At least for myself, I’m happy to give that a low probability. Even with the lowered quality since Eliezer stopped writing, LW is still much better—thanks to karma—than OB or SL4 were.
LW is still much better—thanks to karma—than OB or SL4 were.
How do you know this? Would a reputation system cause the Tea Party movement to become less wrong?
The n-Category Café or Timothy Gowers blog do not employ a reputation system like less wrong. It’s the people who make places better off than others.
It is trivially true that the lesswrong reputation system would fail if there were more irrational people here than rational people, where ‘rational’ is defined according to your criteria (not implying that your criteria are wrong).
I am quite sure that a lot of valuable opinions are lost due to the current reputation system because there are a lot of people who don’t like the idea of being voted down according to unknown criteria rather than engaging in argumentative discourses.
And as I wrote before, the curren reputation system favors non-technical posts. More technical posts often don’t receive the same amount of upvotes as non-technical posts and technical posts that turn out to be wrong are downvoted more extensively. This does discourage rigor and gives incentive to write posts about basic rationality rather than tackling important problems collaboratively.
A reputation system necessarily favors status quo.
This community are mostly aspired rationalists, not professionals in philosophy/decision theory/psychology, though there are a number of experts around. Accuracy of technical posts is hard to judge, so people probably go by the post quality, their gut feeling and how well it conforms to what has been agreed upon as correct before. Plus the usual points for humor. Minus penalty for poor spelling/grammar/style.
An example of a reputation system that works for a technical forum is MathOverflow, though partly because the mods are quite ruthless there about off-topic posts.
I am quite sure that a lot of valuable opinions are lost due to the current reputation system
...which likely means that this forum is not the right one for them. LW is open enough to resist “evaporative cooling”, and rapid downvoting inhibits all but expert trolling.
gives incentive to write posts about basic rationality rather than tackling important problems collaboratively.
I think that is the idea. Educating people “about basic rationality” is a much more viable goal than doing basic research collaboratively. LW is often used as a sounding board for research write-ups, but that is probably as far as it can go. Anything more would require excluding amateurs from the discussion, to reduce the noise level. I am yet to see a public forum where “important problems” are solved “collaboratively”. Feel free to provide counterexamples.
Would a reputation system cause the Tea Party movement to become less wrong?
Yes. They would still have their major shibboleths like Obama being a Muslim born in Kenya, but reputation systems would at least reduce the most mouth-breathing comments.
The n-Category Café or Timothy Gowers blog do not employ a reputation system like less wrong. It’s the people who make places better off than others.
People are a factor. People are not the only factor which is solely determinative. Code is Law.
I am quite sure that a lot of valuable opinions are lost due to the current reputation system because there are a lot of people who don’t like the idea of being voted down according to unknown criteria rather than engaging in argumentative discourses.
And that is why LW has orders of magnitude less comments and posts than OB or SL4 did. Wait, never mind, I meant ‘more’.
This does discourage rigor and gives incentive to write posts about basic rationality rather than tackling important problems collaboratively.
Or it discourages attempts to bamboozle with rigor. I don’t remember terribly many rigorous proofs on LW, but then, I don’t remember terribly many on OB or SL4 either.
At least for myself, I’m happy to give that a low probability. Even with the lowered quality since Eliezer stopped writing, LW is still much better—thanks to karma—than OB or SL4 were.
How do you know this? Would a reputation system cause the Tea Party movement to become less wrong?
The n-Category Café or Timothy Gowers blog do not employ a reputation system like less wrong. It’s the people who make places better off than others.
It is trivially true that the lesswrong reputation system would fail if there were more irrational people here than rational people, where ‘rational’ is defined according to your criteria (not implying that your criteria are wrong).
I am quite sure that a lot of valuable opinions are lost due to the current reputation system because there are a lot of people who don’t like the idea of being voted down according to unknown criteria rather than engaging in argumentative discourses.
And as I wrote before, the curren reputation system favors non-technical posts. More technical posts often don’t receive the same amount of upvotes as non-technical posts and technical posts that turn out to be wrong are downvoted more extensively. This does discourage rigor and gives incentive to write posts about basic rationality rather than tackling important problems collaboratively.
A reputation system necessarily favors status quo.
This community are mostly aspired rationalists, not professionals in philosophy/decision theory/psychology, though there are a number of experts around. Accuracy of technical posts is hard to judge, so people probably go by the post quality, their gut feeling and how well it conforms to what has been agreed upon as correct before. Plus the usual points for humor. Minus penalty for poor spelling/grammar/style.
An example of a reputation system that works for a technical forum is MathOverflow, though partly because the mods are quite ruthless there about off-topic posts.
...which likely means that this forum is not the right one for them. LW is open enough to resist “evaporative cooling”, and rapid downvoting inhibits all but expert trolling.
I think that is the idea. Educating people “about basic rationality” is a much more viable goal than doing basic research collaboratively. LW is often used as a sounding board for research write-ups, but that is probably as far as it can go. Anything more would require excluding amateurs from the discussion, to reduce the noise level. I am yet to see a public forum where “important problems” are solved “collaboratively”. Feel free to provide counterexamples.
Yes. They would still have their major shibboleths like Obama being a Muslim born in Kenya, but reputation systems would at least reduce the most mouth-breathing comments.
People are a factor. People are not the only factor which is solely determinative. Code is Law.
And that is why LW has orders of magnitude less comments and posts than OB or SL4 did. Wait, never mind, I meant ‘more’.
Or it discourages attempts to bamboozle with rigor. I don’t remember terribly many rigorous proofs on LW, but then, I don’t remember terribly many on OB or SL4 either.