There exist hundreds of LW readers, and downvotes don’t mean that the majority disapproves, it means that atleast one out of those hundreds of readers disapproved with a downvote. (Or more precisely that n+1 readers disapproved with a downvote where n readers approved with an upvote)
As such arguments of the style “I got downvoted for speaking against group consensus, therefore LessWrong is exhibiting groupthink” don’t seem that convincing to me. Even if that was the only reason you got downvoted, even if it was a completely unjust downvote—it just means that one reader was exhibiting groupthink behaviour and downvoted you unjustly for going against the norm.
First, I want to agree that not every downvote is due to being against group consensus. Sometimes posts (including my own) just aren’t well thought out.
I also agree that a downvote only represents one person and not the whole of the LW community. In fact I’ve thought it would be interesting to be able to see how many upvotes and downvotes each comment has. There’s a massive difference between a comment with a score of 0 (or any other score) that got there because 20 people upvoted it and 20 people downvoted it, versus a score of 0 because nobody voted for it at all. The first kind of comment is more likely to be interesting and controversial.
However, I would argue that it doesn’t take many people to effect a culture. If there were no moderation, how many trolls do you think it would take to significantly lower the LW quality?
Let’s back up and take a macro view (something LWers seem to dislike, but which I think is often necessary.); If posting a non-consensus view tends to result in a negative or 0 karma, and posting a consensus view tends to result in positive karma, then it is likely that people are going to post consensus views much more often than non-consensus views. Even if no one admits it consciously, I would bet the karma system has at least a subconscious effect on what people post.
Because people post consensus views more often, people tend to agree with the consensus more. For example if consensus view has 10 good posts/comments supporting it and nonconsensus view has 0-1 good posts/comments supporting it, then you have seen more and better arguments for the consensus view, and are more likely to believe that.
As a site leans more and more toward a single worldview, people with differing worldviews start actively staying away. If I was a rationalist who rationally thought that the Singularity and FAI weren’t the most pressing concerns right now, the chances are low that I would want to join this site. Without having a wide range of views to moderate opinion, consensus becomes like a runaway train becoming progressively more one-sided.
From personal experience, I’ve known pretty much sense I’ve joined this site that it’s not the sort of place I’d want to stay around. I’ll stay around for a month or two, learn what I can from here, and go my merry way. The reason not being random downvotes, which I really don’t care about, but rather the resulting culture which I do in fact consider to be an echo chamber that has never learned to argue politely. (In the article I just linked to, I would say that LW is in “Draft 2” stage.)
If posting a non-consensus view tends to result in a negative or 0 karma, and posting a consensus view tends to result in positive karma, then it is likely that people are going to post consensus views much more often than non-consensus views.
I likewise object to those who mindlessly downvote or upvote. On my part I think nonsensical upvotes are worse than nonsensical downvotes, though, as it causes karma inflation. There exist people who’ll upvote people just for saying “Hi”, and I’m guessing they upvote every other comment they see. This rewards quantity instead of quality—which serves to reduce quality.
Without having a wide range of views to moderate opinion, consensus becomes like a runaway train becoming progressively more one-sided.
This is largely what the article on Evaporative cooling of group beliefs is about. But I don’t know how to fix this perceived problem, except to encourage you to speak and post about those non-consensus positions.
The first time I noticed this was in the recent PUA flamewars where everyone tried talking about very specific instances of a single (as in “one” not as in “not dating”) guy picking up a single female, and the net utility of these specific interactions, etc.
No one ever tried to say, “Hey, let’s take a step back and look at what the culture as a whole does”. My only participation in those flamewars (besides linking to some relevant scientific research I’d stumbled across) was to bring up the macro view. I’ll admit my posting of it wasn’t the best. I’m sure someone else could make the point better. But the thing is, no one did. I observed the flamewars from afar, waiting for someone to bring up what I considered to be a rather obvious point (I had 0 desire to participate), but the focus consistently remained on the specifics.
Of course, I’ll admit that this is just one anecdote, and was taken from a flamewar that most of the moderate voices of reason had already left. However it was useful in that it helped me see a general pattern, and since then, I’ve always seemed to notice that LW discussions tend to focus on “drilling down” and never really on “panning out”. i.e. Let’s get an example of an example and discuss that, rather than let’s take a step back and look at an overall culture or system.
