[cstrahan]

> I don't understand how you can read the comment as being purely descriptive, when it makes categorical statements about people's "value" [...]

I touched on this in a later response under your initial comment in this thread, but the tl;dr was that I interpreted their use of the word "value" being the same as its use in economics: something is said to be "valued" if it is desired/sought after, and whether that should be the case or how we feel about it is an orthogonal concern (though certainly not any less deserving of discussion itself).

> [...] with a postscript about how these "truths" are too hot to handle. If it were simply about following the facts wherever they lead, surely there wouldn't be a need to preemptively declare that anyone who disagreed did so irrationally, and surely it wouldn't have been categorical without making room for nuance or disagreement.

I think I see where you're coming from now. I suspect difference in interpretation is a consequence of differences in our individual priors: I have seen countless times that people will conflate mentioning of a statistic with support for that statistic being what it is -- there is, after all, the proverbial saying "don't shoot the messenger". So I can sympathize with (what I interpret to be) a preemptive "I know some of you are going to take what I've written uncharitably and/or irrationally, so fire away" -- which isn't to say that I think that's a productive way of communicating, but I see the rationale behind that (as misguided as it may be) just as much as I can see the rationale behind giving someone the finger, or cussing someone out, letting out a frustrated sigh, or any other emotionally motivated outburst. (I didn't take what was originally written to mean "if you disagree, it's because you're being irrational")