That’s both an unfair and unwarranted response. First of all, there’s been “karma bombing” of a variety of different forms by people of different political tribes here, the most prominent of course being Eugine_Nier and his sockpuppets systematic downvoting of all comments of people whose politics he disliked. Second of all, there’s a big difference between karma bombing in the Eugine sense and people as individuals downvoting individual comments that are overly political. Third of all, part of the problem here is that AA shoves his politics into almost every single post even when the connection is at most very tenuous. I suspect I’m thought of by people here as more on the “left” but I’m pretty sure that if someone was throwing into comments asides about how the Republican party was racist or sexist, or similar remarks, I’d downvote that person and they’d end up in a pretty similar situation. Fourth of all, at least one user below has made clear that they have some sympathies with AA’s viewpoints and downvoted him because the comment’s quality and general politics made it not good content.
Arguing that this is about one side downvoting people from the other side really misses what is going on here.
First: Indeed, Eugene violated civilized norms, and was booted. What a strange coincidence that it was an unprogressive fellow that got booted. That’s as much evidence for my thesis as against.
Second: Ah, so AA saying that people should attend to their game is being “overly political”. Seems a stretch. I guess for some people everything is political, but if so, complaining that a post is political makes little sense.
Third: I thought voting a person down was a no no. That was what made Eugine’s downvoting a crime, no? I thought we were supposed to be downvoting a post based on it’s own content. I note that the response I received “I would like him to shut up and go away” in justification of the downvoting. Where are the villagers and their pitchforks calling for banning the miscreant?
but I’m pretty sure that if someone was throwing into comments asides about how the Republican party was racist or sexist, or similar remarks, I’d downvote that person and they’d end up in a pretty similar situation.
Your certainty is misplaced. I was involved in exactly the kind of case you posit, where someone basically cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer, and he was upvoted to the moon. When I called him on it, I was downvoted to oblivion. He had the decency to engage the issue, and eventually agreed that he had unfairly maligned conservatives, and hadn’t really realized he had done it at the time. Would you be so surprised if you had been one of the people upvoting his original post with it’s slur against conservatives?
Fourth: “comment’s quality and general politics made it not good content.”
As for the quality, it was the clear expression of an idea relevant to winning that you don’t hear so often. I call it a good point. It is the Open Thread after all. I don’t expect dissertations here.
As for the “general politics”—what would that be? It’s political to suggest that your interpersonal skills have a large effect on your life, so you should see about getting good at them? We shouldn’t talk about interpersonal skills?
The equivalence I think you’re appealing to doesn’t look real to me. Let’s suppose you’re right about what’s happened to advancedatheist: he posts something with a particular political/social leaning, lots of leftish people don’t like it, and they pile on and downvote it into oblivion. Contrast with what Eugine is alleged (with good evidence, I think) to have done: someone posts something with a particular political/social leaning, Eugine doesn’t like it, and he downvotes 50 of their other comments. Two key differences: (1) In the first case, the thing getting zapped is the comment that these people disapprove of; in the second, it’s a whole lot of comments there’s nothing wrong with even by Eugine’s lights other than who posted them. (2) In the first case, each person is downvoting something they disapprove of; the total karma hit advancedatheist gets is in proportion to the number of disapproving people and the number of disapproved comments; in the second, Eugine is doing it all himself; the total karma hit his target gets is limited only by Eugine’s patience.
“I would like him to shut up and go away”
No doubt it’s very disagreeable to want someone to shut up and go away. But rather than cherrypicking those 10 words, let’s take a look at the context—which seems to me to have (again, by coincidence) two key differences from that of EN’s karmattacks. (1) philh is making a very specific accusation about advancedatheist: that he is not participating here in good faith because he seems only really to be interested in popularizing PUA, even in discussions that have basically nothing to do with it. I don’t know whether philh is right or wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure Eugine couldn’t and wouldn’t have claimed with a straight face that the people he karma-bombed here are (e.g.) only posting to spread left-wing ideas or feminist ideas or whatever. It seems to me that there’s a big, big difference between “X is on the wrong side politically; therefore, I would like him to shut up and go away” and “X is trying to force his pet single issue into every discussion on LW and contributing little else; therefore, I would like him to shut up and go away”. (2) What philh is owning up to doing to advancedatheist on account of this is not the same as what Eugine is alleged to have done to lots of people. Eugine: downvoting dozens of comments merely because they’re posted by one of his targets and afford an opportunity to inflict downvotes. philh: being quick on the trigger when he sees a low-quality comment from advancedatheist. Again: big difference between “I would like X to go away, so I’ll downvote all his comments until he does” and “I would like X to go away, so when he says something I think is of low quality I’ll downvote it more readily than I would a similar comment from someone else”.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not endorsing the behaviour I think philh has admitted to here. I think it would be better if he didn’t do it. Someone who’s abusing the community by spamming LW with single-issue stuff is going to get downvoted to hell purely on his comments’ actual merits, with no need for the itchy trigger finger, and that’s a good thing. (And I think it’s what’s been happening to advancedatheist.)