I was going to find some comments that support this, but it is so pervasive that instead I will say; Click on Recent Comments. How many times do you see people discussing specific examples of a theory? How many times do you see people discussing a macro (culture, system, etc) view? I will bet there are at least three times as many of the former than the latter (excepting this particular discussion).
That’s ok. It’s the easiest way to apply rationality, and I’ll admit that. Really “something LWers seem to dislike” was a throwaway comment. An aside. I wouldn’t even bother supporting it if not that (like pretty much every time someone has a “I feel X” comment) specific examples were asked for, as to why.
No one ever tried to say, “Hey, let’s take a step back and look at what the culture as a whole does”.
That would have involved conjunctive predictions about such a society I’m not confidently able to make, or worse, assuming that everything else stayed constant when discussing counterfactual scenarios.
As I said there, I think you overestimated the extent to which people’s goals overlapped, and terms like “general egalitarianism” hid that (first, because ‘general’ allows for everyone to imagine the term describes things occurring with their preferred amount of exceptions to accommodate differences, and second because ‘egalitarianism’ allows everyone to imagine that their preferred level of influence is applied to make outcomes equal and their preferred amount of unconstraint allows greatly unequal outcomes).
“the focus consistently remained on the specifics.” I saw a main purpose of your arguing that there are great areas of agreement at the beginning a meta comment like yours to be to establish a necessary, or at least very helpful, groundwork for the possibility of constructively engaging at the meta level. Assuming you agree, you might agree with my drilling down to specific scenarios as being the most constructive thing granting my opinion that nothing close to such a consensus exists.
A societal level discussion requires agreement about many related things in a dynamic system, and would be great provided people agreed on values. However, some people believe that, e.g. there is no difference between manipulation and persuasion (waves), or that consciously artificially (‘faking’) social signals constitutes rape when someone has a relationship with the signaler based on his signals (or even if they in fact weren’t a necessary condition for the relationship? I’m not sure). I don’t think it would be productive to go from there to speculation about types of society in which each individual has the opportunity to bend their (unfalsifiable) predictions about what would happen to conform to his or her political view.
I understand you think it likely negative utility of PUA at a societal level might swamp even the local utility it produces and render that argument moot, but I really think people had thought of that and rejected it. We were really stuck on the lower level and I don’t think it at all likely things would have been better at a higher one.
As I recall, others did bring up the macro view, though disproving “No one ever tried to say,” might require sifting through over a thousand comments. Something like “three times as many,” as you said, might be accurate to reflect the fewer meta-level comments but if true that would make the PUA example an anomaly even if it were true.
argue politely
I think this can become a lost purpose to some extent as the purposes of arguing politely are to ensure content rather than tone is the focus, people don’t become angry and think unclearly, etc. Autistic spectrum people who primarily care about ideas don’t need to care about tone as much, particularly when replying to others whose personalities they already know.
I am home for thanksgiving, just the other day my family was making sandwiches. We were pulling ingredients out of cabinet, setting the table etc. and my mother was taking things out of the refrigerator. She began putting onions, meat, etc. on the counter, but what drew the eye was a large clear freezer bag containing several pounds of sliced tomatoes, and while taking things out of the fridge she asked me, “What would you like to put on your roast beef sandwich?” “Tomatoes,” I replied. “They’re on the counter,” she said. “I know,” I said. She looked at me. I looked at her. Oops I thought to myself, I’m doing it again. ;-)
The point being that I’m happy with the way people sometimes rudely disagree with me here. I’ll concede a great deal as far as how I’m used to speaking with others not being appropriate for those I know nothing about, or my perhaps too-blunt mode of speech even when it is appropriate instilling poor habits I embody when it isn’t appropriate, but one can’t strongly conclude things about the content of discourse from its form.
The problem of being an echo chamber is only tangentially related to politeness.
Because people post consensus views more often, people tend to agree with the consensus more.
