Esperanto: The artificial language that aimed to unite humanity

Rational investigation requires criticism, like it or not.

Rational investigation requires criticism, like it or not. Yes it does. But your response and your whole argumentation is not criticism but trolling, just designed to provoke an emotional response which you can then tear down and enjoying while doing it. Like what you did earlier and also on my reply.

As I wrote disproving JBR or making any response to him is like responding to an anti-vaxxer. I don't have the damn time, nor could all my responses be trusted, because I'm not a linguist, so who cares anyway? Musing all day about the details of where JBR was right and where he talked as an English speaker out of his ass, just to piss off more people -- brings what exactly? Those people who already made up their opinions will still stick to them, those who will learn Esperanto anyway will learn it anyway. The damage has already been done, because those who are undecided will not learn it or even consider it a language at all. WELL DONE!

And reactions then like yours always boils down to the "bad Esperantist", who reacts pissed off to shitty ideas, shitty opinions thrown around by people who should shut their mouths for good.

minced words to fake some qualitative distinction between “poorly designed” and “not perfect enough” (the diff is quantitative, and arbitrary)

No it's not. A poorly designed pocket knife for example will hurt you, a not perfect knife is just lacking a feature which you would like, but which does not harm you.

First off. You’re clearly assuming that I’m arguing against Esperanto usage, when I’m mostly talking about its design demerits.

I really tried to not assume that, but the way you argumented, how you twisted my response all lead me to the conclusion that you are argumenting against the usage of Esperanto at all as most people who follow the exact argumentation chain do. Using JBR as valid source would be one point in that chain. Like as I quote some news article of Russia Today to prove that the war of Russia against the Ukraine is right, because Ukraine is full of national socialists.

*NOTE: I’m cutting you some slack on this because you’re discussing with me, and I personally don’t mind this too much. But do not act like this against other users of this community, OK?

Ah now the authority is speaking. As if it was me who started to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Esperanto. By just welcoming the blessed opinions of JBR.

associating them with anti-vaxxers (or Nazi, or puppy killers etc.) out of nowhere.

It's not out of nowhere, people who use the same tactics in argumentation are grouped together. And even when you don't like it. Then don't like the opinion I have about your argumentation style. As you already noted about my style of argumentation.

assuming the intentions of other people. You’re claiming what you cannot reliably know.

When an argument goes in a certain direction, then there is little left of what the person really is intending. Experience counts more than uncertainty.

I’d also like to encourage you [and everyone else in this comm] to be extremely careful with arguments relying on “who” said something or their “credibility”, as in your first paragraph. It’s simply more conductive to analyse what is said than who is said it.

In general I would agree with you there. But in the end let's face it, the arguments of an architect regarding the construction of buildings weighs more than the arguments of Joe the neighbour regarding house building. In the end you only have logic and "argumentation style" to prove or disprove what you are saying. This in turn means that arguments are forced to follow a certain direction inevitably because of "logic", which leads to the same conclusions, which leads to echo chambers of people who follow these conclusions.

If for example you approach road design by seeing that all the cars are blocking them, so you by the force of logic you widen the road, the problem still exist, you widen the road more. Based on the experience of people who did research into road construction, infrastructure building you would have known that using trains, bike lanes, smaller roads and more clever design of cities would really solve the problem. Sheer basic logic does not solve shit.

And so it is in attempting with disproving or proving JBR.

adopting a defensive tone and excessive snark.*

Cute, I'm only in normal conditions and this is already considered "excessive snark". Adopting a defensive tone is what I did, because I think you are spreading FUD about Esperanto.

TL;DR: I still call your claim that Esperanto is poorly designed "nonsense".