I was involved in exactly the kind of case you posit, where someone basically cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer
No, he really didn’t. Not remotely. This is the article in question. (Right?) There’s nothing there remotely like casting conservatives as in league with Lucifer. What there is—and I think this is what Kaj later agreed you were right about—is something much less stupid, less harmful, and less likely to be the result of ill will: in one place he gave an example involving social conservatives’ thinking about liberals’ legislative preferences regarding homosexuality, and he didn’t do a very good job of getting inside social conservatives’ heads, and consequently his description was inaccurate and made them sound sillier and more unreasonable than they (typically) actually are. That’s all.
(To put it differently: I suggest that nothing Kaj wrote was any more inaccurate or uncharitable than your description of him, just now, as having cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer.)
In any case, Kaj’s article is irrelevant here, and would be even if he’d been much ruder about social conservatives than he actually was. Because JoshuaZ’s complaint about advancedatheist is that he shoves highly-charged political asides into comments about other things. Whereas Kaj’s whole post was, precisely, about how people think about their political opponents. No matter what he said there, there’s no way it could have been an example of the behaviour JoshuaZ is criticizing advancedatheist for.
Contrast with what Eugine is alleged (with good evidence, I think) to have done: someone posts something with a particular political/social leaning, Eugine doesn’t like it, and he downvotes 50 of their other comments.
I confirm that this is what Azathoth123 has done. (I assume with high probability that Azathoth123 is Eugine, but I cannot confirm that. Since both are banned, I don’t care anymore.) Even towards new users. A new user comes, posts dozen comments, receives one downvote per each, leaves LW and doesn’t return again. One of the comments happened to be political, the remaining ones were just the kind of comments we usually have here. No other downvotes for that user from anyone else. This in my opinion is much more harmful than downvoting old users who usually have high enough karma that they are in no danger of returning to zero, and they understand that it is only one person punishing them for having expressed a political opinion, not a consensus of the whole website.
It is a completely different behavior from downvoting the political comment and leaving the other comments untouched. From this kind of feedback people can learn “don’t post this kind of comments”. From the Eugine’s kind of feedback, the only lesson is “someone here doesn’t like you (and doesn’t even bother to explain why), go away”. And Eugine’s algorithm for giving this feedback is far from representative for the LessWrong culture.
The equivalence I think you’re appealing to doesn’t look real to me.
It’s not identical, but similar.
In the first case, each person is downvoting something they disapprove of
First, I think there as a fair bit of disapproving because of a person they disapprove of, because of his views. The comments against the post seem to include a lot of analysis of AA’s general behavior, not specific textual analysis of the post.
advancedatheist gets approximately zero benefit of the doubt at this point.
That’s about the person, not about the particular post. A particular chunk of text doesn’t need a “benefit of the doubt”, it needs to be read.
Voting down a post because of the person, and not the post, was the primary charge against Eugine. If he voted down 50 votes, but detailed the specific failings of each post, what grounds would there have been to boot him?
Second, Eugine’s crime was the violation of list norms on the use of karma. Is it not a violation of the professed list norms to vote an article down just because you disapprove of their views?
that he is not participating here in good faith because he seems only really to be interested in popularizing PUA
Since when is it bad faith to have a particular hobby horse that one rides? I see a lot of “ethical altruism” posts and comments. You voting those down too?
And no, what people are doing here is not existentially identical to what Eugine did. “Not exactly the same as the tarred and feathered pariah” is not exactly the greatest defense.
Let’s suppose you’re right about what’s happened to advancedatheist: he posts something with a particular political/social leaning, lots of leftish people don’t like it, and they pile on and downvote it into oblivion.
OK, let’s suppose I’m right. That’s usually a good bet.
Do you consider such behavior acceptable? Desirable? Consistent with the professed norms of behavior of the list?
No, he really didn’t. Not remotely. This is the article in question. (Right?)
Argue with him about it if you like. I did my time on that one.
Kaj’s article is perfectly relevant to JoshuaZ’s claim here:
that if someone was throwing into comments asides about how the Republican party was racist or sexist, or similar remarks, I’d downvote that person and they’d end up in a pretty similar situation.
The scenario he described happened, and the author did not end up in a similar situation as AA. Far from it, he was applauded.
Yes, giving (or not giving) someone the benefit of the doubt on a particular occasion involves your opinions about the personally and not just what they’ve done on that occasion. No, I don’t see why that should be a problem. (Suppose an LW poster whom you know to be sensible and intelligent posts something that seems surprisingly stupid. I hope you’ll give serious consideration to the possibility that you’ve misunderstood, or they’re being ironic, or there’s some subtlety they’ve seen and you haven’t. Failing that, you’ll probably guess that for whatever reason they’re having a bad day. Whereas if someone whose contributions you regard as generally useless posts something stupid-looking you’ll probably just think “oh yeah, them again”. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that.)
The worst problem with mass-downvoting of the sort Eugine got booted for isn’t that his voting wasn’t completely blind to who wrote the things he was voting on. It’s that it ignored everything else.
(And: Yes, it is a violation of the professed norms around here to vote something down just because you disapprove of its author’s views. You ask that question as if we’re faced with a bunch of examples of people doing that, but I’m not seeing them.)
Hobby horses
LW has a bunch of pet topics. Effective altruism has (not always by that name) always been one of them. If someone only ever posts on LW about effective altruism, that in itself doesn’t make their contributions unhelpful. PUA is not in that situation; my impression is that a few people on LW are really interested in it, a (larger) few are really offended by it, and most just aren’t interested. So someone posting only about PUA is (all else being equal) providing much less value to LW than someone posting only about EA.