This thread itself is an example of how LW ends up drilling down to insignificant details: I say LW is cultish. Give us an example, you say (LW in general. Not you specifically). I say downvoting leads to group think. Give us an example you say. I say, (as an aside, it NOT really being my point at all), that LWers focus on the details at the expense of the whole. Give us an example, you say. I say here is a specific example, and some generalities. NOW you will debate with me, but at this point we are SO far down the rabbit hole, that it doesn’t even matter anymore.
If you want to deconstruct my post on meta PUA, feel free to do so...However please do it as a response to my actual post, and not here, where it was just used as an example and I personally admitted that it wasn’t the most well-written post.
As I recall, others did bring up the macro view, though disproving “No one ever tried to say,” might require sifting through over a thousand comments.Something like “three times as many,” as you said, might be accurate
I did in fact read almost all of the 1000+ posts in that thread hoping someone would post a macro view. You say they were there, but I did not see it. I will say “a hundred times as many”, and feel fairly confident that I did not just entirely miss at least 13 posts. Feel free to prove me wrong. I will happily claim the mistake if you do.
you might agree with my drilling down to specific scenarios as being the most constructive thing granting my opinion that nothing close to such a consensus exists.
When people talk about generalities, it is imperative that all involved are willing to follow logical lines of thought without demanding proof and examples at every turn.Generalities contain so many specifics that you have to agree with other people that you hold the same general idea, while being willing to disagree on specifics. That’s the only way these discussions can work. I understand that’s not how LW works and I myself said
That’s ok. It’s the easiest way to apply rationality, and I’ll admit that.
I would like to say that I completely understand why LW doesn’t do generalities. I understood when I wrote my last post. I accept this. You are correct in this. But when I say LW doesnt talk about generalities, you explain WHY that is, but it doesn’t change the fact that LW doesn’t talk generalities, which is the original point you wanted me to prove.
Autistic spectrum people who primarily care about ideas don’t need to care about tone as much,
Trust me, I know what people on the Autism spectrum are like. I have worked for years in child and disability care, and currently have two clients with Asperger’s. I have to deal with this at work, so I know that the Queen Anne’s Revenge Lego ship costs $120 and has 1095 pieces and is for ages 9-16, and that the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and it’s in Dubai and has over 160 stories. But is this really the conversation model we want to have? (I know it’s something I certainly don’t want to have to put up with, when I’m not being paid good money to) Because if it is, the ability of this site to attract smart NTs is going to drastically decrease. If you want LW to be a non-NT haven, that’s great! Just call it that, instead of calling it a blog on rationality.
There’s a joke on “Glee” where a character claims to have Asperger’s, and uses that as an excuse to be rude to everyone. Saying people are on the Autism spectrum is an explanation of impoliteness, and a good way to apologize for rudeness (i.e. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for my words to be taken that way. I have a problem with being too blunt”). It is NOT however a free ticket to be rude, without regard to consequences.
Being “polite” isn’t just to help convince the other person to listen to you. It’s to not completely drive the NTs away altogether.
(I also realize that I myself am not being overly polite right now, and I apologize. But I don’t have time to make all these points in a polite manner, and apparently you are more than happy with people being blunt with you, so I will take you at your word in the matter.)
Have you read.........
I know that recommending the sequences is the LW version of “Fuck you”. I assume, being a long time LW vet, that you are aware of the same. For your information, I have read much of the Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor sequence, but had not read the wiki (your link was broken, btw), and just read the first link.
However, my first contact with these ideas was actually from a TED talk a good while back (long ago enough that I don’t remember who it was and can’t find it). I think the TED talk comments are a good example of how people can have interesting discussions, but remain civil.
I am getting tired of this thread, and am unlikely to continue commenting. I’m gonna go back to transcribing videos.
When people talk about generalities, it is imperative that all involved are willing to follow logical lines of thought without demanding proof and examples at every turn.Generalities contain so many specifics that you have to agree with other people that you hold the same general idea, while being willing to disagree on specifics. That’s the only way these discussions can work.
I mainly interact through the recent comments screen. Consequently I don’t always know what had proceeded, and didn’t here. If excessive drilling is a problem, I think we have found a major reason why, and it is fixable in many ways.
I barely cared about the cult aspect, and that’s why I didn’t say anything about it and just pointed. I realize the cult aspect was central to your thinking even as the level issue was the one I cared about.
