That social norm always made sense to me: Simple disagreement doesn’t provide much information, unless you provide a reason. Even a short reason gives me a “hook” to evaluate why you might disagree, or to do research.
The exception would be if an expert’s intuitive evaluation is saying “this seems wrong to me”, at which point I have a good reason to dig in to it myself.
Besides, if you don’t want to bother explaining why, then either you’re trying to outsource the cognitive cost to me (in which case you probably don’t care whether I change my mind), or you don’t consider it worth the cognitive cost in the first place—either way, there’s no reason for me to believe that your disagreement is worth following up on.
Especially here on LessWrong, the “Vote Down” button seems the simplest way to disagree without explaining any farther, and avoids the social issue entirely.
I think “I agree” is somewhat more acceptable because it at least adds a little emotional bonus of “yay, the tribe supports me!” whereas “I disagree” is a very mild hostile bump of “eek, the tribe might exile me!” That said, I’ve seen plenty of communities where “I agree” is considered a taboo statement, and I always find it sort of surprising how often I actually see it around here :)
tl;dr: a chorus of “I agree” / “I disagree” is simply adding noise to communication.
I disagree that a vote down fulfills this function. A vote down does not say “i disagree”, it says “I want to see less of some feature of this comment/article in the Less Wrong stream”.
Sometimes that’s because I disagree strongly enough to consider it foolishness and not worth discussion. But most of the time, a vote down is for other reasons. I do find that I am much more likely to vote down comments that I disagree with, and I suspect this is true for most/all Less Wrongers. But that’s because I am more likely to be looking harder for problems in posts I disagree with due to all the various biases in my thinking. Disagreement alone is insufficient reason for a vote down from me, and I hope that is true for almost everyone here.
Disagreement alone is insufficient reason for a vote down from me, and I hope that is true for almost everyone here.
Seconded. Agreement/disagreement shouldn’t be a reason for up- or downvoting.
My personal policy is to never downvote immediate replies to my own comments. There’s too much of a risk that I’ll downvote something simply because I disagree with it.
I disagree. ;) Specifically because knowing who disagrees with me gives me way more evidence than just knowing that someone disagrees with me. Practically speaking I do not consider downvotes evidence that I am wrong (they are generally just evidence that people dislike what I say because it sounds pretentious or because it pattern matches to something that could be wrong), whereas I would consider a simple “I disagree” comment from e.g. Nick Tarleton some evidence that I was wrong and should spend effort finding out why. (This isn’t mostly because Nick is a good thinker (though he is) but that I think it’s a lot less likely he’ll uncharitably misinterpret what I’m trying to say, whereas an “I disagree” comment from Vladimir Nesov is a lot less evidence that I’m wrong even though he is also an excellent thinker.)
Obviously “I disagree” plus a short reason is better and normally not much more difficult, but this would also be a lot easier to do in a community where just “I disagree” was acceptable.
nods If it’s someone whose name I recognize and whose opinion I value, that tends to get handled similar to an “expert’s intuitive evaluation”. I don’t know how tight-knit the community is here, and what percentage of “I disagree” messages end up triggering that here, but most communities I’ve seen aren’t tight-knit enough for it to be meaningful except possibly when said by a “tribal leader”.
You do make a good point about the acceptability of “I disagree” influencing the acceptability of “I disagree because of this brief reason” :)
Practically speaking I do not consider downvotes evidence that I am wrong (they are generally just evidence that people dislike what I say because it sounds pretentious or because it pattern matches to something that could be wrong), whereas I would consider a simple “I disagree” comment from e.g. Nick Tarleton some evidence that I was wrong and should spend effort finding out why. (This isn’t mostly because Nick is a good thinker (though he is) but that I think it’s a lot less likely he’ll uncharitably misinterpret what I’m trying to say, whereas an “I disagree” comment from Vladimir Nesov is a lot less evidence that I’m wrong even though he is also an excellent thinker.)
Strongly agree on every point.
While downvotes always contain evidence that evidence contains more information about the social reality than the conceptual one. It is useful information, just not necessarily information about facts or accuracy.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of communities where “I agree” is considered a taboo statement, and I always find it sort of surprising how often I actually see it around here
Some of us tried to enforce a noise-cancelling norm of squashing “I agree” type comments early on, but it was overridden by a concern that being generally unpleasant is no good for the community. See Why our kind can’t cooperate (and for balance, Well-kept gardens die by pacifism)
“I agree” is useful in cases where people think that their agreement would provide me with a non-negligible update, because they know that I respect their rationality or because they consider themselves experts in the domain in question. For example, an “I agree” from thomblake would provide me with non-negligible evidence if written in response to some speculations about academic philosophy. Of course, most people don’t signal agreement for this reason, so it’s not really what you were talking about.
