And remember, billionaire friend Peter Thiel financed this immense production, which E.Y. wrote while on Thiel’s payroll at SIAI. It’s immensity isn’t a product of original thought but, in the end, of a pampered parasite with too much time on his hands.
Seriously? DevilWorm is criticizing Eliezer for managing to find financial support while producing his intellectual output? That’s how most intellectual work gets done—both within and without formal academic establishments and in various forms across time. This criticism is utterly pathetic.
I don’t understand how DevilWorm has been upvoted here (+3 prior to my vote). The remainder of the comment is almost as bad—as is every other comment he has written. Moreover a brief glance at the user’s comment history identifies the DevilWorm account as rather obviously yet another sock-puppet created for the purpose of acting out his personal animosity.
How the heck are our new anti-trolling measures going to work if people go around upvoting blatant trolling like this? I mean sure, this guy seems to have a basic grasp of grammar and punctuation but apart from that he doesn’t seem to have contributed anything but some filler in which to embed some unnecessary insults.
DevilWorm’s comments (and all other slander-sockpuppets) should not be upvoted. They should be downvoted to invisibility until someone has a chance to ban the comments—and that only because the ‘ban user by name and IP’ is missing.
I’m actually moderately alarmed by the level at which their comments are upvoted (with all the bold face and whatnot). This event potentially adds motivation to the “Don’t let users with low Karma upvote things” change.
If a non-negligible number of people upvote comments expressing negative opinions of Eliezer Yudkowsky or the Sequences, what leads you to the conclusion that the best response is to label these comments “slander” and cast for roundabout ways to suppress them? If you want an echo-chamber (a reasonable thing to want), that can be easily and non-disingenuously accomplished, for instance by making it explicit policy that disagreement with local authority figures is not permitted.
I am not calling you a liar, because I accept that you are sincere, but I don’t believe you. The claim that you determine the quality of comments without regard to the positions they express is outlandish, for at least two reasons. One, that you are human, and therefore subject to the same biases as every other human known to have ever existed, meaning that you will inevitably tend to appraise posts that agree with your views more favorably than those that disagree. Two, that if you aren’t judging comments’ quality by the positions they express, there’s little of substance left by which you could judge them. The vast majority of comments and posts are neither formal nor rigorous enough for their reasoning, when considered solely on the comments’ own merits, to hold up to any serious scrutiny. So that leaves presentation, and...?
The claim that you determine the quality of comments without regard to the positions they express
...is not one I’ve made. Caring about quality of comments doesn’t require having perfect perception of this quality that is unaffected by other things. But I’m quite confident in my judgment of the quality of the comments that started this conversation.
The vast majority of comments and posts are neither formal nor rigorous enough for their reasoning, when considered solely on the comments’ own merits, to hold up to any serious scrutiny
They should be amenable to steel-manning, not impossible to criticize (though this is not what I was talking about).
Owing to my low karma, I can’t respond directly to DevilWorm’s comment. But this is for you, my friend.
DevilWorm, I don’t like to judge a person too harshly. I acknowledge that in principle your trolling has the potential to make a positive contribution to the community. It would be cruel to just say “go back to troll school until you measure up”. But to be honest, I do have my doubts about whether you have what it takes. To be brutally honest, the world only needs good trolls and bad trolls, and you are neither.
Bad trolls (in the good sense of bad) are the ones who are born to trolldom. They are the griefers, the naturally vindictive spirits. But among genuinely evil trolls, you wouldn’t last a day. If you enrolled in the Sith Academy’s trolling masterclass, they would end up using you for target practice.
Good trolls have trolldom thrust upon them. Through a mysterious mutant strain in their makeup, they see something that others cannot, and they are driven to the status of troll just by bearing witness to truth. But you are that sad case of someone who mistakes their own blind spot for superior vision: you think you can see that there is nothing to see here.
Finally we have the ugly trolls, the wannabes, the ones who aspire to trolldom. My advice is, give it up. Don’t use boldface, don’t use italics, don’t call people semiliterate when you don’t know where to place an apostrophe yourself. Be humble, accept your station in life as just another commenter who occasionally makes a valid point. It’s better to be an ordinary person who makes a small but genuine contribution, than a blowhard who contributes nothing at all.