I also realize that I myself am not being overly polite right now, and I apologize.
I honestly didn’t notice.
I know that recommending the sequences is the LW version of “Fuck you”.
I agree, which is why I have never once ever recommended that a person read the sequences...I think. I have frequently recommended posts, wiki entries, entire sequences minus 1⁄3 of their content, etc. That’s because it actually provides useful information. In your case I didn’t recommend you read them, but asked if you had, as I wasn’t sure.
There exist hundreds of LW readers, and downvotes don’t mean that the majority disapproves, it means that atleast one out of those hundreds of readers disapproved with a downvote. (Or more precisely that n+1 readers disapproved with a downvote where n readers approved with an upvote)
As such arguments of the style “I got downvoted for speaking against group consensus, therefore LessWrong is exhibiting groupthink” don’t seem that convincing to me. Even if that was the only reason you got downvoted, even if it was a completely unjust downvote—it just means that one reader was exhibiting groupthink behaviour and downvoted you unjustly for going against the norm.
First, I want to agree that not every downvote is due to being against group consensus. Sometimes posts (including my own) just aren’t well thought out.
I also agree that a downvote only represents one person and not the whole of the LW community. In fact I’ve thought it would be interesting to be able to see how many upvotes and downvotes each comment has. There’s a massive difference between a comment with a score of 0 (or any other score) that got there because 20 people upvoted it and 20 people downvoted it, versus a score of 0 because nobody voted for it at all. The first kind of comment is more likely to be interesting and controversial.
However, I would argue that it doesn’t take many people to effect a culture. If there were no moderation, how many trolls do you think it would take to significantly lower the LW quality?
Let’s back up and take a macro view (something LWers seem to dislike, but which I think is often necessary.); If posting a non-consensus view tends to result in a negative or 0 karma, and posting a consensus view tends to result in positive karma, then it is likely that people are going to post consensus views much more often than non-consensus views. Even if no one admits it consciously, I would bet the karma system has at least a subconscious effect on what people post.
Because people post consensus views more often, people tend to agree with the consensus more. For example if consensus view has 10 good posts/comments supporting it and nonconsensus view has 0-1 good posts/comments supporting it, then you have seen more and better arguments for the consensus view, and are more likely to believe that.
As a site leans more and more toward a single worldview, people with differing worldviews start actively staying away. If I was a rationalist who rationally thought that the Singularity and FAI weren’t the most pressing concerns right now, the chances are low that I would want to join this site. Without having a wide range of views to moderate opinion, consensus becomes like a runaway train becoming progressively more one-sided.
From personal experience, I’ve known pretty much sense I’ve joined this site that it’s not the sort of place I’d want to stay around. I’ll stay around for a month or two, learn what I can from here, and go my merry way. The reason not being random downvotes, which I really don’t care about, but rather the resulting culture which I do in fact consider to be an echo chamber that has never learned to argue politely. (In the article I just linked to, I would say that LW is in “Draft 2” stage.)
I likewise object to those who mindlessly downvote or upvote. On my part I think nonsensical upvotes are worse than nonsensical downvotes, though, as it causes karma inflation. There exist people who’ll upvote people just for saying “Hi”, and I’m guessing they upvote every other comment they see. This rewards quantity instead of quality—which serves to reduce quality.
This is largely what the article on Evaporative cooling of group beliefs is about. But I don’t know how to fix this perceived problem, except to encourage you to speak and post about those non-consensus positions.
Bayes, sister!
Aumann to that, brother.
.
Why do you say?
The first time I noticed this was in the recent PUA flamewars where everyone tried talking about very specific instances of a single (as in “one” not as in “not dating”) guy picking up a single female, and the net utility of these specific interactions, etc.
No one ever tried to say, “Hey, let’s take a step back and look at what the culture as a whole does”. My only participation in those flamewars (besides linking to some relevant scientific research I’d stumbled across) was to bring up the macro view. I’ll admit my posting of it wasn’t the best. I’m sure someone else could make the point better. But the thing is, no one did. I observed the flamewars from afar, waiting for someone to bring up what I considered to be a rather obvious point (I had 0 desire to participate), but the focus consistently remained on the specifics.
