Could you define sneering, as you use it? It sounds to me like you mean something like "dismissing in entirety", which is not my definition. 

Giving attention to sneering comments that happen to bubble to your attention isn't Pareto optional on any front. If you want to learn where you are wrong, seek out the most insightful people who disagree with you (and not just the ones that use long essays to lay out their case logically). 

Back in 2020, @Raemon gave me some extremely good advice.

@johnswentworth had left some comments on a post of mine that I found extremely frustrating and counterproductive. At the time I had no idea about his body of work, so he was just some annoying guy. Ray, who did know who John was and thought he was doing important work, told me:

You can't save the world without working with people at least as annoying as John. 

Which didn't mean I had to heal the rift with John in particular, but if I was going to make that a policy then I would need to give up on my goal of having real impact. 

John and I did a video call, and it went well. He pointed out a major flaw in my post, I impressed him by immediately updating once he pointed it out. I still think his original comments displayed status dynamics while sneering at them, and find that frustrating, but Ray was right that not all factual corrections will be delivered in pleasing forms. 

or have a weekly minimum that's greater than the daily minimum x7

Personal example: back when I was working as a data scientist at various startups, my mother would tell me to wear a suit when interviewing. And I would be like “Mom you do not get it, that would absolutely tank my chances of getting hired except at companies so bad I don’t want to work there, the only people who wear a suit for an interview in tech are the people who don’t think they can cut it on their technical skills and the people hiring know this”. I had the skills. I was definitely playing the winners’ bracket in that particular game. Throwing in something like a suit, the sort of signal used in the losers’ bracket, would have been a terrible move.

This seems more like "your mom is wrong about what the correct interview outfit is" than "you escaped the game". There are lots of outfits that would cost you points in start-up interviews; some people are lucky enough to have their tastes formed by the same pressures and feel like it's natural, others have to learn the same way people have to wear a suit.

The MATS acceptance rate was 33% in Summer 2022 (the first program with open applications) and decreased to 4.3% (in terms of first-stage applicants; ~7% if you only count those who completed all stages) in Summer 2025. Similarly, our mentor acceptance rate decreased from 100% in Summer 2022 to 27% for the upcoming Winter 2026 Program.

This is not counter-evidence to the accusation that scholar quality has been going downhill unless you add in several other assumptions. 

I'm dying to know... If you lack the "appreciate long term relationship" receptor, why did you stay in a relationship for 10 years?

One of the reasons it's hard to take the possibility of blatant lies into account is that it would just be so very inconvenient, and also boring.

Feeling called out by this relatable content. 

My impression is 7 is neutral, so this isn't very good. I'm surprised and view this as a huge lost opportunity.

Do you have data on how valuable writers find the feedback they get from peers or mentors? Do people who get a little tend to want more?