A Poem for S.B.F.

No worries :)

No, I don't want Less Wrong to turn into the Onion or the Daily Show. I enjoy reading the Onion sometimes, but it would be a waste to turn Less Wrong into that.

Criticizing leaders is fine though (although SBF isn't one here, as far as I know).

nah, they just prefer the attack be very precise here - it's generally considered kinder here to do what elsewhere would be considered ruthless precise deconstruction. you can see in my comments on the main "we should clarify, fraud bad, actually" post that I've been similarly critical of the immune response against criticism of him. in my view, it is generally a good idea to focus on policies, not people, even when describing the problems with a single person's behavior.

I strong upvoted you back to zero on this comment, though I strong downvoted the main post.

I already bowed to your authority to remove me if you don't like what I said, in the earlier part with Gears: "If I am removed for this, you are well within your rights". So, I'm still not disputing your authority to moderate. You strawman me if you claim that I was talking about "you shouldn't get rid of my post" - I clearly have said otherwise.

The problem I addressed, of using an invalidation of the speaker to avoid the points made, still stands. That's still an ad hominem, regardless of if you're doing it for the sake of your community standards. Further, as I pointed out in an earlier reply - you all seem to disagree about why I shouldn't be included, which was what made me laugh, responding to Gears. One says "don't criticize people, stay vague", another "okay to criticize leaders, no parody", and now you say that the problem with it is that it's a song, art instead of prose? Or, that it's a song about a person, stay vague? Or that I'm not being nice talking about them?

Also, look how many times Brendan Long misrepresents my arguments, without admitting to it... and no one but me to say so? That is not a moderated board; downvoting doesn't call-out his tactic or correct his mistake; its a very muddy signal, and it is easily spoofed.

Ah, thank you for digging into argumentation! It's been discouraging to see Brendan Long misrepresent what I said. I mentioned in my earlier response to Gears, a little ways up in this thread: "If I am removed for this, you are well within your rights" I understand that this is your space, not mine, and if you don't want my contribution, you have authority to remove it. You've chosen downvoting as your proxy-metric for detecting fallacies and discontent; you are allowed to do that (despite, as you've also noticed, it is easily hacked by downvote-mafias; it's been Goodharted... so I don't see why you guys keep it, except for inertia and lack of initiative to do real moderation of fallacies?).

At the same time, the rest of the world is well within their rights to assess your community for having a bubble, where an argument is allowed unless it has emotions or artistic expression or humor. You should think carefully how you brand yourself, before claiming that your bubble is correct.

To your concern that the community devolve, without critique of appropriateness and tone - I also mentioned that earlier, too :) Again, responding to Gears, above: "...without addressing the substance of the argument. Consider if, in the extreme, I was downvoted or dismissed for not following MLA formatting, without mention of the content? " (emph. added) There, you can see I pointed-out twice that the issue was not a discussion of tone or appropriateness, itself; rather, it's the use of a 'tone-police' to avoid addressing the actual argument. By attacking the validity of the speaker (an 'ad hominem attack') these commenters hope to dodge rebuttal; I have encountered them repeatedly in Lesswrong, ACX, and EA Forum, and the contrast with the moderated forums of the 90s is stunning.

We used to respond with a post, pointing out the fallacy, so that the trolls couldn't get away with it. Your community lets the trolls become a downvote-mafia, and then this group uses their Goodharted downvote-proxy as justification to ignore the arguments. This has happened to the extent that other commenters eventually did point-out that I was being strawmanned, in other threads, and a few more folks sent me direct messages through the forum saying they'd encountered the same. It sounds like you are already the free-for-all, and my satire won't change that.