Some people here have objected to Crocker's Rules, arguing that Crocker's Rules would allow/require people to abandon politeness in outgoing communications. Of course, abandoning politeness is probably impractical, as well as undesirable for a variety of reasons.
Now, Crocker's Rules don't *require* this, as Eliezer has correctly pointed out. On the contrary, it is argued, Crocker's Rules simply require the adoption of an attitude of tolerance towards others. Just because one ought to be tolerant does NOT mean that one ought to be impolite; thus, the objection fails.
However, this rebuttal misses the point. If Crocker's Rules are as good as Crocker and Yudkowsky argue, then EVERYBODY ought to be following Crocker's Rules. What would this mean, practically speaking? That if I get offended by an impolite speaker, this my problem, and not the speaker's.
With that in mind, we now might ask: What are you being polite for?
"So that the lazy/stupid people don't get upset at you," it might be
argued. That makes practical sense, but only on the assumption that most
people are lazy/stupid. Being polite to a person whom you regard as your
inferior is much much harder than being polite to a person whom you regard
as your peer. Humility, I would argue, is the foundation of courtesy.
If being polite is a good idea in the first place, then we ought to regard
others as our peers, rather than as our inferiors. Of course, if
politeness is outdated evolutionary baggage, then we can safely reject
such notions. Nonetheless, the argument that I should be polite because
people are *not* my peers does not hold up empirically, for the attitude
of superiority over others renders politeness too difficult, if not
impossible, to implement in practice.
On the other hand, if one DOES believe that politeness is a good idea, then one should also accept the claim that we should regard others as our peers. This begs some explanation of how/why our peers have not adopted Crocker's Rules already, or do not adopt them as soon as they are informed of them. No such explanation, at present, has been provided: rather, instead, it has been argued that those not following Crocker's Rules are not peers to begin with.
There may be some truth to this claim, and in that case, perhaps we should not be polite to our inferiors. Politeness may, in fact, be a kind of social wisdom tooth: painful to extract, but less painful than leaving it in. Eliminating politeness may add to the efficiency of discussion as well, as both Crocker and Yudkowsky have argued. Humility may not be a virtue at all, especially in light of extropy and boundless expansion. Finally, there is ample evidence of variance between persons, and so if politeness requires us to assume interpersonal equality, well, so much the worse for politeness.
Nonetheless, I think I have shown how Crocker's Rules ARE opposed to politeness, and how we cannot realistically both have our cake and eat it, too.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings