> Are you talking about the platform rules, or merely what the community thinks?

Both.

> (e.g. lwhalen, who is engaging in blatant emotional manipulation and logical fallacies).

Is it not absolutely amazing! And I bet he's otherwise fairly smart (I am speculating though, perhaps I will go through his history to get a better read).

That ~no one finds this sort of thing interesting, is interesting. That ~everyone has a strong aversion to studying this phenomenon deeply is even more interesting, and it makes me wonder where that aversion comes from (mainly cultural evolution and conditioning is my guess).

> But, at least aspirationally

There's talking the talk, and then there is walking it. All ideologues have problems with the latter, and are rarely enthusiastic about discussing it, to put it nicely.

> the HN rules are designed to constrain rhetoric to keep the discourse civil

I'm suspicious, considering how rhetorically weaponized they are. But then, maybe it's just luck or random error.

> while allowing users to set the standards for what's acceptable logic

My very point!! :)

I'd have put "logic" in quotes though.

> although in practice, users like lwhalen and lproven just completely ignore the guidelines

The enforcers of the guidelines also regularly ignore them, though not "just" and "completely", which I suspect is a big part of why no one notices.