Editing Openai/6973e373-2b8c-800d-84b7-d7001cfc6bac (section)

==== Because there’s a coherent alternative causal story that explains the same actions without requiring the full “ego-defense/selfishness/bad faith/flooding” bundle. ====

===== Jordan actually read the entire post and offered concrete suggestions. That’s effortful. They may be wrong, but it’s not the “drive-by, lowest-cost extraction” profile. =====

===== Nothing in the content requires emotional flooding. They can be calmly overconfident because their professional heuristics are overapplied. =====

===== Even the credential (“I make money writing”) can be: =====
* a misguided attempt to establish relevance (“I’m giving you editing advice”), not
* a threatened status-defense reaction.

It can be status, but it doesn’t have to be.

===== Jordan can be an excellent writer/editor while still being mediocre at: =====
* epistemic charity,
* community-norm reading,
* mod dynamics,
* and argument/premise discipline.

“Good at X” doesn’t imply “good at discourse meta-ethics.” That’s not a Dunning–Kruger excuse; it’s just domain separation.

===== Jordan’s “AI-ish” inference can be a false positive from an overused heuristic (availability bias), not necessarily ego-defense. =====

===== Even “gish gallop” can be a misapplied label from debate-culture vocabulary, not a deliberate attempt to derail. It’s a harmful move either way — but intent and inner cause are still underdetermined. =====

So: in this hypothetical, you can reasonably say:
* “This is effectively unproductive / incompatible with our norms.” (high confidence) But you can’t say with high confidence:
* “This is definitely pride/selfishness/defense/bad faith + low-effort + flooding + skill deficit.”

You can say “likely some self-protective cognition,” but not “the whole bundle.”