> I read the long post as a thoroughly steelmanned response.

Steel manning means engaging with the strongest interpretation of the argument. The original comment clearly used sawdust not as sawdust specifically but as a substitute for something harmful or inappropriate. It’s not even about eating. So spending half a comment on “ackchyually, sawdust is good for you” (this is a caricature for brevity) is nitpicking something which doesn’t matter and derails the rest of the comment which is based on it.

Steel manning would’ve meant engaging in good faith, understanding “eating sawdust” isn’t meant literally but as a random choice for “something bad”, and replying to the latter, not the former.

In other words (I’m explaining it three times to drive the point home), steel manning means not nitpicking the exact words of someone’s argument but making the effort to respond to their meaning. It’s addressing the spirit of the comment above its letter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law). Sometimes the difference between those isn’t obvious, but I’m arguing that in this case it is.

> I eat meat but I'm one of those people who is ethically opposed to consuming AI content.

Eating meat or being vegan has nothing to do with the original comment. Again, it’s not even about eating, that was clearly a random example which could be substituted by a myriad other things. When you describe your eating habits you’re already engaging with a derailed, straw manned version of the argument instead of the original point the person was making.

I do apologise if my response came across as deliberately nitpicking on the specific item; my intent was to highlight that there are many cases where things we might broadly find unpalatable actually do happen all the time, with no harm except to our belief structures; from that perspective, sawdust or any other non-toxic contaminant in food is a pretty good analogy for AI in content, because in very small dilutions the only possible harm it can carry is to a belief structure.

On the flip side, it does seem to me like you have deliberately chosen the worst possible interpretation of what I wrote, so ... pot, kettle?