Of course, I’ll admit that this is just one anecdote, and was taken from a flamewar that most of the moderate voices of reason had already left. However it was useful in that it helped me see a general pattern, and since then, I’ve always seemed to notice that LW discussions tend to focus on “drilling down” and never really on “panning out”. i.e. Let’s get an example of an example and discuss that, rather than let’s take a step back and look at an overall culture or system.
I was going to find some comments that support this, but it is so pervasive that instead I will say; Click on Recent Comments. How many times do you see people discussing specific examples of a theory? How many times do you see people discussing a macro (culture, system, etc) view? I will bet there are at least three times as many of the former than the latter (excepting this particular discussion).
That’s ok. It’s the easiest way to apply rationality, and I’ll admit that. Really “something LWers seem to dislike” was a throwaway comment. An aside. I wouldn’t even bother supporting it if not that (like pretty much every time someone has a “I feel X” comment) specific examples were asked for, as to why.
That would have involved conjunctive predictions about such a society I’m not confidently able to make, or worse, assuming that everything else stayed constant when discussing counterfactual scenarios.
As I said there, I think you overestimated the extent to which people’s goals overlapped, and terms like “general egalitarianism” hid that (first, because ‘general’ allows for everyone to imagine the term describes things occurring with their preferred amount of exceptions to accommodate differences, and second because ‘egalitarianism’ allows everyone to imagine that their preferred level of influence is applied to make outcomes equal and their preferred amount of unconstraint allows greatly unequal outcomes).
“the focus consistently remained on the specifics.” I saw a main purpose of your arguing that there are great areas of agreement at the beginning a meta comment like yours to be to establish a necessary, or at least very helpful, groundwork for the possibility of constructively engaging at the meta level. Assuming you agree, you might agree with my drilling down to specific scenarios as being the most constructive thing granting my opinion that nothing close to such a consensus exists.
A societal level discussion requires agreement about many related things in a dynamic system, and would be great provided people agreed on values. However, some people believe that, e.g. there is no difference between manipulation and persuasion (waves), or that consciously artificially (‘faking’) social signals constitutes rape when someone has a relationship with the signaler based on his signals (or even if they in fact weren’t a necessary condition for the relationship? I’m not sure). I don’t think it would be productive to go from there to speculation about types of society in which each individual has the opportunity to bend their (unfalsifiable) predictions about what would happen to conform to his or her political view.
I understand you think it likely negative utility of PUA at a societal level might swamp even the local utility it produces and render that argument moot, but I really think people had thought of that and rejected it. We were really stuck on the lower level and I don’t think it at all likely things would have been better at a higher one.
As I recall, others did bring up the macro view, though disproving “No one ever tried to say,” might require sifting through over a thousand comments. Something like “three times as many,” as you said, might be accurate to reflect the fewer meta-level comments but if true that would make the PUA example an anomaly even if it were true.
I think this can become a lost purpose to some extent as the purposes of arguing politely are to ensure content rather than tone is the focus, people don’t become angry and think unclearly, etc. Autistic spectrum people who primarily care about ideas don’t need to care about tone as much, particularly when replying to others whose personalities they already know.
I am home for thanksgiving, just the other day my family was making sandwiches. We were pulling ingredients out of cabinet, setting the table etc. and my mother was taking things out of the refrigerator. She began putting onions, meat, etc. on the counter, but what drew the eye was a large clear freezer bag containing several pounds of sliced tomatoes, and while taking things out of the fridge she asked me, “What would you like to put on your roast beef sandwich?” “Tomatoes,” I replied. “They’re on the counter,” she said. “I know,” I said. She looked at me. I looked at her. Oops I thought to myself, I’m doing it again. ;-)
The point being that I’m happy with the way people sometimes rudely disagree with me here. I’ll concede a great deal as far as how I’m used to speaking with others not being appropriate for those I know nothing about, or my perhaps too-blunt mode of speech even when it is appropriate instilling poor habits I embody when it isn’t appropriate, but one can’t strongly conclude things about the content of discourse from its form.
The problem of being an echo chamber is only tangentially related to politeness.