Seriously? DevilWorm is criticizing Eliezer for managing to find financial support while producing his intellectual output? That’s how most intellectual work gets done—both within and without formal academic establishments and in various forms across time. This criticism is utterly pathetic.
I don’t understand how DevilWorm has been upvoted here (+3 prior to my vote). The remainder of the comment is almost as bad—as is every other comment he has written. Moreover a brief glance at the user’s comment history identifies the DevilWorm account as rather obviously yet another sock-puppet created for the purpose of acting out his personal animosity.
How the heck are our new anti-trolling measures going to work if people go around upvoting blatant trolling like this? I mean sure, this guy seems to have a basic grasp of grammar and punctuation but apart from that he doesn’t seem to have contributed anything but some filler in which to embed some unnecessary insults.
DevilWorm’s comments (and all other slander-sockpuppets) should not be upvoted. They should be downvoted to invisibility until someone has a chance to ban the comments—and that only because the ‘ban user by name and IP’ is missing.
I’m actually moderately alarmed by the level at which their comments are upvoted (with all the bold face and whatnot). This event potentially adds motivation to the “Don’t let users with low Karma upvote things” change.
If a non-negligible number of people upvote comments expressing negative opinions of Eliezer Yudkowsky or the Sequences, what leads you to the conclusion that the best response is to label these comments “slander” and cast for roundabout ways to suppress them? If you want an echo-chamber (a reasonable thing to want), that can be easily and non-disingenuously accomplished, for instance by making it explicit policy that disagreement with local authority figures is not permitted.
I’m afraid of the acceptance and approval of low quality comments, irrespective of the positions they express.
I am not calling you a liar, because I accept that you are sincere, but I don’t believe you. The claim that you determine the quality of comments without regard to the positions they express is outlandish, for at least two reasons. One, that you are human, and therefore subject to the same biases as every other human known to have ever existed, meaning that you will inevitably tend to appraise posts that agree with your views more favorably than those that disagree. Two, that if you aren’t judging comments’ quality by the positions they express, there’s little of substance left by which you could judge them. The vast majority of comments and posts are neither formal nor rigorous enough for their reasoning, when considered solely on the comments’ own merits, to hold up to any serious scrutiny. So that leaves presentation, and...?
...is not one I’ve made. Caring about quality of comments doesn’t require having perfect perception of this quality that is unaffected by other things. But I’m quite confident in my judgment of the quality of the comments that started this conversation.
They should be amenable to steel-manning, not impossible to criticize (though this is not what I was talking about).
Owing to my low karma, I can’t respond directly to DevilWorm’s comment. But this is for you, my friend.
DevilWorm, I don’t like to judge a person too harshly. I acknowledge that in principle your trolling has the potential to make a positive contribution to the community. It would be cruel to just say “go back to troll school until you measure up”. But to be honest, I do have my doubts about whether you have what it takes. To be brutally honest, the world only needs good trolls and bad trolls, and you are neither.
Bad trolls (in the good sense of bad) are the ones who are born to trolldom. They are the griefers, the naturally vindictive spirits. But among genuinely evil trolls, you wouldn’t last a day. If you enrolled in the Sith Academy’s trolling masterclass, they would end up using you for target practice.
Good trolls have trolldom thrust upon them. Through a mysterious mutant strain in their makeup, they see something that others cannot, and they are driven to the status of troll just by bearing witness to truth. But you are that sad case of someone who mistakes their own blind spot for superior vision: you think you can see that there is nothing to see here.
Finally we have the ugly trolls, the wannabes, the ones who aspire to trolldom. My advice is, give it up. Don’t use boldface, don’t use italics, don’t call people semiliterate when you don’t know where to place an apostrophe yourself. Be humble, accept your station in life as just another commenter who occasionally makes a valid point. It’s better to be an ordinary person who makes a small but genuine contribution, than a blowhard who contributes nothing at all.
Your concerned friend, metatroll