If this were the really your motivation, then you could simply not respond to my comments. (Indeed you wouldn’t even have to read them. “A comment on my post? —oh, it’s Said Achmiz. Surely he has nothing useful to say, and I have nothing to gain by reading this. [dismiss notification]”)

This is as good a time as any to make the following point. In an earlier comment, you wrote:

We’ve gotten into it over many years and at no time have I felt the better for you commenting on my posts.

You seem to believe that this is a relevant, even decisive, consideration. (And you’re not the only one; I’ve seen such sentiments a few times.)

This seems to me to betray a view of Less Wrong discussions that I can only marvel at—but certainly not sympathize with, much less endorse.

If we were having a private, one-on-one conversation—in person, via email, via direct messages or chat or whatever—then of course it would make perfect sense to say “I am gaining nothing from this interaction; I do not expect to gain anything from this interaction; and I have no obligation to continue this interaction—therefore I now terminate it”. Perfectly normal, straightforwardly sensible.

But Less Wrong is a public forum!

Why do you think people post comments under your posts? What do you think is the purpose of doing this, in the minds of the comment authors? What do they get out of it? Do you think that your posts’ comments sections are a series of one-to-one conversations between you and various readers? Do you think that people are commenting on your posts for your benefit?

It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that I never have the authors’ interests in mind when commenting, or that this is of zero importance to me. But as far as I am concerned, insofar as the author of a post might benefit from reading my comments on his post, it is as one of the participants in the discussion. If the post author stands to benefit more, it is because his ideas are the focus of the discussion. (But this doesn’t even always apply.) It’s certainly not because the comments on his posts are being written for him, or to benefit him.

The point of writing a comment (or, for that matter, a post) is to make a contribution to a discussion, out of which some productive outcome (useful knowledge or understanding, etc.) may emerge—for the benefit of all participants, and all readers. That’s why we have a public forum in the first place! The central motivating idea of a public discussion forum is “we all talk to each other, and as a result, we all benefit; and everyone who reads what we write in these public discussions also benefits”.

So when you motivate your banning of my comments from your posts by asking “what do I, personally, gain from Said Achmiz commenting on my posts”, this strikes me as a bizarrely selfish view.

(And I use the word “bizarrely” quite deliberately. An ordinarily selfish view might be, say, the idea that you write your posts in order to promote your ideas, to convince others, etc., and therefore any comment is evaluated only on whether it helps you to do that. But the idea that comments are to be evaluated by whether they make you, personally, “better”—but not by whether any other participant in the discussion (never mind any readers) are benefited—I don’t think such a view would ever have even occurred to me, had I not seen it expressed by you and others.)

In short: why in the world should it matter whether you “feel the better” for me commenting? If you don’t like my comments—fine; just don’t read them and don’t respond to them. Easy.

If instead you ban me from posting them at all, then it seems reasonable to suspect other motives.

P.S.: Here’s Tycho of Penny Arcade opining on a similar situation:

I go to the comments not to find consensus but literally to find people criticizing the article. I want to see the idea of that article discussed. I am not of the opinion that most articles I see are very good; and even if they were, they're not scripture. For me they're like the sausage casing that contains the actual food, which is the community processing the data. Independent of any other consideration, just at a lower level of magnification, I don't think we get smarter this way. I don't think we achieve robustness just rolling around in a bunch of ideologically hermetic spheres.