But all else is not equal. What advancedatheist is accused of isn’t merely posting only about PUA, it’s shoehorning PUA into discussions where it doesn’t belong. If someone did that with EA, I think there would be plenty of complaints and downvotes flying around after a while.
“Not exactly the same”
“Not exactly the same as the tarred-and-feathered pariah” is a pretty good defence, when the attack it’s facing is “see, you’re doing the same as the tarred-and-feathered pariah”. And actually what I’m saying is “Quite substantially less bad than the tarred-and-feathered pariah”. And you may recall that it was controversial whether Eugine should be sanctioned for his actions; so what I’m saying is actually “Quite substantially less bad than that guy whose behaviour we had trouble deciding whether to punish”.
Piling on
If someone posts something lots of people don’t like for political reasons and it gets jumped on for political reasons: no, I don’t like it much. Nor for that matter if they post something lots of people do like for political reasons and it gets upvoted to the skies.
It may at this point be worth remarking that, so far as I can see, advancedatheist’s comments are not heavily downvoted overall right now. Maybe that’s partly because of this discussion; I don’t know. But it doesn’t actually seem as if he’s being greatly harmed, or his comments being effectively silenced, on account of their political content.
Anyway: as I say, I think it’s a shame if something gets a huge pile of negative karma merely for being politically unpopular. But unacceptable or inconsistent with professed norms hereabouts? No, I don’t think so.
Kaj’s comments on social conservatives
I didn’t dispute that Kaj agreed he’d been too negative about social conservatives. I did dispute (and continue to dispute) that he did anything remotely resembling saying that they’re in league with Lucifer. What Kaj agreed with you about was the first of those; what you’ve claimed here and I’ve disagreed with is the second.
And no—for reasons I’ve already given, but you’ve completely ignored—it was not an instance of the scenario JoshuaZ described. Because
what JoshuaZ described was someone chucking in irrelevant anti-Republican comments into discussions they’re irrelevant to; whereas
Kaj’s article was all about dealing with political disagreement, a lot of it was about how important it is to understand your political opponents and not strawman them, and it just happened he didn’t do as good a job as he should have of doing that (even though, as I think we agree, he was trying to).
These are not remotely the same thing. Irrelevant politically-charged asides versus mentioning politics in an article about politics. Overt hostility to a particular group versus limited ability to portray a group accurately.
(Also: you can only cast one vote on a given article. The paragraph you didn’t like was one of dozens. I see no reason to think that what got Kaj’s article applauded and upvoted was that he misrepresented social conservatives rather than all the other stuff in it. Is it your opinion that if an article or comment contains anything in it that is less than perfectly charitable to the author’s political opponents, it should be downvoted? You might want to be careful about your answer.)
[I had mistakenly replied to my own post instead of yours. ]
Yes, giving (or not giving) someone the benefit of the doubt
It shouldn’t be about him, it should be about his post. Maybe he’s in league with Lucifer too, but that doesn’t make any of his posts any more true or false.
you’ll probably guess that for whatever reason they’re having a bad day. Whereas if someone whose contributions you regard as generally useless posts something stupid-looking you’ll probably just think “oh yeah, them again”. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that.
If having a bad day means writing a bad post, then you get a downvote.
You’re just letting your prior on the person determine your vote. Which you say you disapprove of.
Yes, it is a violation of the professed norms around here to vote something down just because you disapprove of its author’s views.
a (larger) few are really offended by it,
I’m not really big on giving offense utility monsters a veto. Once you pay the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.
People are offended at PUA. Do they really not comprehend that plenty of people find their views offensive in turn? Just as everyone is the hero in their own story, there’s a pretty good chance you’re the villain in the stories of a lot of other people.
But I admit that’s something of the clash of civilizations going on here. Many people feel that their group’s “offense” should tally up in the utility machine, and they should thereby get their way. I don’t.
where it doesn’t belong
So it doesn’t belong in the Open Thread?
Anyway: as I say, I think it’s a shame if something gets a huge pile of negative karma merely for being politically unpopular. But unacceptable or inconsistent with professed norms hereabouts? No, I don’t think so.
You just said:
Yes, it is a violation of the professed norms around here to vote something down just because you disapprove of its author’s views.
It shouldn’t be about him, it should be about his post.
When a post is somewhat ambiguous, it’s reasonable to consider its context. That includes considering who posted it and what their likely reasons were. (Because it influences what is likely to happen in the ensuing discussion, if any.)
I’m not really big on giving offense utility monsters a veto.
Just as well no one suggested that, then. If you’re suggesting that I am proposing giving offense utility monsters a veto, then I politely request that you reread the whole of the sentence from which you quoted eight words and reconsider what might be leading you to misinterpret so badly. (Incidentally: Kipling reference noted.)
Do they really not comprehend that plenty of people find their views offensive in turn?
I don’t see any reason to think otherwise. If someone came along who only wanted to talk about how awful the PUA crowd is, and wedged complaints about that into discussions in which they have no place, I don’t imagine that would be much more popular than advancedatheist’s alleged wedging of pro-PUA material into inappropriate contexts.
