No. I was very specific on purpose pinpointing exactly one comment.
I really am not inclined to argue about intended communication issues because that simply isn’t a productive (or even amusing use of time) so I’m going to only address this issue once. You wrote:
Hahahahahaha. Ok I’ll bite. Yes, I was thinking about 9/11 related posts. But the
fact that I couldn’t convince anyone doesn’t bother me that much. What bothers me > is that just pointing to evidence that contradicts the established view on 9/11 here > is downvoted. See the following comment:
You used the phrase “9/11 related posts” and then made a generalization about posts with “evidence.” In standard discourse this would likely have been read as talking about a general problem and giving a specific example of that. This seems further supported by the fact that your previous comment had the remark that
I’ve also witnessed a certain disrespect for dissenters, comments that
contradicted certain established views where downvoted
There may be a communication issue here. Let me ask then, are you only arguing that this single post in question was downvoted when it should not have been?
if you listened to the eye-witness testimony in question, the guy was trapped
inside the building because the stairs were blown away and the electricity was
turned off(so he couldn’t use the elevator). If you claim that his testimony is wrong > you would have to explain why he was trapped inside the building and btw this
happened before any of the main towers collapsed so you can’t say “he was in
shock” or what not.
I’m a bit confused by this claim. Trapped inside the building works perfectly well after the airplane crash without any explosion from a pre-planted device. Regarding your last remark, do you mean to imply that someone trapped without electricity in a burning building isn’t going to have any shock issues or issues contributing to reliability simply because the building hasn’t collapsed?
Ohhhh, please, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppressing here is a > whole list of definitions. If a comment gets downvoted to −3 it no longer appears on > the comment page(you have to specifically click to make it appear again). If that is > not supression we are speaking a different language here.
Well, it seems empirically that a lot of people click through on this thread (most obviously one can look at the karma scores within this subthread to verify that people are clicking through). We may in this case be speaking different languages in that I have trouble seeing how requiring an extra click constitutes suppression. The linked to dictionary seems to agree with me (with the usual caveats about dictionaries being descriptive not proscriptive objects).
The definitions listed are:
1 : to put down by authority or force : subdue
Doesn’t seem relevant.
2 : to keep from public knowledge: as a : to keep secret b : to stop or prohibit the
publication or revelation of
2b could very weakly maybe apply if you stretched it (is requiring an extra click prohibiting publication? I’d think not).
3 a : to exclude from consciousness b : to keep from giving vent to
Irrelevant. 4,5,6 are also irrelevant.
Finally yes, eye-witness testimonies are unreliable but this
doesn’t mean that you can discard them, that they are not evidence. So my point
still stands.
No it really doesn’t. You don’t seem to have actually responded to any of my points about why we have a downvoting system. If evidence is sufficiently weak (such as this evidence where it isn’t even obvious that it actually favors an alternative hypothesis over the currently judged as most likely hypothesis) then downgrading lets LW readers know that the comment is likely to not be useful for improving the correspondence between their map and the territory.
The remainder of your remark is contentless repetition of what you’ve already said.
There may be a communication issue here. Let me ask then, are you only arguing that this single post in question was downvoted when it should not have been?
No. I’m arguing that this is a general problem. However in order to make my point I chose one specific comment which hopefully portrays the problem very clearly. What could be better than a comment whose only content is a link to outside evidence? If the comment contained personal arguments I would have a much harder time defending it.
I’m a bit confused by this claim. Trapped inside the building works perfectly well after the airplane crash without any explosion from a pre-planted device. Regarding your last remark, do you mean to imply that someone trapped without electricity in a burning building isn’t going to have any shock issues or issues contributing to reliability simply because the building hasn’t collapsed?
Ohhh, sorry, I think that I get your point now. The eye witness in question was trapped inside WTC 7 which was not hit by any plane(it is not one of the twin towers). All this happened before the collapse of either twin tower and according to the official version there was no damage to WTC7 before their collapse, only afterwards did WTC7 catch fire that lead to a later collapse of itself. I guess that was the origin of the confusion, I hope this makes it clearer. Btw, if that really was the origin of the confusion and you weren’t aware of the facts that I just cited shouldn’t this ring an alarm bell, that maybe you know less about this particular testimony than you thought you knew?
As for the definition of suppress: the original meaning was “to press down” and a synonym is “to check” which among other things means: “to restrain or diminish the action or force of ”. Other than that I don’t think it makes much sense to fight over definitions.
If evidence is sufficiently weak (such as this evidence where it isn’t even obvious that it actually favors an alternative hypothesis over the currently judged as most likely hypothesis)
then downgrading lets LW readers know that the comment is likely to not be useful for improving the correspondence between their map and the territory.
Sure, there are cases where downvoting is justified. But when isn’t it, and how do you distinguish between these cases? That’s the hard question. And if you are downvoting evidence as opposed to normal comments you better be very sure about what you are doing.
Ok. If you are arguing about a general problem, then my remarks clearly stand even if a single other comment was poorly voted on. But, I’ve already explained why even in that individual case the voting was reasonable.
Ohhh, sorry, I think that I get your point now. The eye witness in question was
trapped inside WTC 7 which was not hit by any plane(it is not one of the twin
towers). All this happened before the collapse of either twin tower and according
to the official version there was no damage to WTC7 before their collapse, only
afterwards did WTC7 catch fire that lead to a later collapse of itself. I guess that
was the origin of the confusion, I hope this makes it clearer. Btw, if that really was > the origin of the confusion and you weren’t aware of the facts that I just cited
shouldn’t this ring an alarm bell, that maybe you know less about this particular
testimony than you thought you knew?
