To add to Kawoomba’s comment, there isn’t a comprehensive voting rubric that pretty much everyone agrees on, but a rule of thumb which seemsrelativelypopular is to upvote what one wants more of and downvote what one wants less of. (Ideally one tries to be fair-minded about this, putting more weight on objective features of the post, like its correctness.)
Downvoting people who see things from a different perspective is… a custom designed to keep out the undesirables?
To a degree! Eliezer gave a rationale for this in “Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism”. Seeing things from a different perspective may be a good thing or a bad thing; it depends on the perspective. While some novel perspectives are productive and reveal powerful new insights, others are intellectual dead ends, and not a few of those are intellectual dead ends which have been discussed on Less Wrong multiple times before. When the latter rear their head for the nth time it can bring down the usefulness of the discussion here, in which case burying the conversation in downvotes can prove useful. (Quoting myself, “[s]ometimes the most efficient way to handle a crappy comment is to hit it with a downvote and move on, rather than getting bogged down in an argument.”)
I am sorry I missed the point but I learned nothing from the downvoting. I learned a great deal from your helpful comment—thank you.
No problem. The big upside of downvoting is that it’s far less work than having to explain what might be wrong with someone’s comment. (Instead of using introspection to pinpoint why my immediate reaction to your comment was “this seems like it’s missing the point”, then putting that belief into words, then adjusting what I wrote for brevity, clarity & politeness, then posting what I wrote, then reflecting on it, then editing in a correction, I could’ve just hit the little downward thumb.) The big downside of downvoting is that it communicates far less information than a verbal disagreement.
So when I encounter a comment that I think confuses things more than it clarifies things, I face a tradeoff; do I downvote and move on, at the risk of being opaque, or do I put in the time to articulate what’s wrong with it? I figured the second route was worth taking here because I didn’t see any of the usual warning signs that explaining my disagreement would be a waste of time: (1) you mentioned taking theoretical physics classes, so you weren’t one of those people who simply pontificates about a field they’re utterly ignorant of; (2) having studied physics, you probably had more of a reductionist, pro-empirical point of view than a goofy anti-reductionist and/or anti-empirical one; and (3) you don’t have a track record here of being unreceptive to disagreement.
Ah… see, that’s where I think the ‘lost’ minds are likely hiding out, in branches of infinitesimal measure. Which might sound bad, unless you have read up on the anthropic principle and realize that /we/ seem to be residing on just such a branch.
This sounds like reasoning I’ve detected in past discussions here of “quantum immortality”, “quantum suicide” and “Quantum Russian Roulette”, which runs along the lines of, “I can destroy myself in as many branches as I like, as long as I’m still standing in at least one branch, because in all the branches where I destroy myself I won’t be around to regret it”. This philosophy has never really felt right to me; if I die in branch A, the version of me in branch B may live on, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still dead in branch A and no longer exert any influence on it, contrary to the preferences of the version of myself previously existing in branch A. (For that reason, I’m also not worried by the prospect of being trapped by quantum immortality in a torturous branch. It might be inevitable in the sense that I’ll have to experience it in at least one branch, but in any randomly selected branch my chance of escaping quantum immortal torment is nigh on 100%.)
P.S. Is there a place the rating system is explained? I have looked casually and not found it with a few minutes of effort; it seems like it should be explained prominently somewhere.
Are downgradings intended as a punitive training measure (“don’t post this! bad monkey!”) or just a guide to readers (don’t bother reading this, it’s drivel, by our community standards). I was assuming the latter.
Mostly, but it is also feedback to commenters. You have some latitude to interpret that feedback as you see fit, since downvotes don’t convey much beyond “a person didn’t like this”.
To add to Kawoomba’s comment, there isn’t a comprehensive voting rubric that pretty much everyone agrees on, but a rule of thumb which seems relatively popular is to upvote what one wants more of and downvote what one wants less of. (Ideally one tries to be fair-minded about this, putting more weight on objective features of the post, like its correctness.)
To a degree! Eliezer gave a rationale for this in “Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism”. Seeing things from a different perspective may be a good thing or a bad thing; it depends on the perspective. While some novel perspectives are productive and reveal powerful new insights, others are intellectual dead ends, and not a few of those are intellectual dead ends which have been discussed on Less Wrong multiple times before. When the latter rear their head for the nth time it can bring down the usefulness of the discussion here, in which case burying the conversation in downvotes can prove useful. (Quoting myself, “[s]ometimes the most efficient way to handle a crappy comment is to hit it with a downvote and move on, rather than getting bogged down in an argument.”)
No problem. The big upside of downvoting is that it’s far less work than having to explain what might be wrong with someone’s comment. (Instead of using introspection to pinpoint why my immediate reaction to your comment was “this seems like it’s missing the point”, then putting that belief into words, then adjusting what I wrote for brevity, clarity & politeness, then posting what I wrote, then reflecting on it, then editing in a correction, I could’ve just hit the little downward thumb.) The big downside of downvoting is that it communicates far less information than a verbal disagreement.
So when I encounter a comment that I think confuses things more than it clarifies things, I face a tradeoff; do I downvote and move on, at the risk of being opaque, or do I put in the time to articulate what’s wrong with it? I figured the second route was worth taking here because I didn’t see any of the usual warning signs that explaining my disagreement would be a waste of time: (1) you mentioned taking theoretical physics classes, so you weren’t one of those people who simply pontificates about a field they’re utterly ignorant of; (2) having studied physics, you probably had more of a reductionist, pro-empirical point of view than a goofy anti-reductionist and/or anti-empirical one; and (3) you don’t have a track record here of being unreceptive to disagreement.
This sounds like reasoning I’ve detected in past discussions here of “quantum immortality”, “quantum suicide” and “Quantum Russian Roulette”, which runs along the lines of, “I can destroy myself in as many branches as I like, as long as I’m still standing in at least one branch, because in all the branches where I destroy myself I won’t be around to regret it”. This philosophy has never really felt right to me; if I die in branch A, the version of me in branch B may live on, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still dead in branch A and no longer exert any influence on it, contrary to the preferences of the version of myself previously existing in branch A. (For that reason, I’m also not worried by the prospect of being trapped by quantum immortality in a torturous branch. It might be inevitable in the sense that I’ll have to experience it in at least one branch, but in any randomly selected branch my chance of escaping quantum immortal torment is nigh on 100%.)
The FAQ on the wiki has a short section about it.
Mostly, but it is also feedback to commenters. You have some latitude to interpret that feedback as you see fit, since downvotes don’t convey much beyond “a person didn’t like this”.