So it doesn’t belong in the Open Thread?
I think you are mixing levels here. I am not complaining about advancedatheist, I am commenting on philh’s complaints about him and on the parallels you’re drawing. The accusation being levelled at advancedatheist (or at least part of it) is that he tries to shove PUA advocacy into discussions of other things. If in fact all he’s been doing is saying “yay PUA” in top-level open thread comments, then it’s an unfair accusation (though I think “yay PUA” and “boo PUA” belong in LW open threads about as much as “yay President Obama” or “boo Manchester United Football Club”) but that’s an entirely separate question from whether there’s an inconsistency between complaining about Eugine Nier’s mass-downvoting and not complaining about the downvotes some of advancedatheist’s comments have received.
You just said: [...]
No contradiction. The distinction you may be missing is between “because you disapprove of its author’s views” and “because you disapprove of the views expressed in that comment”. If I post one comment saying “Adolf Hitler was an admirable leader and we should give his policies another try” and one saying “Kurt Goedel proved the relative consistency of CH with ZF by proving that CH is true in the constructible universe and that Con(ZF) implies Con(ZF & V=L)”, then it is a violation of local professed norms if the latter comment gets downvoted because the former is horrible, but not if the former one does.
These are not remotely the same thing. Irrelevant politically-charged asides versus mentioning politics in an article about politics. Overt hostility to a particular group versus limited ability to portray a group accurately.
It’s not that he was mentioning politics in an article about politics. Talking about political slurs would be relevant to an article about politics. Making political slurs generally wouldn’t be.
But altogether lost in the brouhaha over my original objections to Kaj’s post was that his false characterization made for a bad argument. He did worse than be uncharitable, he did worse than slur his opponents, he made a bad argument relying a smear for much of it’s force.
And as far as I was concerned, the people who upvoted him did much worse in circling the wagons around a bad argument dependent on a cheap slur, even after it was pointed out to them.
Is it your opinion that if an article or comment contains anything in it that is less than perfectly charitable to the author’s political opponents, it should be downvoted?
No, less than perfect is not my standard for downvotes.
Mischaracterizing your opponents as supporting something morally reprehensible probably qualifies. Making a bad argument based on such a mischaracterization certainly does. Defending the mischaracterization would as well.
that if someone was throwing into comments asides about how the Republican party was racist or sexist, or similar remarks, I’d downvote that person and they’d end up in a pretty similar situation.
The scenario he described happened, and the author did not end up in a similar situation as AA. Far from it, he was applauded.
It should be easy to see how these situations are different. A well-respected user made an article with a large amount of other content, and explicitly was trying their best to model a wide varity of people who they disagree with. (And mind you many people would likely upvote Kaj by default simply based on their general inclination. This clear happens with some of the more popular writers here. Heck, I’ve occasionally upvoted some of gwern’s posts before I’ve finished reading them). This is not the scenario in question where the comments are being put into repeated comments that have little or nothing to do with the topic at hand and where this is almost all the comments the user in question has. Kaj was specifically talking about how people think about politics and trying to be charitable (failing at properly doing so apparently but that’s not for lack of trying.) And now imagine Kaj kept doing shoving such comments in while going through apparently almost zero effort to actually respond to either questions or criticisms. That would be the scenario under discussion.
I (and I suspect many people here) would not react to you the way they’ve reacted to AA partially because you respond to comments and frankly when you do have political statements, they are generally more clearly laid out, more reasonable, and more interesting than the throw-away cheering remarks that AA has. I am however, surprised by how downvoted your initial comment was there- it does have serious issues such as the claim that Kaj doesn’t have regular conservative readers, but it is surprisingly downvoted; I do have to wonder if part of that is a status thing (Kaj being of relatively high status here and you being of status more in my range or slightly higher). However, that’s not a great explanation and it does make me update in the direction of their being some for lack of a better term, liberal pile-ons.
Incidentally, note that your guess that I had downvoted you in that thread was wrong: I had not seen that thread until it was pointed out here, and had not read Kaj’s piece either. So that prediction of yours was wrong. I’m curious, meanwhile, if you’ll take me up on my offer for a bet about your attitude about AA changing in the next few months.
Indeed, Eugene violated civilized norms, and was booted. What a strange coincidence that it was an unprogressive fellow that got booted.
Excuse me, but this seems like saying: “Indeed, Eugine was the person who was strategically downvoting his political opponents. But it is still a strange coincidence that he also happened to be the person who was banned for strategically downvoting his political opponents.” I fail to see the strangeness here.
I guess the charitable interpretation is that the list of bannable offenses is purposefully generated to include things done by unprogressive people, and to exclude things done by progressive people (which I guess means pretty much everyone who is not a neoreactionary). For example, if it would be instead someone else mass-downvoting neoreactionaries (not just for political comments, but having once made a political comment, then for everyrything, including meetup announcements), and Eugine would be posting pictures of kittens, then the moderators of LessWrong would decide that mass-downvoting is perfectly acceptable, however pictures of kittens deserve a life-time ban.
What a strange coincidence that it was an unprogressive fellow that got booted. That’s as much evidence for my thesis as against.
In what universe? Are you claiming that Eugine got booted by what? The evil cabal of moderators who want to push left-wing politics?
