I’m finding his downvotes of me hilarious. He has one strategy, and just doesn’t know what to do when it doesn’t work.
See, Eugine, the issue with your strategy is this: It only works on people who care what other people think of them, who are -bothered- when their karma drops, or when their percentage isn’t exactly what they want it to be. If you manage to get this account to the point where I can’t post anymore? I’ll start another.
This account isn’t important to me, it’s a fake band name I invented as a teenager to rename songs by a death metal band I don’t even like (Cannibal Corpse). I’ve gone through dozens of pseudonyms, and this isn’t even my longest-running, it’s just one I used for a blog I no longer write in.
I think he has two strategies. One, post obnoxious prejudiced trollery as often as possible, because that always convinces people. Two, mass-downvote people you take to be your ideological opponents, because that will definitely make them go away or get ignored, rather than getting you banned and universally scorned.
(I do actually quite like karma. But I observe that posting comments is net-karma-positive for me despite Eugine’s asshattery, so the effect of reducing my karma is to make me post more. But maybe all Eugine cares about is seeing “-1”s next to comments expressing opinions he doesn’t like.)
And both strategies are self-destructive. (Seriously, how can somebody who writes and behaves like a fifth grader ever have felt they were sufficiently more rational than other people here, such as to believe that they were in a position to decide who did and did not belong here?)
He erodes the ability of people to credibly signal disagreement with any position he knowably downvotes. I have no idea how many independent people went through and downvoted my post, and my comments in those posts—but I’m going to assume the vast majority of downvotes are from him and his sockpuppet accounts.
Agreed with OrphanWilde, and in the same boat. I have no idea how many people credibly downvoted my post either, which gives me little information about how to optimize my actions.
I get a lot of Eugine downvotes, and it looks to me like he very rarely[2] downvotes any of my comments more than once. My guess is that the same is true of Gleb.
[1]I think the large majority of downvotes I get are from Eugine. Of course it’s hard to be sure, and obviously “all my downvotes come from the deranged mass-downvoter no one pays any attentiont to” is a self-flattering hypothesis...
Agreed that not all downvotes I get are from Eugine. My point is that his downvotes obscure my ability to tell how many are real downvotes and how many are not.
Regarding your other question, I specifically asked for comments, not downvotes. That way, I can check if the user is a Eugine sockpuppet or not.
What if his fourth strategy is to get all the people on Less Wrong to talk about Eugine Noir more than anything else thereby allowing his ideas to get notoriety?
I would never have paid attention to his comments sans the furor. As it is, I find myself interested in what views he has and why LW is so opposed to them.
The problem isn’t just that talking about Nier might promulgate his ideas. It’s that talking about him means not talking about anything more important and/or interesting.
LW isn’t opposed to his views. Many people here share many of his views, and argue them considerably more effectively than he ever has. LW is opposed to his tactics; namely, using large numbers of sockpuppet accounts to mass-downvote people he doesn’t feel “belong” on Less Wrong, which is really just anybody who doesn’t agree with him.
He’s not being silenced, he was kicked out for trying to silence others, and he continues to be kicked out every time he’s identified because he’s never stopped.
I think the actual situation is something like this.
Eugine believes that there are systematic (statistical) mental differences between men and women, between black people and white people, etc.
I think the LW consensus on this, in so far as there is one, is that there probably are such differences.
I suspect most LW participants would estimate smaller differences than Eugine would.
Eugine seems to love to talk about these differences and to trot them out as his preferred explanation for anything anyone might otherwise explain as racism, sexism, etc. Most LW participants do not have that preference.
Eugine believes that departures from traditional norms of sexuality and gender are Bad: boo to homosexuality, boo squared to transgenderism, etc.
I think the LW consensus on this is squarely against him.
And those are pretty much all the issues that Eugine posts a lot about. He may well have strong and/or interesting opinions on many other topics, but it seems that what he mostly wants to talk about is the inferiority of black people and the contemptibility of transgender people. (This wasn’t always true. Compare the first page of The_Lion’s user overview with that of, say, Eugine_Nier’s.)
