I encourage you to respond to any comment of mine that you believe...
...actively suppresses inconvenient questions with “fuck you, the truth is important.”
...ignores the arguments you made with “bro read the article.”
...leaves you in a fuzzy daze of maybe-disagreement and general malaise with ”?????”
...is hostile without indicating a concrete disagreement of substance with “that’s a lot of hot air”
...has citations that are of even possibly dubious quality with “legit?”. And if you dig through one of my citations and think either I am misleading by including it or it itself is misleading, demonstrate this fact, and then I don’t respond, you can call me a coward.
...belittles your concerns (on facebook or otherwise) with “don’t be a jerk.”
...professes a belief that is wholly incompatible with what I believe in private with “you’re lying.”
Since I expect readers of the comment chain to not have known that I gave you permission, I’ll take the work of linking to this post and assuring them that I quite literally asked for it. You’re also welcome to take liberties with the exact phrasing. For example, if you wanted to express a sharper sentiment in response to your general malaise, you might write ”???!!!!??!?!?!?”, which I would also encourage.
I doubt that this would work as a normative model for discourse since it would quickly devolve into namecalling and increase the heat of the arguments without actually shedding much light. I also think that if you were never beholden to the typical social rules that govern the EA forum and lesswrong, that you would lose some of the qualities that I most enjoy in your writing. But, if you see my name at the top of a comment, feel free to indulge yourself.
I don’t think I’ve told you before, but I like your writing. I appreciate the labor you put into your work to make it epistemically legible, which makes it obvious to me that you are seeking the truth. You engage with your commenters with kindness and curiosity, even when they are detracting from your work. Thank you.
I appreciate that you took the time to explain your position. I think this is indeed a difference in the definition of “trap”, so I’ll leave it here.