-I'm avoiding naming anyone in this post even when linking to their public writings, in order to try to keep the _rhetorical emphasis_ on "true tale of personal heartbreak, coupled with sober analysis of the sociopolitical factors leading thereto" even while I'm ... expressing disappointment with people's performance. This isn't supposed to be character/reputational attack on my friends and (former??) heroes—I just _need to tell the story_.
+> [Replies here should](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/dvkv41/meta_reducing_negativity_on_rrational/f7fs88l/) still follow the etiquette of saying "Mileage varied: I thought character X seemed stupid to me" rather than saying "No, character X was actually quite stupid."
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+But "I thought X seemed Y to me" and "X is Y" _do not mean the same thing_. [The map is not the territory](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KJ9MFBPwXGwNpadf2/skill-the-map-is-not-the-territory). [The quotation is not the referent](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/np3tP49caG4uFLRbS/the-quotation-is-not-the-referent). [The planning algorithm that maximizes the probability of doing a thing is different from an algorithm that maximizes the probability of having "tried" to do the thing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WLJwTJ7uGPA5Qphbp/trying-to-try).
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+Social norms that require claims to be made as "I" statements are adapted for _minimizing social conflict_. In the absence of mind-reading technology whose reliability is common knowledge, assertions about the content of your own map are unchallengable. If everyone is forced to only make narcissitic claims about their map ("_I_ think", "_I_ feel"), and not make claims about the territory (which could be construed to call other people's maps into question), that's
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+This post has been incredibly emotionally difficult to write, because intellectual discourse _shouldn't_ be personal _or_ political. It's easy to write posts of the form, "Smith argues that X, but actually, not-X, because ..." and it doesn't hurt because it's not about Smith or the social pressures acting on her, it's about the balance of evidence and structure of the arguments for and against X. It's only when argument _fails_ and yet you [still have Something to Protect](/2019/Jul/the-source-of-our-power/), that your last recourse is to jump to the meta level and say,
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