To echo OrphanWilde, Eugine’s views on empirics are typically well-supported by the facts, and you’ll find people like me making similar points in similar places. He’s also been around a long time, and has made a large number of good comments, and is a good source of rationality quotes.
The trouble is almost entirely the vote manipulation.
It seems to me that he often makes a huge generalization (of something that in the non-generalized form is a useful insight), and often makes the comment unnecessarily rude.
Simply, there is a difference between saying “when judging a population’s share in e.g. Nobel prizes, you should consider that some of them may be politically motivated, especially when we don’t talk hard science” and saying “black people contribute nothing; even all their Nobel prizes are political”. Eugine always chooses the latter form.
Rudeness is sometimes necessary, otherwise the Overton window of what can be mentioned in a polite society shifts:
There are facts that were once known, sometimes generally known, that are now known to but a few. Some of this information loss is caused by changes in occupational patterns – farmers automatically know something about heritability, clerks and workers in dark satanic mills, not so much.
But mostly these facts are unpleasant, at least to some ears. People who mention such facts are punished – generally in terms of their careers, not being invited to parties, etc. That’s enough to cause a 10 or 20-fold drop in visibility, which ought to tell you something about how brave people are. Many people assume that everyone is secretly aware of those unpleasant facts, but that is not the case. A generation that has grown up never hearing those facts will be almost entirely unaware of them, in part because their personal life experiences don’t impinge on those patterns much. This means that they can and sometimes do make serious mistakes that those ‘secretly aware’ types never would.
I submit that if Viliam hadn’t understood that he wouldn’t have felt the need to say ”… unnecessarily rude”.
Do you think it is at all likely that by writing the way he does Eugine is keeping LW’s Overton window in a better place than it would be if he stated equivalent opinions without going out of his way to offend?
“Unnecessarily rude” is like “excessive force” or “inadequate approach”, if you accept the expression you accept that the subject is wrong by definition.
I think that politeness is not an unalloyed virtue and that being rude can be useful. I am, of course, not saying that every time you have the opportunity to be rude, you should.
if you accept the expression you accept that the subject is wrong by definition
I don’t agree. There is such a thing as being unnecessarily pedantic, but there are situations where pedantry is very much called for (say, reviewing the specifications for a communications protocol to be used in nuclear reactor software). There is such a thing as being unnecessarily sexually explicit, but there are situations where being sexually explicit is very much called for (say, while having sex).
I do agree that saying “unnecessarily X” carries a suggestion that X is usually not a good thing in ordinary circumstances. Personally I’m quite comfortable saying that about rudeness (while vigorously agreeing that there are situations in which rudeness is called for); do you disagree?
that politeness is not an unalloyed virtue and that being rude can be useful
I very much agree. I would guess that Viliam does too. (We may not agree on how often being rude is useful.)
Greg Cochran
Yeah, I’d classify that as needless obnoxiousness, and it certainly doesn’t make me think better of Cochran, think worse of his opponents, or think him more likely to be right. More specifically, if I compare my mental models of (1) someone who holds Cochran’s opinions as the result of impartial scientific investigation and (2) someone who holds Cochran’s opinions partly because he’s always been inclined towards white supremacism and is glad to have some scientific-looking backup for it, #2 seems distinctly more likely to write that sort of thing than #1, so I update Pr(Cochran’s opinions are not substantially influenced by prior prejudice) down just a little.
I doubt Cochran cares what I think of him, and he may well have sufficient reasons of his own for being obnoxious in that fashion. (E.g., I expect it helps to stir up enthusiasm in readers who are already convinced he’s right.) But in so far as Cochran cares about persuading those who are not yet fully convinced members of Team Cochran, I guess that that sort of rudeness is counterproductive.
We may not agree on how often being rude is useful.
That is probable. I like to sharpen the point till it gets to be very very sharp. Can lead to bleeding.
in so far as Cochran cares about persuading those who are not yet fully convinced members of Team Cochran, I guess that that sort of rudeness is counterproductive
I don’t think he’s running a marketing campaign or is attempting to jumpstart a grassroots movement. He’s more likely to be raising a flag to see who rallies to it. Or maybe he just likes to grumble and snark :-)
Social norms of politeness vary. By the usual ’net norms the discussion on LW (including Eugine) is very polite.
