> Would you categorize this particular style of rhetoric to be persuasive or annoying?

Why are those the choices?

Essays are situated along countless dimensions: tone, vocabulary, author, zeitgeist, publication context, intent, subtext, relationship to other works and expressions, etc

A "good faith" reader takes all of those into consideration as they absorb the essay, and integrate it with their own intellectual situation that sits along just as many countless dimensions.

Nobody's asked to sign a notarized binding document that they wholesale agree or disagree with everything said in this essay -- or its conclusions. Nor are they obliged to have some strong reaction to it at all, let alone annoyance.

It's just one among thousands of essays about a "hot button topic", to be taken however it's personally received.

Why should Chiang have to take responsibility for making sure it's not too strongly positioned for your persomal taste. Maybe he really does see it so clearly and is simply being earnest. Maybe he enjoys the literary flourish of prose in strong language. Maybe he just wants to express something as a prose-poetic human, not maximize persuasion or non-annoyance per se.