Have you read Every Cause Wants to be a Cult, EvaporativeCooling of Group Beliefs, Groupthink, etc.?
This thread itself is an example of how LW ends up drilling down to insignificant details: I say LW is cultish. Give us an example, you say (LW in general. Not you specifically). I say downvoting leads to group think. Give us an example you say. I say, (as an aside, it NOT really being my point at all), that LWers focus on the details at the expense of the whole. Give us an example, you say. I say here is a specific example, and some generalities. NOW you will debate with me, but at this point we are SO far down the rabbit hole, that it doesn’t even matter anymore.
If you want to deconstruct my post on meta PUA, feel free to do so...However please do it as a response to my actual post, and not here, where it was just used as an example and I personally admitted that it wasn’t the most well-written post.
I did in fact read almost all of the 1000+ posts in that thread hoping someone would post a macro view. You say they were there, but I did not see it. I will say “a hundred times as many”, and feel fairly confident that I did not just entirely miss at least 13 posts. Feel free to prove me wrong. I will happily claim the mistake if you do.
When people talk about generalities, it is imperative that all involved are willing to follow logical lines of thought without demanding proof and examples at every turn.Generalities contain so many specifics that you have to agree with other people that you hold the same general idea, while being willing to disagree on specifics. That’s the only way these discussions can work. I understand that’s not how LW works and I myself said
I would like to say that I completely understand why LW doesn’t do generalities. I understood when I wrote my last post. I accept this. You are correct in this. But when I say LW doesnt talk about generalities, you explain WHY that is, but it doesn’t change the fact that LW doesn’t talk generalities, which is the original point you wanted me to prove.
Trust me, I know what people on the Autism spectrum are like. I have worked for years in child and disability care, and currently have two clients with Asperger’s. I have to deal with this at work, so I know that the Queen Anne’s Revenge Lego ship costs $120 and has 1095 pieces and is for ages 9-16, and that the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and it’s in Dubai and has over 160 stories. But is this really the conversation model we want to have? (I know it’s something I certainly don’t want to have to put up with, when I’m not being paid good money to) Because if it is, the ability of this site to attract smart NTs is going to drastically decrease. If you want LW to be a non-NT haven, that’s great! Just call it that, instead of calling it a blog on rationality.
There’s a joke on “Glee” where a character claims to have Asperger’s, and uses that as an excuse to be rude to everyone. Saying people are on the Autism spectrum is an explanation of impoliteness, and a good way to apologize for rudeness (i.e. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for my words to be taken that way. I have a problem with being too blunt”). It is NOT however a free ticket to be rude, without regard to consequences.
Being “polite” isn’t just to help convince the other person to listen to you. It’s to not completely drive the NTs away altogether.
(I also realize that I myself am not being overly polite right now, and I apologize. But I don’t have time to make all these points in a polite manner, and apparently you are more than happy with people being blunt with you, so I will take you at your word in the matter.)
I know that recommending the sequences is the LW version of “Fuck you”. I assume, being a long time LW vet, that you are aware of the same. For your information, I have read much of the Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor sequence, but had not read the wiki (your link was broken, btw), and just read the first link.
However, my first contact with these ideas was actually from a TED talk a good while back (long ago enough that I don’t remember who it was and can’t find it). I think the TED talk comments are a good example of how people can have interesting discussions, but remain civil.
I am getting tired of this thread, and am unlikely to continue commenting. I’m gonna go back to transcribing videos.
I wish I could upvote again just for this point.
Code is destiny.
I mainly interact through the recent comments screen. Consequently I don’t always know what had proceeded, and didn’t here. If excessive drilling is a problem, I think we have found a major reason why, and it is fixable in many ways.
I barely cared about the cult aspect, and that’s why I didn’t say anything about it and just pointed. I realize the cult aspect was central to your thinking even as the level issue was the one I cared about.
I honestly didn’t notice.
I agree, which is why I have never once ever recommended that a person read the sequences...I think. I have frequently recommended posts, wiki entries, entire sequences minus 1⁄3 of their content, etc. That’s because it actually provides useful information. In your case I didn’t recommend you read them, but asked if you had, as I wasn’t sure.
Shermer? Benscoter?