Pointing out that black people don’t get Nobels in hard sciences because the right tail of their IQ distribution doesn’t reach that far is highly politically incorrect and might well be rude in the sense of making participants in the conversation uncomfortable, but that’s precisely the valuable sense of which West Hunter speaks.
Some of us are -very- opposed to his views, and for reasons which probably to some extent come down to politics, we tend to fight him a little harder than those who are merely opposed to his tactics.
Then where is he getting all the karma? Is it possible there is a rogue mod mole feeding under-the-table karma to Eugine’s sock puppets using some clever hack?
Probably a few sockpuppets upvoting all his comments. Presumably they’re accounts he doesn’t reveal by commenting or mass-downvoting with them. You only need 10 karma to vote.
Evil mods seem like a poor explanation :-) but I suppose anything’s possible.
Probably a few sockpuppets upvoting all his comments
I wonder how many total accounts The Great Eugine Noir has at this point? 50+? I suppose he would only need to create a handful (~10-12) of “voting” puppets that could be used over and over again. Then he needs a steady supply of kamikaze comment puppets which, after vetting themselves artificially by posting legitimately useful rationality quotes, are inevitably banned once he actually starts voicing his opinion through them.
I don’t think that’s the whole story. Many, many of his comments, including very poor ones, get upvoted within minutes of being posted. In particular, at one point every single The_Lion2 comment had five or more upvotes.
Yes. He uses sockpuppets for voting, so presumably he uses them for upvoting himself as well. But most comments of his that I have seen I would expect to have positive (1 or 2) karma from anyone else as well, and if his comments were sufficiently horrible people would downvote him enough to overwhelm any amount of sockpuppets.
I’m finding his downvotes of me hilarious. He has one strategy, and just doesn’t know what to do when it doesn’t work.
See, Eugine, the issue with your strategy is this: It only works on people who care what other people think of them, who are -bothered- when their karma drops, or when their percentage isn’t exactly what they want it to be. If you manage to get this account to the point where I can’t post anymore? I’ll start another.
This account isn’t important to me, it’s a fake band name I invented as a teenager to rename songs by a death metal band I don’t even like (Cannibal Corpse). I’ve gone through dozens of pseudonyms, and this isn’t even my longest-running, it’s just one I used for a blog I no longer write in.
I think he has two strategies. One, post obnoxious prejudiced trollery as often as possible, because that always convinces people. Two, mass-downvote people you take to be your ideological opponents, because that will definitely make them go away or get ignored, rather than getting you banned and universally scorned.
(I do actually quite like karma. But I observe that posting comments is net-karma-positive for me despite Eugine’s asshattery, so the effect of reducing my karma is to make me post more. But maybe all Eugine cares about is seeing “-1”s next to comments expressing opinions he doesn’t like.)
And both strategies are self-destructive. (Seriously, how can somebody who writes and behaves like a fifth grader ever have felt they were sufficiently more rational than other people here, such as to believe that they were in a position to decide who did and did not belong here?)
He erodes the ability of people to credibly signal disagreement with any position he knowably downvotes. I have no idea how many independent people went through and downvoted my post, and my comments in those posts—but I’m going to assume the vast majority of downvotes are from him and his sockpuppet accounts.
Agreed with OrphanWilde, and in the same boat. I have no idea how many people credibly downvoted my post either, which gives me little information about how to optimize my actions.
Reading some comments on your articles might give you a hint.
Please don’t try this “all downvotes I get are from Eugine”. It’s obviously not true.
I get a lot of Eugine downvotes, and it looks to me like he very rarely[2] downvotes any of my comments more than once. My guess is that the same is true of Gleb.
[1]I think the large majority of downvotes I get are from Eugine. Of course it’s hard to be sure, and obviously “all my downvotes come from the deranged mass-downvoter no one pays any attentiont to” is a self-flattering hypothesis...
[2] Perhaps never? I can’t tell.
