo and will doubtless make errors as I climb up the learning curve; this kind of discourse is deeply alien to me and will take some time to master.)
To what “certain kind of question” do you refer here?
In any case, the point remains that you admitted (as far as I can tell; and you haven’t disputed the interpretation) that you engaged in bad faith. I certainly haven’t done any such thing (naturally so, because such an “admission” would be a lie!).
Thus there is no need to believe or disbelieve me on that count; we need only check the record. As I have noted, I refer only to behavior here, not to “internals”.
But I wouldn’t say such things.
The difference between “disingenuous whataboutery” and “nobly contributing to the collaborative search for truth” hasn’t anything to do with anyone’s motivations, except insofar as they are reflected in their actions—but then we can simply examine, and discuss, those actions.
Something like, say, a request for examples of some purported claim, is good and praiseworthy, regardless of whether it is, secretly, posted for the most noble or the most nefarious of reasons.
The distinction you’re pointing to, here, is one of evaluation, not fact. So it makes no sense to speak of “believing”, or of “denying”. One may reasonably speaking of “disagreeing”, of “disputing”—but that is different.
“Such things” above refers to your claim that you’ve never engaged in bad faith, which is a thing you just said.
I am no longer concerned with your beliefs about anything, after your blatant falsehoods in this comment, in which you explicitly claim that four different links each say something that none of them come even remotely close to saying. That is sufficient justification for me to categorize you as an intentional liar, and I will treat you as such from this point forward.
But this makes no sense. As I made it clear, when speaking of “bad faith”, I was referring to your (apparent) admission of engaging in bad faith. There is no need to “believe” or “disbelieve” your subsequent claims about whether you’ve done this, after you’ve admitted doing so.
Certainly I wouldn’t say “you must believe me that I’m not engaging in bad faith [but this is entirely a matter of my internal state, and not public record]”. That is the sort of thing of which you might reasonably say “why would we believe you?”. So, indeed, I did not “just” (or ever, in my recollection) say any such thing.
On the contrary, I correctly (as far as I can tell) claim that the five provided links demonstrate that, as I said, you believe a certain thing. I did not claim that you said that thing, only that you clearly (so it seemed, and seems, to me) believe it. (Certainly your behavior is difficult to explain otherwise; and when a person says something—multiple times and in multiple ways—that sounds like X, and then they also act like they believe X, is it not reasonable to conclude that they believe X? Of course more complex explanations are possible, as they always are; but the simplest explanation remains.)
Now, you later—after I’d responded, and after the ensuing discussion thread—edited the linked comment (Wayback Machine link as evidence; screenshot)[1] to add an explicit disclaimer that you do not, in fact, hold the belief in question.
Had you included such a note at the outset, the conversation would have gone differently. (Perhaps more productively, perhaps not—but differently, in any case. For example, I would have asked you for examples of you asking for examples and of you providing examples when asked; and then—supposing that you gave them—we could have discussed those examples, and analyzed what made them different from those which I provided, and perhaps gained understanding thereby.)
But that note wasn’t there before. So, as I see it, I made a claim, which had, until that moment and to my knowledge, been contradicted by nothing—not even by any disclaimer from you. This claim seemed to me to be both true and fairly obvious. In response to a challenge (by gjm) that the claim seemed like a strawman, I provided evidence, which seemed (and continues to seem) to me to be convincing.
I do not see any way to construe this that makes it reasonable to all me an “intentional liar”. The charge, as far as I can tell, is wholly unsubstantiated.
Now, you may protest that the claim is actually false. Perhaps. Certainly I don’t make any pretensions to omniscience. But neither do I withdraw the claim entirely. While I would no longer say that I “do not think it’s controversial at all to ascribe this opinion” to you (obviously it is controversial!), your previous statements (including some in this very discussion thread) and your behavior continue (so it seems to me) to support my claim about your apparent views.
I now say “apparent”, of course, because you did say that you don’t, in fact, hold the belief which I ascribed to you. But that still leaves the question of why you write and act as though you did hold that belief. Is it that your actual views on the matter are similar to (perhaps even indistinguishable for practical purposes from) the previously-claimed belief, but differ in some nuance (whether that be important nuance or not)? Is it that there are some circumstantial factors at play, which you perceive but I do not? Something else?
I think that it would be useful—not just to you or to me, but to everyone on Less Wrong—to dig into this further.
Incidentally, I find this to be a quite unfortunate habit of yours. It has happened several times in this conversation that you posted some comment, I’ve responded to it, and then you later edited the comment in such a way that my response would’ve been very different if I’d read the edited version first (or, in some cases, would never have been written at all). In
no casesalmost no cases (EDIT: correction) have you signaled the edit (as I do when I edit for substance), leaving me no way to discover, except by vigilant watchfulness, that a comment I’d responded to now contained new and/or different words, sentences, paragraphs. I cannot but strongly disapprove of such behavior.Mod note: I just gave Duncan and Said a commenting rate-limit of 1-per-day, mostly as a “slow down and give mods time to actually think” measure.
(This is not my ideal technological solution to the situation, but it was the easiest one to implement quickly, apologies)
Actually, update: I just remembered I could ban them both from this post temporarily. I just did that, and undid the previous rate limit. I do ask them not to engage in various proxy threads about this in other posts.
further update: moderators talked for awhile today, writing up some thoughts. Most likely tomorrow we’ll post a top-level post briefly outlining the situation background, and post individual comments with our respective takes.
Needless to say, I don’t agree with your characterization (as my comment in that thread notes).