Once you're out of high school debate club, it's a good principle that if the only thing in favour of a statement is "it's true", err on the side of not saying it.
Is LessWrong one of these rationalist communities? Here's their relevant FAQ: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/FAQ#Site_Etiquette_and_Socia...
The reason I ask: My local political party recently adopted a geek-style Code of Conduct. Huge help. But as you can imagine, our policy debates remain suboptimal, sometimes getting rather acrimonious. Neither our bylaws or Robert's Rules of Order say much about playing nicely. Maybe some experience, advice from rationalists would help.
(HN's guidelines would also be a good start for my purposes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
LessWrong is one of those sites, but for sheer elegance of writing (in my very personal opinion) you can't go much better than Scott Alexander.
{necessary, kind}:
> Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary. Kind, in that you don’t rush to insult people who disagree with you. Necessary in that it’s on topic, and not only contributes something to the discussion but contributes more to the discussion than it’s likely to take away through starting a fight.
{true, kind}:
> Annnnnnd sometimes you might want to share something that’s not especially relevant, not the most important thing in the world – but if you do that it had better be both true and kind. No random interjection of toxic opinions that are going to cause World War III. No unprovoked attacks.
(personal comment - the recent HN thread on castle Guedelon, where a bunch of experimental archaeologists are building a medieval-style castle, was perhaps not "necessary" or "relevant" on a tech forum, but it was kind in that I very much enjoyed the half hour I was reading about it. Since there were no false claims about castles on that page, I'd count that as "true and kind".)
For good measure, {true, necessary}:
> Nobody can be kind all the time, but if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics.
I think the point was more that being quiet is an option.
>Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary. Kind, in that you don’t rush to insult people who disagree with you. Necessary in that it’s on topic, and not only contributes something to the discussion but contributes more to the discussion than it’s likely to take away through starting a fight.
1. Good-faith efforts at contribution where a person happens to be wrong? (happens to the most conscientious of us)
2. Instances where the speaker has made their confidence level explicitly known? ("Just a guess...", "I am not a lawyer, but...", "I'm not certain, but my understanding is that..." etc)
Are "necessary" and "kind" lies acceptable?
Being patronized by the OP was neither true, kind nor necessary. It is another misdirection of the sort they describe, this one attacking the (imaginary) opponent with a strawman or false dichotomy? Anyway, I'll shut up now.