Communication can be used for emotional stimulus as much as intellectual stimulus, so it is not necessarily ideal that all arguments fit into some rigid ranking valuing objective refutations over emotionally driven spasms. "u r a fag" says a lot with a little: it's efficient. I mean, if everyone always strove towards perfectly clean refutations of central points, think about how boring the internet would be! It's simply not the case that everyone should just be looking to refute arguments with specifics. And besides, this way of looking at it reeks of elitism, like most Paul Graham articles. How can we trust what he's saying anyway? It's just to get hits to his blog. What a self-important dilettante.

:)