It's not just him, though. Say we're in a thread on the #microbiology tag because we all totally love microbiology. zeroFail has just created a thread about microscopic spores. You actually know more about microscopic spores than anyone else on the site. You're actually an expert on the specific type of spore we're discussing and someone's made a grievous error that all the rest of us are happily going along with. Unfortunately zeroFail disagrees with your position on Israel and has muted you, so you can't contribute to the thread.

Do you miss out? Yeah, sure, a little. You don't get to fulfill that impulse to share relevant knowledge that you possess. By and large, though, the subscribers of #microbiology miss out. Instead of having some new factual information now they're spreading some nonsense they read on Hubski around because of your disagreement with zeroFail on a completely unrelated topic.

Not such a big deal when it's only a handful of people blocking one another. If it gets out of hand, though, you can see how the quality of conversation might suffer.