Optimal rudeness

You went on to dredge up problems in past employment that you perceive Phil had.

I didn't dredge them up. Phil brought them up on LW to prove some points. My point is that what he's voluntarily told us about his life, combined with multiple posts he's done here, his emails to SL4, another post that Carl brought up I didn't even remember, and his memorable comments and posts over the last year, all paint a very specific picture which has nothing to do with LW's rationality and critical thinking skills, and everything to do with him.

Maybe he had a divorce you'd like to dredge up too? Do his kids hate him? Any sexual dysfunction you'd like to mention?

I don't believe he's discussed any of those.

But you weren't done there. Let's liken Phil to every hated, low status behavior and low status loser that has ever appeared on the list. Phil is the hated, low status Them, that We all despise.

Have you ever spent much time on Wikipedia, enough time to see intelligent productive contributors 'burn out'? Or with engineers or programmers? The escalating pattern of problems, the fixation on specific issues, going from disaster to disaster, the shrillness and increasing anger, the brusqueness, the marking of enemies - all of these are instantly familiar to anyone who has seen them before. I saw them with multiple Wikipedia contributors, including myself (ever wonder how I lost my adminship there?), and I've seen them on LW too (XiXiDu). The downward spiral can't go on forever. So it won't.

The question is, how does it end? Does it end cleanly with them coming to their senses and mending their ways, or taking a break to regain perspective, or will it end ugly with them finally going beyond the pale and a possibly permanent punishment handed down? Since I do not run LW and otherwise have no influence with Goetz, I cannot lance the boil or make the fever break.

And what should we do about the hated, low status Them? We should get our popcorn, and sneer and jeer at Them, looking down on Them from the balcony seats of the theatre. Them aren't really people to address; they're objects to observe in amusement, contempt, and disdain. What fun!

Unfortunately, we're all objects to one another. This would be useful, but we cannot break out of our own perspective. ("O wad some Pow'r / the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! / It wad frae mony a blunder free us, / An' foolish notion...")

Why so ugly? It's a generalized personal attack, aimed at vital organs, dehumanizing and depersonalizing, seeking to rally hatred and loathing from the group. In HPMoR terms, it showed rhetorical intent to kill. Not to win, not to make a point, but to harm, and rally others to the stoning.

So it's both generalized and personal? It's depersonalizing and personal? It's an ad hominem which is dehumanizing?

Your comment is not unpleasant because I can find worse ones on 4chan? You just made that argument. I know it seems incredible, but really, you did. Look up above, there it is.

Incredulity is not an argument. Feel free to try to understand my point sometime instead of feeling superior. It'd be good practice for your next medical statistics article.

Even if you are correct in believing I have some emotional motivation, what are the benefits to anybody of pointing it out,

I downvoted gwern's comment for rudeness and invective, but I was tempted to upvote it for pointing out to you that this post and its predecessor pattern-match to escalating conflict over a personal slight and lashing out, along the lines of other posts. Talk about becoming enemies with gwern furthers the appearance, regardless of the reality. Presumably similar considerations affected some other upvoters and downvoters.

Why care about that perception? Well, you have repeatedly expressed your frustration with unexplained lack of upvotes or the presence of downvotes on pieces you think are strong. If you are perceived as unreceptive to critique, and likely to lash out, then readers have less incentive to reply to your questions, especially when they expect you won't like the answers. This hurts you, because you lose out on feedback that could help you improve your writing and its reception. It hurts LessWrong via the opportunity costs of any improvements you might have made in response to feedback, and unpleasant drama.

I hesitated to post this comment, lest I exacerbate this local exchange or get mired in it, but I do think you could create a much more amicable relationship with respondents and get better feedback if you went out of your way to avoid the perception of retaliation. Concretely, Kaj Sotala and Yvain's responses to criticism might be good models.

I'm asking a question that I want to know the answer to.

No, you don't. You want to justify your previous behavior and ensuing results, and justify what you yourself have told us is a lifetime of clashing with supervisors and coworkers over various things and making enemies of them.

I merely observe that is the usual cause for something like your behavior here. I can imagine no other motivation for your attack on me, even if you believe what you say. Even if you are correct in believing I have some emotional motivation, what are the benefits to anybody of pointing it out, creating more interpersonal conflict, and discouraging people from thinking about or answering the question?

Disgust at watching such wasteful behavior? A bit of pity, knowing that one's problems can be far more obvious to an observer than oneself, and this is just as true about me? Irritation at the status-move implied in going meta with the presumption you were right in every respect?

So far: 2 extremely rude comments, 2 up-votes. 1 polite reply to rude comments, 0 up-votes.

Don't worry, I'll toss in some votes and affect that number.

Of course, you knew that posting a summary would inspire someone to vote just because of that summary, as predictably as waving a red flag in front of the proverbial bull. You should consider what made you add in that entirely gratuitous point, in light of my original comment.

Do you think your running explicit summary of rude/polite comments and their score has any particular effect on the thing you're observing?

while responding to rude comments, I kept wondering whether I should be rude or polite in response, and didn't know

Are you explicitly equating "X comments get more upvotes" with "I should be X" here, or is this part of a broader exercise in data gathering?