"Could we, as a community, come up with a definition for "being a dick" that everyone finds acceptable?"
Not without running into the same problems I've already highlighted. The more specific a rule is, the less likely it is to be enforced arbitrarily. I always assumed that when rachel said the "don't be a dick" rule would only be a placeholder for future, concrete rules, that that would actually happen. Unfortunately it never did, and nobody knows what is actually allowed vs. what is not allowed aside from what someone may have said weeks or months ago.
As for the second part, I should have said "invest social capital in" instead of "worth talking to"
They have the same meaning for me, but apparently that got lost in translation. Obviously I talk to everybody. That doesn't mean I personally value the communication I have with everyone equally.
It's not about "rejecting people", as you say, but it's about knowing how likely someone is to be able to maintain a rational and productive conversation about something. It's about not spending energy that isn't worth spending. We've had a very long conversation in this thread, but for the most part I believe it was worthwhile. If we were talking about racial politics, however, it would not be. It's not that I wouldn't want to go down that rabbit hole with you, specifically. It's that you wouldn't respond well, it wouldn't go anywhere, and neither of us would get anything out of it.
Sometimes I like to say something that is controversial in a public channel, and use that as a sort of lure to figure out who is and is not capable of actually having a real debate. It's not about who agrees with what I say, it's about who can be a good sport and have some fun.
My personal Hell would be me stuck in a room with only people who agree with everything that I say.
Sometimes the most controversial statements provoke the most interesting (to me) conversations.
And I don't believe you're garbage, even though you say I'm a jerk. I just don't like you.
You seem to have a mommy complex, needing to defend people from words. You assume offense for others who were never offended in the first place, and use that as cause to ban people (or have people banned, in my case).
You overreact with a preference to your perceived offense to your friends or others.
Telling me that you are some kind of paragon of judgement of people who have opposing opinions doesn't fit at all with my own interactions with you. That's not to say you can't do better, I just know that you won't.