If you smack someone or tweak their noise while talking, it doesn't matter if that was your 'main thrust'. Please just don't be uncivil here.

My decision was to try out an idea briefly and learn from it. We achieved that, and what we learned stabilized quickly, so the value of continuing was small. Meanwhile the cost of continuing was nonzero, and possibly high. It turns out that when you tell people you're going to try an idea out briefly just to see what happens, many hear "this is a permanent change". That was not intended, and I didn't want to do damage by allowing that misconception to linger for another several days.

I was going to link to the famous Keynes line about "when the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do?", but it turns out Keynes didn't say it: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/02/11/keynes-he-didnt-s....

> Ill omit such language in the future

Thanks!

I don't believe that accurately labeling poor behavior is uncivil, but I should have used a phrase like "showing cowardice" (more in line with my phrasing of poor judgment) to make it about the specific behavior (and faults with it), rather than a comment about you. I also will, in the future, pick less emotionally charged synonyms or phrases, because they're clearly distracting.

I appreciate the time you've taken to engage with me and explain your thinking (though I disagree with your choices still).

I hope you'll make a post explicitly about the experiment, so we can talk more fully (and civily!) about why I disagree with you.

Have a good day!