But if you want, I’ll make a fun related prediction: Within 3 months you’ll agree with me that AA has been violating community norms. What do you want to bet on that?
Second: Ah, so AA saying that people should attend to their game is being “overly political”. Seems a stretch. I guess for some people everything is political, but if so, complaining that a post is political makes little sense.
Don’t be daft. Making claims like he did falls flatly into PUA and neoreactionary claims. Moreover, the phrasing was political.
Third: I thought voting a person down was a no no. That was what made Eugine’s downvoting a crime
No. The problem with Eugine was he was a) repeatedly downvoting people’s comments which had nothing to do with anything to do with politics or controversial issues. For crying out loud, he was downvoting meetup announcements posted by people. b) he was using sockpuppets to get the karma to do it. (Note that for example, I’ve downvoted two of advanceatheist’s recent comments but not most of them, and upvoted one of the less political ones).
Your certainty is misplaced. I was involved in exactly the kind of case you posit, where someone basically cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer, and he was upvoted to the moon. When I called him on it, I was downvoted to oblivion.
Link?
As for the quality, it was the clear expression of an idea relevant to winning that you don’t hear so often.
Really? I could imagine much clearer and much more steelmanned, and frankly more interesting versions of the same idea. I can easily supply them if you want.
It’s political to suggest that your interpersonal skills have a large effect on your life, so you should see about getting good at them? We shouldn’t talk about interpersonal skills?
No. But it is politics to claim that interpersonal skills are intrinsically involved in issues of sex and gender, that those issues always come up in the way that he described and the like.
That’s both an unfair and unwarranted response. First of all, there’s been “karma bombing” of a variety of different forms by people of different political tribes here, the most prominent of course being Eugine_Nier and his sockpuppets systematic downvoting of all comments of people whose politics he disliked. Second of all, there’s a big difference between karma bombing in the Eugine sense and people as individuals downvoting individual comments that are overly political. Third of all, part of the problem here is that AA shoves his politics into almost every single post even when the connection is at most very tenuous. I suspect I’m thought of by people here as more on the “left” but I’m pretty sure that if someone was throwing into comments asides about how the Republican party was racist or sexist, or similar remarks, I’d downvote that person and they’d end up in a pretty similar situation. Fourth of all, at least one user below has made clear that they have some sympathies with AA’s viewpoints and downvoted him because the comment’s quality and general politics made it not good content.
Arguing that this is about one side downvoting people from the other side really misses what is going on here.
First: Indeed, Eugene violated civilized norms, and was booted. What a strange coincidence that it was an unprogressive fellow that got booted. That’s as much evidence for my thesis as against.
Second: Ah, so AA saying that people should attend to their game is being “overly political”. Seems a stretch. I guess for some people everything is political, but if so, complaining that a post is political makes little sense.
Third: I thought voting a person down was a no no. That was what made Eugine’s downvoting a crime, no? I thought we were supposed to be downvoting a post based on it’s own content. I note that the response I received “I would like him to shut up and go away” in justification of the downvoting. Where are the villagers and their pitchforks calling for banning the miscreant?
Your certainty is misplaced. I was involved in exactly the kind of case you posit, where someone basically cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer, and he was upvoted to the moon. When I called him on it, I was downvoted to oblivion. He had the decency to engage the issue, and eventually agreed that he had unfairly maligned conservatives, and hadn’t really realized he had done it at the time. Would you be so surprised if you had been one of the people upvoting his original post with it’s slur against conservatives?
Fourth: “comment’s quality and general politics made it not good content.”
As for the quality, it was the clear expression of an idea relevant to winning that you don’t hear so often. I call it a good point. It is the Open Thread after all. I don’t expect dissertations here.
As for the “general politics”—what would that be? It’s political to suggest that your interpersonal skills have a large effect on your life, so you should see about getting good at them? We shouldn’t talk about interpersonal skills?
The equivalence I think you’re appealing to doesn’t look real to me. Let’s suppose you’re right about what’s happened to advancedatheist: he posts something with a particular political/social leaning, lots of leftish people don’t like it, and they pile on and downvote it into oblivion. Contrast with what Eugine is alleged (with good evidence, I think) to have done: someone posts something with a particular political/social leaning, Eugine doesn’t like it, and he downvotes 50 of their other comments. Two key differences: (1) In the first case, the thing getting zapped is the comment that these people disapprove of; in the second, it’s a whole lot of comments there’s nothing wrong with even by Eugine’s lights other than who posted them. (2) In the first case, each person is downvoting something they disapprove of; the total karma hit advancedatheist gets is in proportion to the number of disapproving people and the number of disapproved comments; in the second, Eugine is doing it all himself; the total karma hit his target gets is limited only by Eugine’s patience.