I’m happy to report that few of my downvotes come from a single deranged mass-downvoter, but many different mass-downvoters.
Agreed that not all downvotes I get are from Eugine. My point is that his downvotes obscure my ability to tell how many are real downvotes and how many are not.
Regarding your other question, I specifically asked for comments, not downvotes. That way, I can check if the user is a Eugine sockpuppet or not.
I predict that saying “please comment on this rather than downvoting it” will not be effective in reducing how much it is downvoted.
“Owing to Eugine-related downvoting issues, please comment if you downvote this so I can update accurately” would probably work better.
Good point, will post something like that in the future—thanks!
His third strategy is to use new accounts to repost comments that were previous banned.
I’m not sure how he doesn’t get that reactance bias causes people to go against his perspective anyway.
What if his fourth strategy is to get all the people on Less Wrong to talk about Eugine Noir more than anything else thereby allowing his ideas to get notoriety?
I would never have paid attention to his comments sans the furor. As it is, I find myself interested in what views he has and why LW is so opposed to them.
The problem isn’t just that talking about Nier might promulgate his ideas. It’s that talking about him means not talking about anything more important and/or interesting.
LW isn’t opposed to his views. Many people here share many of his views, and argue them considerably more effectively than he ever has. LW is opposed to his tactics; namely, using large numbers of sockpuppet accounts to mass-downvote people he doesn’t feel “belong” on Less Wrong, which is really just anybody who doesn’t agree with him.
He’s not being silenced, he was kicked out for trying to silence others, and he continues to be kicked out every time he’s identified because he’s never stopped.
Hm. I understood otherwise.
I think the actual situation is something like this.
Eugine believes that there are systematic (statistical) mental differences between men and women, between black people and white people, etc.
I think the LW consensus on this, in so far as there is one, is that there probably are such differences.
I suspect most LW participants would estimate smaller differences than Eugine would.
Eugine seems to love to talk about these differences and to trot them out as his preferred explanation for anything anyone might otherwise explain as racism, sexism, etc. Most LW participants do not have that preference.
Eugine believes that departures from traditional norms of sexuality and gender are Bad: boo to homosexuality, boo squared to transgenderism, etc.
I think the LW consensus on this is squarely against him.
And those are pretty much all the issues that Eugine posts a lot about. He may well have strong and/or interesting opinions on many other topics, but it seems that what he mostly wants to talk about is the inferiority of black people and the contemptibility of transgender people. (This wasn’t always true. Compare the first page of The_Lion’s user overview with that of, say, Eugine_Nier’s.)
To echo OrphanWilde, Eugine’s views on empirics are typically well-supported by the facts, and you’ll find people like me making similar points in similar places. He’s also been around a long time, and has made a large number of good comments, and is a good source of rationality quotes.
The trouble is almost entirely the vote manipulation.
It seems to me that he often makes a huge generalization (of something that in the non-generalized form is a useful insight), and often makes the comment unnecessarily rude.
Simply, there is a difference between saying “when judging a population’s share in e.g. Nobel prizes, you should consider that some of them may be politically motivated, especially when we don’t talk hard science” and saying “black people contribute nothing; even all their Nobel prizes are political”. Eugine always chooses the latter form.
Rudeness is sometimes necessary, otherwise the Overton window of what can be mentioned in a polite society shifts:
(West Hunter)
Greg Cochran, by the way, tends to be rude.
I submit that if Viliam hadn’t understood that he wouldn’t have felt the need to say ”… unnecessarily rude”.
Do you think it is at all likely that by writing the way he does Eugine is keeping LW’s Overton window in a better place than it would be if he stated equivalent opinions without going out of his way to offend?
“Unnecessarily rude” is like “excessive force” or “inadequate approach”, if you accept the expression you accept that the subject is wrong by definition.
I think that politeness is not an unalloyed virtue and that being rude can be useful. I am, of course, not saying that every time you have the opportunity to be rude, you should.
Since I’m quoting Greg Cochran, here’s more on the topic.
