Sure, but "is my friend upset" is very different than "is the sum total of all the positive and negative effects of this, from first order until infinite order, positive" 

Mm, I think sometimes I'd rather judge on the standard of whether the outcome is good, rather than exclusively on the rules of behavior.

This made my blood go cold, despite thinking it would be good if Said left LessWrong. 

My first thoughts when I read "judge on the standard of whether the outcome is good" is that this lets you cherrypick your favorite outcomes without justifying them. My second is that it knowing if something is good can be very complicated even after the fact, so predicting it ahead of time is challenging even if you are perfectly neutral. 

I think it's good LessWrong('s admins) allows authors to moderate their own posts (and I've used that to ban Said from my own posts). I think it's good LessWrong mostly doesn't allow explicit insults (and wish this was applied more strongly). I think it's good LessWrong evaluates commenting patterns, not just individual comments. But "nothing that makes authors feel bad about bans" is way too far. 

On the other hand, we should expect that the first people to speak out against someone will be the most easily activated (in a neurological sense)- because of past trauma, or additional issues with the focal person, or having a shitty year. Speaking out is partially a function of pain level, and pain(Legitimate grievance + illegitimate grievance) > pain(legitimate grievance). It doesn't mean there isn't a legitimate grievance large enough to merit concern. 

This seems like an argument for deleting TurnTrout's post, but not the original comment, which was on topic. 

Does it matter if it's a conscious strategy? His internal experience might be "this is dumb and annoying", but unless that's uncorrelated with how a post reflects on him, the effect is going to be distorting the information people present about him in his posts.

yeah a friend of mine gave in because she was getting so much attitude about needing people to give her directions. 

This mostly comes up with talkative Uber drivers. The superficial thing I do is I ask myself "what vibes is this person offering?" And then do some kind of centering move. Sometimes it feels unexpectedly good and I do an accepting mood and feel nourished by the conversation. Sometimes it will feel bad and I'll be more aggressive in shutting conversations down. I'm often  surprised by the vibe answer, it feels different than what my conscious brain would answer.

The obvious question is what am I doing with the inquiry and accepting moves. I don't know how to explain that. 

Overall a growth edge I'm exploring right now is "forms of goodness other than interesting." And I think that's probably a weak area for you too, although maybe an endorsed one 

A top [1-5?]% conversation is as good in the moment as an early playthrough of my favorite video games, and feels better afterward. That's probably top 10% of conversations at parties, which have higher selection pressure than uber drivers. 

I've been working on getting more out of lower percentile conversations. The explanation is fairly woo-ey but might also relate to your interest around flirting. 

Median conversation is about as good as a TV show I will watch for two episodes and give up on. 

Tangent: my standards for media have gone way up over the last ~5 years, I abandon a lot more out of boredom, especially books. I worried this was some sort of generalized anhedonia, but every once in a while read or reread something great and enjoy it immensely, so I think it's just raised standards. 

Bupoprion is used to help people stop smoking because it is in the same class of molecule as nicotine and triggers many of the same receptors. I wouldn't expect it to help any other addiction as well as it treats smoking.

Koreindian didn't order anyone to do anything. He suggested a different frame and some ideas to consider. I wouldn't even call it a recommendation of any particular idea.