No doubt it’s very disagreeable to want someone to shut up and go away. But rather than cherrypicking those 10 words, let’s take a look at the context—which seems to me to have (again, by coincidence) two key differences from that of EN’s karmattacks. (1) philh is making a very specific accusation about advancedatheist: that he is not participating here in good faith because he seems only really to be interested in popularizing PUA, even in discussions that have basically nothing to do with it. I don’t know whether philh is right or wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure Eugine couldn’t and wouldn’t have claimed with a straight face that the people he karma-bombed here are (e.g.) only posting to spread left-wing ideas or feminist ideas or whatever. It seems to me that there’s a big, big difference between “X is on the wrong side politically; therefore, I would like him to shut up and go away” and “X is trying to force his pet single issue into every discussion on LW and contributing little else; therefore, I would like him to shut up and go away”. (2) What philh is owning up to doing to advancedatheist on account of this is not the same as what Eugine is alleged to have done to lots of people. Eugine: downvoting dozens of comments merely because they’re posted by one of his targets and afford an opportunity to inflict downvotes. philh: being quick on the trigger when he sees a low-quality comment from advancedatheist. Again: big difference between “I would like X to go away, so I’ll downvote all his comments until he does” and “I would like X to go away, so when he says something I think is of low quality I’ll downvote it more readily than I would a similar comment from someone else”.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not endorsing the behaviour I think philh has admitted to here. I think it would be better if he didn’t do it. Someone who’s abusing the community by spamming LW with single-issue stuff is going to get downvoted to hell purely on his comments’ actual merits, with no need for the itchy trigger finger, and that’s a good thing. (And I think it’s what’s been happening to advancedatheist.)
No, he really didn’t. Not remotely. This is the article in question. (Right?) There’s nothing there remotely like casting conservatives as in league with Lucifer. What there is—and I think this is what Kaj later agreed you were right about—is something much less stupid, less harmful, and less likely to be the result of ill will: in one place he gave an example involving social conservatives’ thinking about liberals’ legislative preferences regarding homosexuality, and he didn’t do a very good job of getting inside social conservatives’ heads, and consequently his description was inaccurate and made them sound sillier and more unreasonable than they (typically) actually are. That’s all.
(To put it differently: I suggest that nothing Kaj wrote was any more inaccurate or uncharitable than your description of him, just now, as having cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer.)
In any case, Kaj’s article is irrelevant here, and would be even if he’d been much ruder about social conservatives than he actually was. Because JoshuaZ’s complaint about advancedatheist is that he shoves highly-charged political asides into comments about other things. Whereas Kaj’s whole post was, precisely, about how people think about their political opponents. No matter what he said there, there’s no way it could have been an example of the behaviour JoshuaZ is criticizing advancedatheist for.
I confirm that this is what Azathoth123 has done. (I assume with high probability that Azathoth123 is Eugine, but I cannot confirm that. Since both are banned, I don’t care anymore.) Even towards new users. A new user comes, posts dozen comments, receives one downvote per each, leaves LW and doesn’t return again. One of the comments happened to be political, the remaining ones were just the kind of comments we usually have here. No other downvotes for that user from anyone else. This in my opinion is much more harmful than downvoting old users who usually have high enough karma that they are in no danger of returning to zero, and they understand that it is only one person punishing them for having expressed a political opinion, not a consensus of the whole website.
It is a completely different behavior from downvoting the political comment and leaving the other comments untouched. From this kind of feedback people can learn “don’t post this kind of comments”. From the Eugine’s kind of feedback, the only lesson is “someone here doesn’t like you (and doesn’t even bother to explain why), go away”. And Eugine’s algorithm for giving this feedback is far from representative for the LessWrong culture.
It’s not identical, but similar.
First, I think there as a fair bit of disapproving because of a person they disapprove of, because of his views. The comments against the post seem to include a lot of analysis of AA’s general behavior, not specific textual analysis of the post.
That’s about the person, not about the particular post. A particular chunk of text doesn’t need a “benefit of the doubt”, it needs to be read.
Voting down a post because of the person, and not the post, was the primary charge against Eugine. If he voted down 50 votes, but detailed the specific failings of each post, what grounds would there have been to boot him?
Second, Eugine’s crime was the violation of list norms on the use of karma. Is it not a violation of the professed list norms to vote an article down just because you disapprove of their views?
Since when is it bad faith to have a particular hobby horse that one rides? I see a lot of “ethical altruism” posts and comments. You voting those down too?
And no, what people are doing here is not existentially identical to what Eugine did. “Not exactly the same as the tarred and feathered pariah” is not exactly the greatest defense.
OK, let’s suppose I’m right. That’s usually a good bet.
Do you consider such behavior acceptable? Desirable? Consistent with the professed norms of behavior of the list?
Yes. That was the article.
Much to his credit, Kaj admitted that he had unfairly cast his opponents as “morally reprehensible”. http://lesswrong.com/lw/dc5/thoughts_on_moral_intuitions/71uz
Argue with him about it if you like. I did my time on that one.
Kaj’s article is perfectly relevant to JoshuaZ’s claim here:
The scenario he described happened, and the author did not end up in a similar situation as AA. Far from it, he was applauded.
“Benefit of the doubt”
Yes, giving (or not giving) someone the benefit of the doubt on a particular occasion involves your opinions about the personally and not just what they’ve done on that occasion. No, I don’t see why that should be a problem. (Suppose an LW poster whom you know to be sensible and intelligent posts something that seems surprisingly stupid. I hope you’ll give serious consideration to the possibility that you’ve misunderstood, or they’re being ironic, or there’s some subtlety they’ve seen and you haven’t. Failing that, you’ll probably guess that for whatever reason they’re having a bad day. Whereas if someone whose contributions you regard as generally useless posts something stupid-looking you’ll probably just think “oh yeah, them again”. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that.)