That social norm always made sense to me: Simple disagreement doesn’t provide much information, unless you provide a reason. Even a short reason gives me a “hook” to evaluate why you might disagree, or to do research.
The exception would be if an expert’s intuitive evaluation is saying “this seems wrong to me”, at which point I have a good reason to dig in to it myself.
Besides, if you don’t want to bother explaining why, then either you’re trying to outsource the cognitive cost to me (in which case you probably don’t care whether I change my mind), or you don’t consider it worth the cognitive cost in the first place—either way, there’s no reason for me to believe that your disagreement is worth following up on.
Especially here on LessWrong, the “Vote Down” button seems the simplest way to disagree without explaining any farther, and avoids the social issue entirely.
I think “I agree” is somewhat more acceptable because it at least adds a little emotional bonus of “yay, the tribe supports me!” whereas “I disagree” is a very mild hostile bump of “eek, the tribe might exile me!” That said, I’ve seen plenty of communities where “I agree” is considered a taboo statement, and I always find it sort of surprising how often I actually see it around here :)
tl;dr: a chorus of “I agree” / “I disagree” is simply adding noise to communication.
I disagree that a vote down fulfills this function. A vote down does not say “i disagree”, it says “I want to see less of some feature of this comment/article in the Less Wrong stream”.
Sometimes that’s because I disagree strongly enough to consider it foolishness and not worth discussion. But most of the time, a vote down is for other reasons. I do find that I am much more likely to vote down comments that I disagree with, and I suspect this is true for most/all Less Wrongers. But that’s because I am more likely to be looking harder for problems in posts I disagree with due to all the various biases in my thinking. Disagreement alone is insufficient reason for a vote down from me, and I hope that is true for almost everyone here.
Seconded. Agreement/disagreement shouldn’t be a reason for up- or downvoting.
My personal policy is to never downvote immediate replies to my own comments. There’s too much of a risk that I’ll downvote something simply because I disagree with it.
I disagree. ;) Specifically because knowing who disagrees with me gives me way more evidence than just knowing that someone disagrees with me. Practically speaking I do not consider downvotes evidence that I am wrong (they are generally just evidence that people dislike what I say because it sounds pretentious or because it pattern matches to something that could be wrong), whereas I would consider a simple “I disagree” comment from e.g. Nick Tarleton some evidence that I was wrong and should spend effort finding out why. (This isn’t mostly because Nick is a good thinker (though he is) but that I think it’s a lot less likely he’ll uncharitably misinterpret what I’m trying to say, whereas an “I disagree” comment from Vladimir Nesov is a lot less evidence that I’m wrong even though he is also an excellent thinker.)
Obviously “I disagree” plus a short reason is better and normally not much more difficult, but this would also be a lot easier to do in a community where just “I disagree” was acceptable.
nods If it’s someone whose name I recognize and whose opinion I value, that tends to get handled similar to an “expert’s intuitive evaluation”. I don’t know how tight-knit the community is here, and what percentage of “I disagree” messages end up triggering that here, but most communities I’ve seen aren’t tight-knit enough for it to be meaningful except possibly when said by a “tribal leader”.
You do make a good point about the acceptability of “I disagree” influencing the acceptability of “I disagree because of this brief reason” :)
Strongly agree on every point.
While downvotes always contain evidence that evidence contains more information about the social reality than the conceptual one. It is useful information, just not necessarily information about facts or accuracy.
Some of us tried to enforce a noise-cancelling norm of squashing “I agree” type comments early on, but it was overridden by a concern that being generally unpleasant is no good for the community. See Why our kind can’t cooperate (and for balance, Well-kept gardens die by pacifism)
“I agree” is useful in cases where people think that their agreement would provide me with a non-negligible update, because they know that I respect their rationality or because they consider themselves experts in the domain in question. For example, an “I agree” from thomblake would provide me with non-negligible evidence if written in response to some speculations about academic philosophy. Of course, most people don’t signal agreement for this reason, so it’s not really what you were talking about.
I agree