“”Maelcum a rude boy, Case.” X-)
I don’t agree. There is such a thing as being unnecessarily pedantic, but there are situations where pedantry is very much called for (say, reviewing the specifications for a communications protocol to be used in nuclear reactor software). There is such a thing as being unnecessarily sexually explicit, but there are situations where being sexually explicit is very much called for (say, while having sex).
I do agree that saying “unnecessarily X” carries a suggestion that X is usually not a good thing in ordinary circumstances. Personally I’m quite comfortable saying that about rudeness (while vigorously agreeing that there are situations in which rudeness is called for); do you disagree?
I very much agree. I would guess that Viliam does too. (We may not agree on how often being rude is useful.)
Yeah, I’d classify that as needless obnoxiousness, and it certainly doesn’t make me think better of Cochran, think worse of his opponents, or think him more likely to be right. More specifically, if I compare my mental models of (1) someone who holds Cochran’s opinions as the result of impartial scientific investigation and (2) someone who holds Cochran’s opinions partly because he’s always been inclined towards white supremacism and is glad to have some scientific-looking backup for it, #2 seems distinctly more likely to write that sort of thing than #1, so I update Pr(Cochran’s opinions are not substantially influenced by prior prejudice) down just a little.
I doubt Cochran cares what I think of him, and he may well have sufficient reasons of his own for being obnoxious in that fashion. (E.g., I expect it helps to stir up enthusiasm in readers who are already convinced he’s right.) But in so far as Cochran cares about persuading those who are not yet fully convinced members of Team Cochran, I guess that that sort of rudeness is counterproductive.
That is probable. I like to sharpen the point till it gets to be very very sharp. Can lead to bleeding.
I don’t think he’s running a marketing campaign or is attempting to jumpstart a grassroots movement. He’s more likely to be raising a flag to see who rallies to it. Or maybe he just likes to grumble and snark :-)
there is a rudeness beyond mentioning facts
Social norms of politeness vary. By the usual ’net norms the discussion on LW (including Eugine) is very polite.
Pointing out that black people don’t get Nobels in hard sciences because the right tail of their IQ distribution doesn’t reach that far is highly politically incorrect and might well be rude in the sense of making participants in the conversation uncomfortable, but that’s precisely the valuable sense of which West Hunter speaks.
I thought we don’t follow the usual net norms here.
Some of us are -very- opposed to his views, and for reasons which probably to some extent come down to politics, we tend to fight him a little harder than those who are merely opposed to his tactics.
I agree with OrphanWilde, it’s not about the views, it’s about the methods he’s using.
He also posts a lot in Rationality Quotes to farm karma (which he needs to downvote others).
Perhaps it’s just because his accounts keep getting banned, but right now I see only one thing on the first page of RQ that comes from a Eugine alias.
Then where is he getting all the karma? Is it possible there is a rogue mod mole feeding under-the-table karma to Eugine’s sock puppets using some clever hack?
Probably a few sockpuppets upvoting all his comments. Presumably they’re accounts he doesn’t reveal by commenting or mass-downvoting with them. You only need 10 karma to vote.
Evil mods seem like a poor explanation :-) but I suppose anything’s possible.
I’m looking for the sexiest explanation.
I wonder how many total accounts The Great Eugine Noir has at this point? 50+? I suppose he would only need to create a handful (~10-12) of “voting” puppets that could be used over and over again. Then he needs a steady supply of kamikaze comment puppets which, after vetting themselves artificially by posting legitimately useful rationality quotes, are inevitably banned once he actually starts voicing his opinion through them.
I wonder if Eugine has a favorite sock puppet?
My guess is fewer than 20. Probably more than 10, though.
He makes a bunch of comments that are good enough to get positive karma, though rarely stellar. Mostly semipolitical quotes in the quotes thread.
I don’t think that’s the whole story. Many, many of his comments, including very poor ones, get upvoted within minutes of being posted. In particular, at one point every single The_Lion2 comment had five or more upvotes.
Yes. He uses sockpuppets for voting, so presumably he uses them for upvoting himself as well. But most comments of his that I have seen I would expect to have positive (1 or 2) karma from anyone else as well, and if his comments were sufficiently horrible people would downvote him enough to overwhelm any amount of sockpuppets.