You have a valid point. I saw this testimony a while ago and must not have remembered it as well as I thought. If the witnesses testimony is accurate it presents problems with the standard account of events. The notion however that someone in that situation would be keeping very good track of timelines and the like isn’t at all obvious(yes less traumatic than being in one of the two towers but that’s not saying that much). Also, structural damage to WTC 7 is not by itself fatal to the standard account nor for that matter is it terribly strong evidence for conspiracy. So this doesn’t change the situation a lot.
Sure, there are cases where downvoting is justified. But when isn’t it, and how do > you distinguish between these cases? That’s the hard question. And if you are
downvoting evidence as opposed to normal comments you better be very sure
about what you are doing.
I don’t share your conviction that comments that claim to have evidence should somehow be privileged over comments that are more analytical. Moreover, even if I don’t have a perfect method for deciding when to downvote or upvote, that’s not an argument against any specific downvote or upvote. The general rule of thumb that comments with extremely weak evidentiary issues should be downvoted is not an unreasonable standard. Moreover, given how little this matters, the notion that I must “better be very sure” simply doesn’t hold. People can easily click through to read a comment if they want to. You seem to be taking the karma system much more seriously than necessary.
I really am not inclined to argue about intended communication issues because that simply isn’t a productive (or even amusing use of time) so I’m going to only address this issue once. You wrote:
You used the phrase “9/11 related posts” and then made a generalization about posts with “evidence.” In standard discourse this would likely have been read as talking about a general problem and giving a specific example of that. This seems further supported by the fact that your previous comment had the remark that
There may be a communication issue here. Let me ask then, are you only arguing that this single post in question was downvoted when it should not have been?
I’m a bit confused by this claim. Trapped inside the building works perfectly well after the airplane crash without any explosion from a pre-planted device. Regarding your last remark, do you mean to imply that someone trapped without electricity in a burning building isn’t going to have any shock issues or issues contributing to reliability simply because the building hasn’t collapsed?
Well, it seems empirically that a lot of people click through on this thread (most obviously one can look at the karma scores within this subthread to verify that people are clicking through). We may in this case be speaking different languages in that I have trouble seeing how requiring an extra click constitutes suppression. The linked to dictionary seems to agree with me (with the usual caveats about dictionaries being descriptive not proscriptive objects).
The definitions listed are:
Doesn’t seem relevant.
2b could very weakly maybe apply if you stretched it (is requiring an extra click prohibiting publication? I’d think not).
Irrelevant. 4,5,6 are also irrelevant.
No it really doesn’t. You don’t seem to have actually responded to any of my points about why we have a downvoting system. If evidence is sufficiently weak (such as this evidence where it isn’t even obvious that it actually favors an alternative hypothesis over the currently judged as most likely hypothesis) then downgrading lets LW readers know that the comment is likely to not be useful for improving the correspondence between their map and the territory.
The remainder of your remark is contentless repetition of what you’ve already said.
No. I’m arguing that this is a general problem. However in order to make my point I chose one specific comment which hopefully portrays the problem very clearly. What could be better than a comment whose only content is a link to outside evidence? If the comment contained personal arguments I would have a much harder time defending it.
Ohhh, sorry, I think that I get your point now. The eye witness in question was trapped inside WTC 7 which was not hit by any plane(it is not one of the twin towers). All this happened before the collapse of either twin tower and according to the official version there was no damage to WTC7 before their collapse, only afterwards did WTC7 catch fire that lead to a later collapse of itself. I guess that was the origin of the confusion, I hope this makes it clearer. Btw, if that really was the origin of the confusion and you weren’t aware of the facts that I just cited shouldn’t this ring an alarm bell, that maybe you know less about this particular testimony than you thought you knew?
As for the definition of suppress: the original meaning was “to press down” and a synonym is “to check” which among other things means: “to restrain or diminish the action or force of ”. Other than that I don’t think it makes much sense to fight over definitions.
I’ve shortly addressed this in the following comment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/218/what_is_missing_from_rationality/1xnz
Sure, there are cases where downvoting is justified. But when isn’t it, and how do you distinguish between these cases? That’s the hard question. And if you are downvoting evidence as opposed to normal comments you better be very sure about what you are doing.
Ok. If you are arguing about a general problem, then my remarks clearly stand even if a single other comment was poorly voted on. But, I’ve already explained why even in that individual case the voting was reasonable.
You have a valid point. I saw this testimony a while ago and must not have remembered it as well as I thought. If the witnesses testimony is accurate it presents problems with the standard account of events. The notion however that someone in that situation would be keeping very good track of timelines and the like isn’t at all obvious(yes less traumatic than being in one of the two towers but that’s not saying that much). Also, structural damage to WTC 7 is not by itself fatal to the standard account nor for that matter is it terribly strong evidence for conspiracy. So this doesn’t change the situation a lot.
I don’t share your conviction that comments that claim to have evidence should somehow be privileged over comments that are more analytical. Moreover, even if I don’t have a perfect method for deciding when to downvote or upvote, that’s not an argument against any specific downvote or upvote. The general rule of thumb that comments with extremely weak evidentiary issues should be downvoted is not an unreasonable standard. Moreover, given how little this matters, the notion that I must “better be very sure” simply doesn’t hold. People can easily click through to read a comment if they want to. You seem to be taking the karma system much more seriously than necessary.