The worst problem with mass-downvoting of the sort Eugine got booted for isn’t that his voting wasn’t completely blind to who wrote the things he was voting on. It’s that it ignored everything else.
(And: Yes, it is a violation of the professed norms around here to vote something down just because you disapprove of its author’s views. You ask that question as if we’re faced with a bunch of examples of people doing that, but I’m not seeing them.)
Hobby horses
LW has a bunch of pet topics. Effective altruism has (not always by that name) always been one of them. If someone only ever posts on LW about effective altruism, that in itself doesn’t make their contributions unhelpful. PUA is not in that situation; my impression is that a few people on LW are really interested in it, a (larger) few are really offended by it, and most just aren’t interested. So someone posting only about PUA is (all else being equal) providing much less value to LW than someone posting only about EA.
But all else is not equal. What advancedatheist is accused of isn’t merely posting only about PUA, it’s shoehorning PUA into discussions where it doesn’t belong. If someone did that with EA, I think there would be plenty of complaints and downvotes flying around after a while.
“Not exactly the same”
“Not exactly the same as the tarred-and-feathered pariah” is a pretty good defence, when the attack it’s facing is “see, you’re doing the same as the tarred-and-feathered pariah”. And actually what I’m saying is “Quite substantially less bad than the tarred-and-feathered pariah”. And you may recall that it was controversial whether Eugine should be sanctioned for his actions; so what I’m saying is actually “Quite substantially less bad than that guy whose behaviour we had trouble deciding whether to punish”.
Piling on
If someone posts something lots of people don’t like for political reasons and it gets jumped on for political reasons: no, I don’t like it much. Nor for that matter if they post something lots of people do like for political reasons and it gets upvoted to the skies.
It may at this point be worth remarking that, so far as I can see, advancedatheist’s comments are not heavily downvoted overall right now. Maybe that’s partly because of this discussion; I don’t know. But it doesn’t actually seem as if he’s being greatly harmed, or his comments being effectively silenced, on account of their political content.
Anyway: as I say, I think it’s a shame if something gets a huge pile of negative karma merely for being politically unpopular. But unacceptable or inconsistent with professed norms hereabouts? No, I don’t think so.
Kaj’s comments on social conservatives
I didn’t dispute that Kaj agreed he’d been too negative about social conservatives. I did dispute (and continue to dispute) that he did anything remotely resembling saying that they’re in league with Lucifer. What Kaj agreed with you about was the first of those; what you’ve claimed here and I’ve disagreed with is the second.
And no—for reasons I’ve already given, but you’ve completely ignored—it was not an instance of the scenario JoshuaZ described. Because
what JoshuaZ described was someone chucking in irrelevant anti-Republican comments into discussions they’re irrelevant to; whereas
Kaj’s article was all about dealing with political disagreement, a lot of it was about how important it is to understand your political opponents and not strawman them, and it just happened he didn’t do as good a job as he should have of doing that (even though, as I think we agree, he was trying to).
These are not remotely the same thing. Irrelevant politically-charged asides versus mentioning politics in an article about politics. Overt hostility to a particular group versus limited ability to portray a group accurately.
(Also: you can only cast one vote on a given article. The paragraph you didn’t like was one of dozens. I see no reason to think that what got Kaj’s article applauded and upvoted was that he misrepresented social conservatives rather than all the other stuff in it. Is it your opinion that if an article or comment contains anything in it that is less than perfectly charitable to the author’s political opponents, it should be downvoted? You might want to be careful about your answer.)
[I had mistakenly replied to my own post instead of yours. ]
It shouldn’t be about him, it should be about his post. Maybe he’s in league with Lucifer too, but that doesn’t make any of his posts any more true or false.
If having a bad day means writing a bad post, then you get a downvote.
You’re just letting your prior on the person determine your vote. Which you say you disapprove of.
I’m not really big on giving offense utility monsters a veto. Once you pay the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.
People are offended at PUA. Do they really not comprehend that plenty of people find their views offensive in turn? Just as everyone is the hero in their own story, there’s a pretty good chance you’re the villain in the stories of a lot of other people.
But I admit that’s something of the clash of civilizations going on here. Many people feel that their group’s “offense” should tally up in the utility machine, and they should thereby get their way. I don’t.
So it doesn’t belong in the Open Thread?
You just said:
When a post is somewhat ambiguous, it’s reasonable to consider its context. That includes considering who posted it and what their likely reasons were. (Because it influences what is likely to happen in the ensuing discussion, if any.)
Just as well no one suggested that, then. If you’re suggesting that I am proposing giving offense utility monsters a veto, then I politely request that you reread the whole of the sentence from which you quoted eight words and reconsider what might be leading you to misinterpret so badly. (Incidentally: Kipling reference noted.)
I don’t see any reason to think otherwise. If someone came along who only wanted to talk about how awful the PUA crowd is, and wedged complaints about that into discussions in which they have no place, I don’t imagine that would be much more popular than advancedatheist’s alleged wedging of pro-PUA material into inappropriate contexts.
