The karma system motivates people not to bring up things not already known to the other members. People will be less interested, and more likely to ding them for “not being relevant” (or because they misunderstand it). For instance, the recent post on E-Prime was relevant; very short; interesting; and even practical. Yet it’s still sitting there at 0.
I’ve noticed that very smart people often go to great effort to spend time with other very smart people; and then, instead of listening to them, try to talk as much as they can. Which defeats much of the purpose of spending time with very smart people. This indicates that the motivation for joining groups is as much to impress them, as to learn from them.
It would be very surprising if groups did not spend most of their time discussing things most of them already know. That would mean that the groups consisted mainly of people who were interested in a subject, yet uninformed about it.
If one person points out a previously-unknown implication of mutually-known facts to the group, does that still count as discussing the information shared by members?
I’ve noticed that very smart people often go to great effort to spend time with other very smart people; and then, instead of listening to them, try to talk as much as they can. Which defeats much of the purpose of spending time with very smart people.
I think this is an interesting observation, but I find myself wondering if it really does defeat the purpose. When conversing with someone I suspect is smarter than me, I tend to value direct, critical responses to my own statements and speculations more than whatever smart thing happens to be on their mind. It’s far easier (for me) to learn from having been wrong than it is just from hearing something that turns out to be right. I can’t elicit as many of those responses if all I do is listen.
I suspect people are interested in talking to smart people because they expect/hope that the smart people will tell them that they, too, are smart, and they value this statement from a smart person more than from some random individual of lesser intelligence.
I would go an extra step beyond Iogi. You can learn more from smart people, but you can also teach them far easier and more enjoyably. They also often get more out of it. Being able to finally be with someone who can understand what you’re talking about can be a great relief even if and sometimes especially if you’re not learning anything at the moment. This does also have the side benefit of impressing them and/or helping you gain high status, so the two can get intermingled.
There’s also the fact that they also usually want to talk a lot, especially if you give them food for thought, so you have to go a long way before you risk monopolizing the conversation.
Unless you are saying that the karma system actually displaces such motivations as giving others something worthwhile to think about, and getting feedback on one’s ideas, I don’t see how a small (even zero) non negative karma rating would discourage anyone from posting an unusual idea. If we are more concerned with writing posts that gain karma than expressing our ideas, we are in trouble. What would we want the karma for anyways?
The karma system motivates people not to bring up things not already known to the other members. People will be less interested, and more likely to ding them for “not being relevant” (or because they misunderstand it). For instance, the recent post on E-Prime was relevant; very short; interesting; and even practical. Yet it’s still sitting there at 0.
I’ve noticed that very smart people often go to great effort to spend time with other very smart people; and then, instead of listening to them, try to talk as much as they can. Which defeats much of the purpose of spending time with very smart people. This indicates that the motivation for joining groups is as much to impress them, as to learn from them.
It would be very surprising if groups did not spend most of their time discussing things most of them already know. That would mean that the groups consisted mainly of people who were interested in a subject, yet uninformed about it.
If one person points out a previously-unknown implication of mutually-known facts to the group, does that still count as discussing the information shared by members?I think this is an interesting observation, but I find myself wondering if it really does defeat the purpose. When conversing with someone I suspect is smarter than me, I tend to value direct, critical responses to my own statements and speculations more than whatever smart thing happens to be on their mind. It’s far easier (for me) to learn from having been wrong than it is just from hearing something that turns out to be right. I can’t elicit as many of those responses if all I do is listen.
Good point. Though, often, the smart person doing the talking doesn’t seem to be in doubt about his/her ideas.
I suspect people are interested in talking to smart people because they expect/hope that the smart people will tell them that they, too, are smart, and they value this statement from a smart person more than from some random individual of lesser intelligence.
I would go an extra step beyond Iogi. You can learn more from smart people, but you can also teach them far easier and more enjoyably. They also often get more out of it. Being able to finally be with someone who can understand what you’re talking about can be a great relief even if and sometimes especially if you’re not learning anything at the moment. This does also have the side benefit of impressing them and/or helping you gain high status, so the two can get intermingled.
There’s also the fact that they also usually want to talk a lot, especially if you give them food for thought, so you have to go a long way before you risk monopolizing the conversation.
Unless you are saying that the karma system actually displaces such motivations as giving others something worthwhile to think about, and getting feedback on one’s ideas, I don’t see how a small (even zero) non negative karma rating would discourage anyone from posting an unusual idea. If we are more concerned with writing posts that gain karma than expressing our ideas, we are in trouble. What would we want the karma for anyways?