Oh, I understand. It's the nature of the voting system of comment feedback. Reddit behaves the same way. Arguments become competitions to see who can inject enough vitriol while still maintaining a placid genteel demeanor. The one who "wins" (convinces the peanut gallery to upvote them) is the one who can avoid looking like they got mad.

It's why people can advocate for ethnic cleansing here, and that's fine as long as they word it correctly, but if someone calls them an asshole about it, they're flagged.

Really common in rationalist circles from my experience as well because they believe that true statements aren't always normative, and that, since their arguments are true because they're rational, their statements aren't necessarily normative. Begging the question, of course, but I see that in situations like Scott Alexander's defense of "human biodiversity" theories (the whole HBD moniker is itself an example of everything I'm talking about condensed into two words).