I think you are mixing levels here. I am not complaining about advancedatheist, I am commenting on philh’s complaints about him and on the parallels you’re drawing. The accusation being levelled at advancedatheist (or at least part of it) is that he tries to shove PUA advocacy into discussions of other things. If in fact all he’s been doing is saying “yay PUA” in top-level open thread comments, then it’s an unfair accusation (though I think “yay PUA” and “boo PUA” belong in LW open threads about as much as “yay President Obama” or “boo Manchester United Football Club”) but that’s an entirely separate question from whether there’s an inconsistency between complaining about Eugine Nier’s mass-downvoting and not complaining about the downvotes some of advancedatheist’s comments have received.
No contradiction. The distinction you may be missing is between “because you disapprove of its author’s views” and “because you disapprove of the views expressed in that comment”. If I post one comment saying “Adolf Hitler was an admirable leader and we should give his policies another try” and one saying “Kurt Goedel proved the relative consistency of CH with ZF by proving that CH is true in the constructible universe and that Con(ZF) implies Con(ZF & V=L)”, then it is a violation of local professed norms if the latter comment gets downvoted because the former is horrible, but not if the former one does.
It’s not that he was mentioning politics in an article about politics. Talking about political slurs would be relevant to an article about politics. Making political slurs generally wouldn’t be.
But altogether lost in the brouhaha over my original objections to Kaj’s post was that his false characterization made for a bad argument. He did worse than be uncharitable, he did worse than slur his opponents, he made a bad argument relying a smear for much of it’s force.
And as far as I was concerned, the people who upvoted him did much worse in circling the wagons around a bad argument dependent on a cheap slur, even after it was pointed out to them.
No, less than perfect is not my standard for downvotes.
Mischaracterizing your opponents as supporting something morally reprehensible probably qualifies. Making a bad argument based on such a mischaracterization certainly does. Defending the mischaracterization would as well.
[Deleted post mistakenly posted as a reply to myself. Moved up one level.]
It should be easy to see how these situations are different. A well-respected user made an article with a large amount of other content, and explicitly was trying their best to model a wide varity of people who they disagree with. (And mind you many people would likely upvote Kaj by default simply based on their general inclination. This clear happens with some of the more popular writers here. Heck, I’ve occasionally upvoted some of gwern’s posts before I’ve finished reading them). This is not the scenario in question where the comments are being put into repeated comments that have little or nothing to do with the topic at hand and where this is almost all the comments the user in question has. Kaj was specifically talking about how people think about politics and trying to be charitable (failing at properly doing so apparently but that’s not for lack of trying.) And now imagine Kaj kept doing shoving such comments in while going through apparently almost zero effort to actually respond to either questions or criticisms. That would be the scenario under discussion.
I (and I suspect many people here) would not react to you the way they’ve reacted to AA partially because you respond to comments and frankly when you do have political statements, they are generally more clearly laid out, more reasonable, and more interesting than the throw-away cheering remarks that AA has. I am however, surprised by how downvoted your initial comment was there- it does have serious issues such as the claim that Kaj doesn’t have regular conservative readers, but it is surprisingly downvoted; I do have to wonder if part of that is a status thing (Kaj being of relatively high status here and you being of status more in my range or slightly higher). However, that’s not a great explanation and it does make me update in the direction of their being some for lack of a better term, liberal pile-ons.
Incidentally, note that your guess that I had downvoted you in that thread was wrong: I had not seen that thread until it was pointed out here, and had not read Kaj’s piece either. So that prediction of yours was wrong. I’m curious, meanwhile, if you’ll take me up on my offer for a bet about your attitude about AA changing in the next few months.
Excuse me, but this seems like saying: “Indeed, Eugine was the person who was strategically downvoting his political opponents. But it is still a strange coincidence that he also happened to be the person who was banned for strategically downvoting his political opponents.” I fail to see the strangeness here.
I guess the charitable interpretation is that the list of bannable offenses is purposefully generated to include things done by unprogressive people, and to exclude things done by progressive people (which I guess means pretty much everyone who is not a neoreactionary). For example, if it would be instead someone else mass-downvoting neoreactionaries (not just for political comments, but having once made a political comment, then for everyrything, including meetup announcements), and Eugine would be posting pictures of kittens, then the moderators of LessWrong would decide that mass-downvoting is perfectly acceptable, however pictures of kittens deserve a life-time ban.
Is this what you are suggesting?
In what universe? Are you claiming that Eugine got booted by what? The evil cabal of moderators who want to push left-wing politics?
But if you want, I’ll make a fun related prediction: Within 3 months you’ll agree with me that AA has been violating community norms. What do you want to bet on that?
Don’t be daft. Making claims like he did falls flatly into PUA and neoreactionary claims. Moreover, the phrasing was political.
No. The problem with Eugine was he was a) repeatedly downvoting people’s comments which had nothing to do with anything to do with politics or controversial issues. For crying out loud, he was downvoting meetup announcements posted by people. b) he was using sockpuppets to get the karma to do it. (Note that for example, I’ve downvoted two of advanceatheist’s recent comments but not most of them, and upvoted one of the less political ones).
Link?
Really? I could imagine much clearer and much more steelmanned, and frankly more interesting versions of the same idea. I can easily supply them if you want.
No. But it is politics to claim that interpersonal skills are intrinsically involved in issues of sex and gender, that those issues always come up in the way that he described and the like.